It’s instructive to compare and contrast these newly released images of Lynk & Co’s HQ in Gothenburg with. Both brands are parented by Chinese auto conglomerate Geely, but whereas Polestar has pushed for a clean, crisp Scandi aesthetic that infuses everything from its typography to its in-car graphics, Geely had a wilder brief.
Car makers’ offices are usually environments where personnel and projects ebb and flow with the global economic tides and tired old buildings are the last place on earth to receive any investment. Even the glossiest public-facing companies probably still have a few draughty portacabins stacked out back behind their production facilities.
Although Lynk & Co's commitment to difference might seem a little timid to a generation raised on the idea of the ‘office as a playground’, it’s definitely bold for a car maker. New Order Arkitektur has gone all out to create a greatest hits of quirky work culture, from exposed brutalist concrete staircases and walls to bold splashes of colour on walls and furniture, including alternative icons like Starck’s ‘Attilla’ table for Kartell .
Alain Visser is Lynk & Co’s CEO. The former senior VP of marketing at Volvo, he’s also one of the founders of the company. ‘Lynk & Co is here to disrupt the automotive industry, not to align with it. Having a boring office is out of the question. It needed to be wow,’ he says. ‘If we don’t live and work in a non-conformist fashion, then we’re not truthful to the brand. It’s all about honesty and authenticity.
New Order Arkitektur worked with Lynk’s own designers to make the most of the existing spaces, leaving old surfaces and finishes exposed, as well as recycling office furniture. Visser was adamant that ‘nice-looking’ was not the approach he wanted for his team. ‘We wanted raw,’ he recalls. ‘When they took us to a warehouse to show what a botched concrete floor looked like, we fell in love. For them it was wrong. For us, it was wrong in just the right way.