In 2012, long before the entrepreneurism fever in the tech scene, there was in Porto a conference about a language still not very popular in Portugal, called Ruby. This conference gave place to a funny episode, of a very young company Subvisual, that took the liberty of sponsoring that event, paying for the t-shirts that would be given way to the participants, but there was not enough money in their bank account to pay for them, forcing their representatives to put the money up front. Since that episode until today, lot´s have change, except for that strong will to make a difference in changing and developing the community. From all this, has born a culture that matured in the past 4 (almost) 5 years, and Subvisual put together a lot of meet ups (Braga.RB, Braga.JS, Braga.UX), created a school (Creators School) and created , also, 2 international conferences, one focus in Ruby and Ruby on Ralils (RubyConf PT) e a Mirror Conf, focused in Web Design and Front-End development.
Office file
Company: Subvisual
Location: Braga, Portugal
Year: 2016
Total area: 300 m2
People: 12
Industry: Design & Web Development
Office Design: DARK Studio
Culture
The stimulus for personal and professional development it´s a constant on the day to day in Subvisual and that is reflected in small things, like the number of books in the working tables or in the library, this is particularly impressive if we take in consideration that Subvisual has only 12 persons and has no ambition to grow beyond this number. Still in this topic it was created the “Friday Talks”, a space were everyone can share or discuss ideas or experience with the team. The first Friday Talk in Subvisual had place in 2013 and since then it has been repeated every Friday, with practically no changes to the original format.
The company concept blends with the family concept in Subvisual, so entering Subvisual is like coming in to a second home, this feeling is obvious when we walk through the open space which is vibrante without being to noisy.
The Office
Subvisual office is a spacious space in Braga on the 4th floor of an office/commercial building. The concept was to create a structure inside this high ceiling space that resembles a house. This wooden structure fosters a meeting room and the open kitchen, and it’s walls can be used to post photos, announcements and even post its and information related to development projects.
Work Area
Currently with enough space for 14 people, this area is open, spacious and connected to all other areas of the office: meeting rooms, kitchen and lounge area.
The effect of the hundreds of light bulbs above give a dramatic aesthetic to the space as well as enough light to work comfortable. The white board paint along one of the longest walls in the office is great to discuss ideas, right down important notes for sharing and visual thinking.
Kitchen
People here always try to get together for lunch, wether if they bring it from home, or get it from a shop nearby. The big blue table allows for multiple uses and invites people to use this space at several times in the day: eating lunch, informal meetings and ping pong match. People keep a score of the ping pong matches and everyone is keen to get at the top of the score chart.
Every Friday they get around the big white sofa for the “Friday Talks”: 2 or 3 people share a topic of their choice, enabling everyone to increase their knowledge as well as their communication skills.
Every quarter this space is also used to hosts meetups, when Subvisual invites people to present a theme and sometimes they also organize an Hackaton.
Meeting rooms
The meeting room closer to the entrance is mostly used for meetings with clients and also to play Nintendo®, while the meeting room closer to the widows is used for team meetings, video/audio calls or work sessions. The glass serves for openness and transparency which is something that Subvisual fosters in their work culture.
Lounge
This is a perfect space for the team of 12 people to meet and get together. They gather here for their weekly meeting, for informal sharing and discussions, for work sessions and also use it to read.
Plans
Office Talk
“ We have a kitchen only for us, a common sofa for leisure as well has for working, which is followed with a view to Braga, full of natural light.” Luis Ferreira
“ Here I fell confortable, like I was in home. The relationship that we have between us, it´s like friends, besides works, we can see a movie ou play ping-pong, we recharge and go back to work more focused” Francisco Baila
Todas as fotos: André Henriques | www.ahphoto.pt/
