THE innovative interior design of the new offices of advertising agency TBWA Hunt Lascaris at The Foundry in Green Point has provided an insight into this field of architecture, a relatively new industry in South Africa. 

One of the top interior design companies in the city, dhi Design, came up with the concept of cutting a vertical visual link through the three levels of office space, with glazed skylights at the top to provide natural light. 

Describing it as 'the office of the future', Derick Henstra, a partner in dhi Design, said the atrium-like space served as a central spine into which all the individual cellular spaces - meeting rooms, offices, boardrooms and storage space - were 'plugged' and, importantly, provided a visual link between the different areas. 

'This is a creative working environment with tremendous synergies and the different sections need to have visual contact so that they can feed off each other,' he said. 'Internal communication is very important, and so is their image - they needed to distinguish themselves in the marketplace.' 

Director Aidan Hart confirmed that a greater understanding of what interior design was all about was starting to take root in this country. 

'We are interior architects, space planners and solutions providers. We deal with the living spaces - decorating is just a small aspect of what we do.' 

Hart stressed the 'value add' that an interior design partner brings to a relocation to new premises in terms of the financial aspect and adhering to budgets. 

'We do for interiors what quantity surveyors do for the exteriors of buildings,' he explained. 'We zone in on a client's specific needs and their conception of branding and corporate image.' 

Hart said that in an environment marked by rising costs, interior designing was coming into its own - providing savings in financial and time management terms, while still delivering a quality product. 

Henstra said interior design was a specialisation of general architecture, the interior architecture of offices. 'It was something that was lacking in the architectural field and that it was why we started the company 10 years ago as a separate company to handle corporate and commercial interior design.' 

dhi Design includes among its high profile clients the Jupiter Drawing Room, Discovery Health, Cape Town Tourism, KPMG and Idion Technologies.