Yandex Office, Belgrade

The Yandex headquarters in Belgrade, conceived by Nefa architects, occupies a five-storey building that was originally a hotel. The 4,500 m² space houses one of the most energetically charged work environments in the region. It won the BIG SEE Interior Design Award 2024, and it's easy to see why.

The concept is built around contrast. Calm, minimalist open-plan zones for focused work coexist with a series of vivid common spaces, each one its own small universe: a meadow lounge with pixel clouds overhead, a spaceship fitted with ring seats and polished surfaces, a jungle room with mirrored pillars and striped sacks. A "teleport corridor" runs through every floor, acting as a threshold between the functional and the fantastical.

It is in this interplay between discipline and play that flexxica's acoustic lamps find their purpose and their full expressive range.

Colour that works

In an office where colour is a design language rather than a decorative afterthought, the choice of acoustic lighting had to hold its own. The Roller, Fold, and Sol acoustic pendants were selected not despite their coloured upholstery and ecoPET panels, but because of them.

The Roller is a large pendant whose fabric shade is available across the full Synergy by Camira and Gabriel palettes, and is filled with professional acoustic foam that absorbs a significant portion of ambient sound. In the open-plan zones of the Yandex office, where software developers spend long hours at their monitors, and the acoustic environment matters as much as the visual one, the Roller does double duty: it defines the ceiling plane with a bold textile form while quietly managing the noise that accumulates in shared space. Its circular geometry and generous proportions give the lamp a presence that reads clearly even in high-ceilinged, open volumes.

The Fold approaches the same problem differently; it's a linear acoustic pendant designed to hang over individual workstations. It combines a slim, high-performance LED profile with coloured ecoPET panels that wrap the fixture on both sides. The ecoPET material, manufactured from recycled PET bottles, is inherently fire-resistant and fully recyclable comes in a wide range of saturated shades from the ARCHIfelt palette. In the context of a bright, characterful interior like Yandex Belgrade, the Fold brings acoustic discipline directly to the desk level without muting the room's energy. The coloured panels slot into the linear composition without effort, contributing to the overall chromatic palette of each zone.

Sol rounds out the trio. Named after the Latin word for sun, it is a circular ecoPET pendant that emits high-quality diffused LED light in both directions: downward through a micro-prismatic diffuser that creates ideal working conditions, upward to fill the room with an ambient glow. Like the Fold, Sol is constructed from flat panels joined with a tongue-and-groove technique that requires no additional fasteners, a clean, resourceful approach that makes both assembly and recycling straightforward. Its soft disc form and colour flexibility make it a natural anchor for casual and social zones, where the ceiling becomes part of the atmosphere.

Why acoustic colour works here

The genius of Nefa architects' approach is that nothing in this office is neutral by accident. The work areas are deliberately understated so that the common spaces can be bold, and within those bold spaces, every material decision amplifies the concept. flexxica's coloured acoustic pendants sit at exactly this intersection: they are functional objects that carry visual intention. The coloured upholstery and PET panels are not decoration applied to a lamp; they are the lamp's surface, doing acoustic work while contributing to the room's character.

This is what acoustic lighting offers that conventional acoustic treatment cannot: the ability to manage sound through objects that are already present for another reason, already earning their place in the room. No separate panels required. No visible compromise between the acoustic ambition and the design vision.

In Belgrade, the result is a workspace that feels genuinely alive, one that acknowledges the full range of how people work, think, relax, and relate to each other over the course of a day.