Sony Music München

Initial Situation

After the corporate separation of the Bertelsmann Group, Sony Music will again re-establish its own corporate identity at a new site. This should be reflected in the address, the type of office concept and the work culture.
Analogous to the corporate culture of Sony which, of course, is already being experienced at other locations in the world, the primary goal of the spatial restructuring is the change from classical single and double offices from the former publishing structure towards an open, communicative office world.

The move towards a modern, flexible office should be able to strengthen and promote the communication between the departments and the labels, and respond flexibly to the future demands of the company. From these parameters, a specific requirement profile has been created with which the property information provided by the real estate business CBRE Real Estate could be evaluated in terms of location, infrastructure, efficiency and flexibility.

For Sony, a drafted and moderated 3-stage workshop process was used by CSMM in which, together with the management, the internal project management and representatives of all departments, the foundations for the further space allocation planning could be developed.

In the case of Sony, the specificity of the requirement profile consists of a mix of ‘normal’ work places with typical requirements for office tasks, as well as of a number of special work places that arise from the specific needs of the music business. For the music boxes, within which work-related music is heard, the subject of acoustics and media technology must be questioned intensively, as there must be also places of rest and concentration, or spontaneous brainstorming. In order to approach the complexity of the task in tangible steps, the collected requirements were divided into three sub-projects – work places, IT and office support spaces – clustered and worked on in various steps and with the respective decision makers.

That realisation was not decided according to the top-down approach, but could be implemented as a jointly drafted result, speaks for the foresight of management. The early involvement of representatives of the departments is beneficial for the later acceptance of spatial change and cultural identity.
Here, CSMM makes the pitch available, the utilisation of which is the responsibility of the company and employees. An accompanying project book transparently details the processes and steps for decision making, budget and deadlines for all parties involved.