Ashurst OSP

Ashurst required its Jakarta office rebuilt for an optimal 55 people across 350 square metres, blending the firm’s global identity with local character. An international law firm holds a workplace standard across every office so that a client meeting in Jakarta reads as it would in London, but an interior imported wholesale would feel foreign to the people working in it every day.

Three demands pulled against each other. The reception had to be expanded into an arrival experience that carries the firm’s refreshed identity. The floor had to support genuinely agile working, with private and collaborative settings and room for the office to grow. And Indonesian cultural elements had to be present without the result drifting from the global standard. Deciding which parts of that standard were fixed and which were open to local expression was the whole design problem.

Greater Group held the design. The brand wall sits directly opposite the entrance so the refreshed identity is the first thing a visitor meets, and around it the reception works in warm minimalist terms, soft lighting and wood panelling against neutral tones, so the room reads as professional without reading as imported.

Local craft carries the character rather than decorating it. Hand-woven sisal and traditional terracotta tiles are sourced locally, which puts Indonesian material culture into the fabric of the office instead of applying it as motif. A Barrisol light installation mimics daylight through the combined lounge and kitchenette, and modular folding doors let private meeting rooms open into a single seminar or town-hall space, so one floor serves a client meeting, a workshop and an all-hands without being rebuilt between them. The breakout space, with its mini library, deliberately stays quiet and minimal, because a retreat has to feel different from the room it adjoins.

The completed office demonstrates that a global standard and a local identity are not a compromise to be split between them: the elements that carry the brand are held exactly, and everything else is genuinely Indonesian, so the office reads as Ashurst and as Jakarta at the same time.

The flexibility is what the firm uses daily. Folding doors and a plan built for both focus and collaboration have supported the move to agile working, and the expanded reception gives visitors a considered first impression of the practice in Indonesia. The client’s own summary is that the delivered space matched the design intent and the renders with no surprises.