Office Interiors for Foreign Companies: Three Roles the Korean Branch Space Plays

What should the person in charge at a foreign company's Korean branch decide first when preparing an office interior? How far to bring the headquarters' brand in, how the sales organization will use the office, and how to handle sound and light to suit the way people work are typical questions. SPACEBASE has worked on the Korean branch offices of a global contact lens company, a Norwegian automated logistics company, a German industrial sensor company, and a French medical device company. We've organized how each of the four spaces was configured around these three questions. Read on to see, one by one, the roles a Korean branch space takes on.

How far does the headquarters' brand go into a Korean branch office?

Some companies are known to set, at the global level, the standard for bringing a brand into space. One example is Gensler's project description, which says a global financial services brand set global design guidelines honoring regional craft, furniture, and textiles. It isn't a Korean case. So how did such standards show up in the space at the Korean branches we worked on?

At the four offices introduced above, we decided the motifs and layouts of the spaces ourselves. What headquarters decided and sent were elements such as color guidelines, designated patterns, and framed pictures. SPACEBASE calls this work of bringing a brand into a space "corporate space branding." It includes deciding a space's motif and colors from a company's branding colors, company name, and company category, and dividing work areas according to that category.

CooperVision is a global contact lens company. From the shape of a lens, we took a circular motif and applied it consistently to the ceiling details, the furniture, and the shape of the doors. For color, we adapted headquarters' guidelines and captured the crisp freshness of looking at the world through a lens.

The sofa area of the CooperVision office. A glass wall continues beside the circular object wall that carries the logo.

Before construction, CooperVision's office also had a logo at the entrance. A logo was attached to an inner wall, with product boxes stacked in front of it. After construction, a circular logo sits on the wall and the entrance is composed of arched glass. The two photos show how the way the entrance presents the brand shifted from a logo and product display to the shape of the space itself, with circles and arches.

The entrance of the CooperVision office before construction. A logo is attached to the inner wall, with product boxes stacked in front.

The entrance of the CooperVision office after construction. A circular logo sits on the wall, and arched glass continues to the right.

AutoStore is a Norwegian company that develops automated logistics systems. In the ceiling design of its Korean branch office, we carried over the structure of the logistics track, its core product. The brand red, its branding color, is repeated on furniture and ceiling structures against a white base. The large framed picture in the office was specified by headquarters. Unlike CooperVision, which adapted headquarters' color guidelines, AutoStore is the only one of the four that used its branding color without altering it.

The ceiling of the AutoStore office. A red line runs along the white ceiling grid.

A red line detail on the AutoStore office ceiling. Two lines cross on the white surface.

The red used on the ceiling and furniture continues into a band of carpet on the meeting room floor.

A room with a U-shaped meeting table. A band of red carpet runs across the gray carpet.

For the office of Sebia, a French medical device company, we brought in the calm and reliability of medical technology. As with CooperVision, we adapted the color from headquarters' guidelines, and the graphic sheets inside the meeting room use a pattern specified by headquarters. The typography of test terms on the meeting room wall follows Sebia's design rules.

A meeting room in the Sebia office. One wall is filled with lettering of test-related terms.

CooperVision's meeting room graphic sheets also use a pattern specified by headquarters. The pattern came in after the whole space had been designed to feel clean and fresh. Headquarters asked us to apply a gradient color pattern that it had designated separately from the CooperVision logo. Putting it in the lounge or at the entrance could make the space feel busy, so we placed the pattern only in part of the meeting rooms. Headquarters decided which pattern to use, but where to place it and how much of it was something we decided by looking at the impression of the whole space.

There are other cases of bringing a brand into a space in our other articles. The MURATA headquarters carried the grid structure of its logo into a floor pattern, and we covered that process in MURATA Headquarters: Giving Form to a Company's Values. With Deluxe, a global media company, we worked on its movie-theater-concept office and then its second office, which extends the theater motif. You can compare the two projects in The Theater a Client Built Twice: The Offices of Deluxe, a Foreign Media Company.

How does a sales-driven branch end up using its office?

The share of foreign companies leasing offices in the Seoul and Pangyo area is said to be 21.9%, about 6 percentage points lower than in 2019. That figure is as of the second half of 2023, according to a 2023 news report citing a Cushman & Wakefield survey. The same report also covered L'Oréal Korea's adoption of unassigned seating and the case of Toyota Korea, whose floor area shrank by close to 60% after its move.

In the two branches we worked on, seats for sales staff who are often out of the office were also set up as hot desks. But the two differed in how they separated training space from work space.

SICK is a German industrial sensor and automation solutions company, and its Korean branch office is a hub office of 350 pyeong (about 1,157 m²). It has 36 staff based there and 16 hot desks for sales staff. The space is split across two floors: one floor is used as the work area, and the other as a showroom and training room. In other words, circulation was divided floor by floor to fit the leased area.

The floor with the work area is divided again, top and bottom, using its 5-meter ceiling height. The lower level has free-seating hot desks with no assigned places, and the upper level has meeting rooms for short stays. Two uses where people don't stay long, the seats of sales staff who are often out and the meeting rooms used briefly, are stacked one above the other within the 5-meter ceiling height.

The work area of the SICK office. A row of desks sits below, and a railed level continues above.

A row of desks in the SICK office. Desks and low partitions of the same height run along both sides of the aisle.

The training room is on a different floor from the work area, so it doesn't overlap with everyday work circulation. It is a large training facility that holds 60 people.

The training room of the SICK office. A logo sits on the front wall, and long tables and chairs are lined up.

Sebia has 11 staff based there and 8 hot desks for sales staff. As a medical device company, it holds training on how to use and service its devices on an ongoing basis. The specialized training seminar room for external customers and the multipurpose town hall for meetings are placed close to the entrance, so outsiders don't enter the work area. In other words, even the location of the training space was decided by the nature of the industry. Dividing work areas by company category, which we introduced earlier as part of "corporate space branding," is a case like this.

The town hall of the Sebia office. Tiered seating in a light wood texture continues, and a room with a glass door sits to one side.

SICK divided the circulation between training space and work space by floor, and Sebia by distance from the entrance. Cases of keeping separate spaces for training and seminars inside the office can be found at other foreign branches too. In a 2022 announcement, Tremco CPG Korea said its new Seoul office is three times the size of the previous one and has spaces dedicated to discussions, demonstrations, and technical seminars.

How do the sound and light of a space change to fit the way people work?

Sound was the challenge in CooperVision's call center and Sebia's meeting room. CooperVision completed its first phase of construction in October 2024, and we also handled the second-phase expansion in Jeungpyeong, completed in October 2025. The call center has 15 people working there as of the second phase's completion. The call center in the office before we took it on had glass walls and weak sound absorption, and because of the discomfort of the staff, there was a request to raise the sound absorption.

On the ceiling and walls we installed sound-absorbing "Artboard," and we attached a sound-absorbing screen to each desk. Even without such a request, we do sound-absorption work as standard when we build a call center.

At the time of construction, Sebia kept the existing aluminum panels on its meeting room ceiling because of budget constraints. A year later, work was done again to add sound-absorbing panels, to strengthen the soundproofing of the meeting room and work area. How a foreign-company project proceeds, including budget, headquarters approval, bidding to choose the interior contractor, and the construction schedule, is covered in What to Know Before Fitting Out a Foreign Company's Office: From Branch Office Registration to Restoration to Original Condition.

The three offices looked at sound at different points. Deluxe's second office belongs to a company that needs a lot of soundproof space, so soundproofing was considered from the building contract stage; the QC BAY, where audio and video quality is checked, is one example. CooperVision's call center had sound absorption built in from the start of construction, and Sebia reinforced its space a year after construction, as we saw above. The more sensitive the work is to sound, the earlier soundproofing may be considered, and depending on the budget, reinforcement may also be pushed back. We covered Deluxe's decision process in The Theater a Client Built Twice: The Offices of Deluxe, a Foreign Media Company.

A meeting room in Deluxe's second office. The walls are finished in Artboard, a sound-absorbing material.

CooperVision's light problem, like the call center, began with the discomfort its staff felt in the office before we took it on. All the windows in that office were covered by blinds, which made it feel stuffy. The blinds were kept fully down to keep light from washing over the monitors.

So we put a lounge where the sun comes in most during working hours, and arranged the desks in the work area so they don't sit against the windows, so the blinds could be kept open. We also planned the overall circulation around this layout.

The work zone of the CooperVision office before construction. The roller blinds at the windows are down.

The lounge of the CooperVision office after construction. A table and plants sit by the window, and light comes in through it.

At the offices of all four branches, what headquarters sent was elements of the brand, while seating and training space, sound and light started from the work the Korean branch actually does. If you're preparing the office interior of a foreign company's Korean branch, talk it through with SPACEBASE.

*Photos and design courtesy of SPACEBASE

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👇🏻 Read these alongside this article

🔗 The Theater a Client Built Twice: The Offices of Deluxe, a Foreign Media Company

🔗 What to Know Before Fitting Out a Foreign Company's Office: From Branch Office Registration to Restoration to Original Condition

🔗 MURATA Headquarters: Giving Form to a Company's Values