The­re are pro­jects that you do not for­get for many years. The­re are tho­se that you pre­fer to put out of your mind. Yet the­re are also tho­se to which we recall with a big smi­le. One of them was the near­ly 3‑year pro­ject for Code­la­b’s new HQ offi­ce. Befo­re we made this move, when the buil­ding still did not have all its win­dows, an unu­su­al object appe­ared abo­ve the Szcze­cin sky.

But befo­re we tell the sto­ry of our small car, it’s worth men­tio­ning what the big offi­ce is all abo­ut. In keeping with the Code­lab spi­rit, we arran­ged our own “home” with a demo­cra­tic com­pro­mi­se, having many discus­sions betwe­en archi­tects and seve­ral employ­ee repre­sen­ta­ti­ves. Howe­ver, one topic fired our ima­gi­na­tion, and we quic­kly agre­ed — we must have it. Yes, abso­lu­te­ly! But let’s start from the beginning.

One of first visu­ali­za­tions have alre­ady acti­va­ted our imagination

The sto­ry begins with a pho­to of a small, whi­te, retro Fiat 500 Ber­li­na from 1970. The long jour­ney from the mid­dle of Poland (Piotr­kow Try­bu­nal­ski) to our recep­tion took a lot of time, coun­tless sle­epless nights, and mul­ti­ple nego­tia­tions. To final­ly make me proud.

Fiat 500 from 1970 is even smal­ler than Fiat 500 from 2020. Despi­te the age, the car was ful­ly func­tio­nal. Still, the risk of dri­ving it to Szcze­cin (aro­und 600km) in the mid­dle of win­ter was just too signi­fi­cant. So we have deci­ded to send a tow truck to bring us our Fiat.

After the car has arri­ved, it appe­ared to us that having a car as a part of the offi­ce inte­rior might not be as easy as we tho­ught. Polish law does not defi­ne how to tre­at the vehic­le insi­de the buil­ding. Can it be tre­ated as fur­ni­tu­re? Or sho­uld it have valid motor insu­ran­ce and regu­lar tech­ni­cal reviews (as the cars on the stre­et are requ­ired)? The secu­ri­ty aspect does not allow a vehic­le con­ta­ining vehic­le liqu­ids (e.g., oil, bra­ke flu­id, petrol, etc.) insi­de the buil­ding. For­tu­na­te­ly, some­how, we mana­ged to jump the­se hoops.

When we were ready with all the “paper­work” (from a law and buil­ding secu­ri­ty per­spec­ti­ve), a new pro­blem sho­wed up. How does one put a car on the 4th flo­or of the offi­ce buil­ding? Cut­ting our Fiat 500 into pie­ces was not an option, and even tho­ugh it is a small car, it is still too big for a modern ele­va­tor. Good, that my mot­to is: “if the doors are clo­sed, use the window ;).”

The solu­tion to our pro­blem was a “fly­ing car,” of cour­se (you could obse­rve the “fli­ght” on the nation­wi­de TVN24 news chan­nel). You pro­ba­bly won­der how we could make the car land softly on the earth, as it had to be lifted 38 meters high. Well, we used a 60-meter cra­ne and a lot of pil­lows (no, real­ly). And the cra­ne lifted our Fiat 500 and put it thro­ugh the offi­ce window.

Even the best thril­ler would not be asha­med of such emotions 🙂

Suc­cess, right? Yes, but it’s not the end of the sto­ry. After safe­ly put­ting our small car on the 4th flo­or, we still had near­ly a year befo­re moving to this new offi­ce. And that meant the offi­ce was just con­cre­te; the­re were no win­dows, no doors, no tech­ni­cal flo­ors — just a dir­ty con­struc­tion site and a lot of work ahe­ad of us. Tha­t’s why we had to cover our car with many quilts and blan­kets (for safe­ty and warmth). And we also had to con­si­der our car during con­struc­tion work (e.g., when the con­struc­tion team laid the tech­ni­cal flo­oring, car­pets, etc.).

At the end of the sto­ry, I can­not for­get abo­ut an essen­tial aspect of one­’s occu­pa­tion – fun at work :). And as I found out, also con­trac­tors from Posej­don have a gre­at sen­se of humor. When our Fiat final­ly sto­od on the new car­pet, they put a fake oil sta­in under the car. A few people almost had a heart attack after pho­tos with oil sta­in had been seen by the Posej­don and Code­lab mana­ge­ment teams. 

Spe­aking Hal­lo­we­en-ish, “trick or tre­at” ;).

Ps. I am sure that you are curio­us what the who­le of this ama­zing offi­ce looks like? Befo­re we can invi­te you for a cof­fee, check out the­se few pho­tos — we miss our offi­ce a lot 🙁 🙁 🙁 May­be you would like to work the­re with us someday?