Gulf Construction Online - AXA Gulf opens new Bahrain head office

Regional News

AXA Bahrain Bay ... a green building.

AXA Gulf opens new Bahrain head office

01 February 2020

AXA Gulf, one of the largest international insurers in the GCC, is moving its activities to its new seven-storey Bahrain Bay headquarters.

The new AXA building consists of over 6,000 sq m of commercial space, enabling a more comfortable work environment for AXA’s Bahrain-based employees while also providing a more customer-friendly location.

Paul Adamson, CEO of AXA Gulf, said the workspace in the new building has been designed to create a flexible and inviting environment that is open, collaborative and modern. “It enhances our New Ways of Working (NWOW) standards, improving efficiency and cross-functional collaboration with the ultimate aim of positively impacting the work-life quality of our employees in Bahrain, who will be coming together under one roof,” stated Adamson.

The newly built green building is centrally-located in Bahrain Bay district and has been created with sustainability in mind, with features such as rooftop solar panels, and automated lighting controls. It is designed to conform to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards. Moreover, in line with AXA Gulf’s strategy of promoting diversity and inclusion, the structure of the building includes features such as ramps for easy wheelchair accessibility and braille on the lift panels.

AXA Gulf’s Bahrain Bay building will feature a ground floor, six floors of office space and four basement floors containing more than 200 parking bays. A welcoming lobby makes up the ground floor of the building while floors one to six feature open-plan layouts, designed to promote efficient work and idea sharing. Each floor hosts custom-made workstations developed to offer maximum flexibility and can be adapted to workers’ requirements.

The building uses AXA’s brand colours on the workspace floors, features a volcanic stone that radiates positive power energy to the environment, and glass partitions to make the meeting rooms private whilst maintaining a sense of openness and brightness.

The need for acoustic comfort due to the presence of numerous reflective windows led the designers to use acoustic sound-insulating products in natural wood, which clad the passage areas, as well as the meeting rooms and multifunctional rooms.

“We are proud of our partnership with the Kanoo Group and the rich history of our insurance business which has been operating for 70 years in the region,” said Adamson. “This new building reflects not only our ambitious spirit of promoting innovation but also creates a working environment to help attract new talents enabling us to work towards achieving our future strategy and growth plans.”