SENTIFORM PRESS & MEDIA FEATURE, October 17, 2026
When culture becomes space
A new OfficeLayout feature looks beyond logos and colour palettes to ask how identity becomes something people can actually experience.
A company can say it values openness, inclusion or collaboration. The space usually reveals whether it means it.
That tension sits at the heart of Brand Identity: When Culture Becomes Space, a new feature by Luisa Castiglioni for OfficeLayout Italy. Sentiform was invited to contribute alongside perspectives from Gensler, Sky and others working across workplace and interior design.
The article explores a subject close to our work: what happens when brand identity leaves the screen and enters a place people use every day.
More than a logo on the wall
Workplace branding is still too often treated as a decorative layer. The architecture is finished, the furniture arrives, and then someone begins looking for surfaces to fill with corporate colours, slogans and oversized values.
But people are perceptive. They notice when a space has been designed with care—and when it has simply been dressed for the photographs.
A space communicates through quieter decisions: how easily people can find their way, where they can retreat, what the organisation chooses to celebrate and whether different people can feel comfortable within it. Identity is carried through materials, language, movement and small moments encountered throughout the day.
As Mario Dzurila, founder and creative director of Sentiform, explains in the article:
“There is a real difference between stating a value and making it visible. A poster declaring that an organisation is inclusive may have little impact. A large-scale mural celebrating Ada Lovelace can help a young female software engineer starting out in tech see herself as part of its history and culture.”
Making values visible
The Ada Lovelace mural forms part of Sentiform’s work for Contentful, spanning three floors of its Berlin headquarters.
Rather than covering the workplace in familiar technology-company imagery, the project celebrates people and ideas that shaped the field. Other spaces reference Susan Kare, Katie Bouman and Margaret Hamilton—women whose influence on technology has not always received the visibility it deserves.
Our work for AUTODOC takes a different route. Its wayfinding and spatial identity look outward, towards the mechanics, workshop owners and makers the company serves. The materials, stories and signs borrow from the visual language of workshops without turning the workplace into a theme park.
There is no formula for expressing culture in space. Nor should there be. The work begins by paying attention: to the organisation, the architecture and, most importantly, the people who will experience the place long after the opening photographs have been taken.
The complete feature appears in OfficeLayout, issue 206.
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