Gets Architects Stacks a Home, Offices and a Warehouse into One Headquarters in South Jakarta

The bracketed letter in the name gives the brief away. CMM (H)Office, completed in 2020 in Tebet, South Jakarta, is a headquarters for a telecommunications and security company that also has to work as a home and as a place to store things. Gets Architects, with lead architect Griselda V. Chandra, fits these three programs into a 3,300 m² building of steel and concrete. From the street it reads as stacked dark boxes resting on a screen of timber-toned fins.

Mixed-use headquarters are common in Jakarta, where owners often live above or beside the business. What makes this one worth a closer look is how the stack is sorted. The plans do not leave the residence on the roof. They place the pool, lounge and bedrooms on the third floor, next to a large work area, and use water, planting and screens to separate them instead of distance. We think that is a more honest response to how a family-run company actually lives, and it is the tension that runs through the whole building.

A Street Front of Boxes and Fins

The street elevation has two layers. Dark metal-clad volumes cantilever forward at the top, and below them sits a lighter, slatted screen that steps in and out with the plan. Planted grasses run along the base and spill off the terrace edges, so the building's lower edge looks soft rather than hard against the pavement.

At dusk the fins do their best work. Lit from behind, the screen glows warm while the upper boxes recede into silhouette, which turns a fairly closed facade into a lantern. In daylight the close-up shots show the fins stepping in depth and throwing shadow across one another. That gives the elevation texture without adding any new material.

Arrival Under a Mirrored Ceiling

The ground floor plan shows two main volumes gathered around a covered drop-off court, and the arrival is handled as a sequence rather than a door. A cantilevered upper floor shelters a dark forecourt. A black reflective ceiling then picks up the green wall and the water channel beyond. Pale stone piers frame the view toward a sculpture, so you see the building's interior landscape before you reach the reception desk.

The mirrored soffit is a smart move for a deep, low space. It doubles the greenery and blurs where the ceiling stops, which makes the car court feel less like a garage. At night the lobby court becomes a stage set: a dark basin, a curved metal sculpture and a lit ramp. The veined stone of the reception desk sits behind a black steel glazing grid that holds the composition together.

Stairs That Float Against Fluted Walls

The vertical circulation follows one consistent rule: dark, thin treads set against pale, ribbed or fluted walls. The cantilevered stair and the floating black stone flight both depend on that contrast. The ribbed surfaces catch raking light from above, so climbing the stairs means walking toward brightness and greenery.

Glass-fibre reinforced concrete appears among the project's listed suppliers. The repeated moulded ribbing across walls and screens suggests where it was used. Whatever the exact panel, the fluting gives the interiors a single tactile language that ties the lobby, stair and pool areas together.

Water as the Organizing Thread

Water is not decoration here; it marks thresholds. Stepping-stone slabs cross a shallow pool in the courtyard passage, where timber benches and planters make the route a place to stop. In the covered walkway, black stone steps run straight down into a narrow channel lined with reeds, so the edge of the building feels like a riverbank.

The plans back this up. Reflecting pools appear at the ground level, and stepped pools return on the fourth floor. Repeating the same element on several levels gives a seven-storey stack a recurring sense of place, which helps it feel like one building rather than several programs stacked on top of each other.

Workspaces Facing the Garden

The offices are deliberately plain: long white desks, black task chairs and linear pendants beneath black slatted ceilings. The restraint makes sense once you see what the desks face. Workstations look through glass onto a planted courtyard with vertical screens, and the shared table sits in light filtered by the facade fins.

The executive lounge pushes this further. Sliding black fin screens pull back to open the room onto a terrace and the tree canopy. For a security company, this kind of adjustable openness is fitting: the fins can close for privacy or slide away for air and view, and you can see either state from the street.

Roof Gardens on Every Setback

The aerial view explains the massing. The building steps back as it rises, and almost every setback is planted, so it sits among Tebet's low houses and dense tree cover as a green-topped mass rather than a blank block. The second floor plan shows roof garden terraces wrapping the lower edges, and the pattern continues upward to a large roof terrace on the sixth floor.

These are usable spaces, not ornamental lids. Pivoting vertical louvers, a slatted canopy and a sunken timber seating nook under a large tree turn the terraces into outdoor rooms. Sculpted pines set against the ribbed charcoal volumes give the upper levels the feel of a courtyard garden.

A Penthouse in the Middle of the Stack

The residential floor is where the (H) earns its place. A long, narrow lap pool runs between a dark cantilevered volume and a ribbed concrete wall. A bedroom opens directly onto the water under a fin-slatted canopy, and a metal wall sculpture closes the far end of the view.

Putting this on the third floor, beside a work area, is the riskiest decision in the project. The pool acts as a horizontal moat, and the slatted ceiling and ribbed screen control what neighbours and colleagues can see. Whether that buffer is enough day to day is a question only the occupants can answer. Still, the plan takes the live-work idea seriously instead of separating the house off at the top.

Plans and Drawings

The plans trace the building from a basement of parking bays and two lift cores, through a ground floor of lobbies, pools and a prayer room, to work floors that also take in a gym, meeting rooms, a lounge and the residential suite. Above that, the floors shrink to a single service room and the roof housing for the stair and lift. Read together, the color-coded axonometrics are the clearest explanation of the scheme. One sorts the floors into private, office and vehicle zones. The other separates warehouse, office, penthouse, outdoor and service uses, and shows how the programs interlock rather than sit in neat bands.

Why This Project Matters

Many South Asian and Southeast Asian cities are full of shophouses and home offices that grew piece by piece, with the family upstairs and the business below. CMM (H)Office takes that informal type and designs it deliberately. It gives each program its own climate of screens, water and planting while letting them share one structure and one address.

The building is not modest. Mirrored soffits, floating stone stairs and a lap pool place it firmly at the corporate end of the market. But the underlying strategy carries over to more modest projects: plant every setback, use water to mark thresholds, and let an adjustable fin screen be both the face of the building and its privacy control. Those are lessons you can apply on a much smaller budget.

CMM (H)Office by Gets Architects, Tebet, South Jakarta, Indonesia. Area: 3,300 m². Completed: 2020. Photography by Mario Wibowo.

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