Panton’s interior work for the Spiegel Publishing House stand as some of his most fantastically electric assemblages of colour and form and are one of only a few similarly-period spaces still alive today. As his documents read:
For the famous news magazine which moved into the modernized premises in 1969 in Hamburg’s Ost-West Street, Panton designed the entrance area with courtyard and lobby, the canteen and the bar areas, the swimming pool for the employees in the basement of the building, the rooms for the editorial conferences and the lounges, as well as the colour schemes for the hallways of the administration or editorial highrise buildings. Here again the colour schemes became a major design element, providing Panton’s typical fusion of room design. All designs were his own – lamps, textiles and wall claddings, only the furniture had to be ordered from Knoll International according to his contracts. The specially designed mirror lighting used on walls and ceilings was of major importance. While the swimming pool area was destroyed soon afterwards by a fire and the entry and lobby saw major redesign in the 90s, the canteen has so far remained in the original version and today represents a unique and valuable historic document.