Today’s definition of the ‘working
environment’ is a slippery concept. While traditional office spaces
remain the norm – individual desks, meeting rooms, ‘breakout areas’,
kitchens – the needs of most workers have changed in the past few
decades in ways that leave these settings somewhat lacking.
Public Office Landscape collection, by Yves Behar and fuseproject
With
the advent of new technology – in particular the ability to communicate
with one another and see our co-workers pretty much wherever we are –
the traditional office set-up is in many ways becoming redundant.
However,
for all the Skypeing, emailing and Facetime, we often need to
physically be with others to truly collaborate, but the traditional
office set-up isn’t usually geared toward this.
This morning, we
saw the results of a four-year investigation into the idea of the Living
Office by design research company Herman Miller. The company showed a
number of innovative office design solutions by Industrial Facility and
Yves Behar’s fuseproject.
The designs look to solve the problems
of traditional office furniture and special arrangements, setting out
what Herman Miller terms a ‘vision and a framework’ that looks to help
companies attract and retain talent through a more desirable workplace.
Research
began in 2010, and focused on the changes in the needs of a workplace,
which now exists as much in the virtual as the physical space.
This
has, in part, democratised the space: for many workers, the facilities
of the office space and their means of communicating with colleagues can
be achieved just as easily at home. As such, the modern office needs to
focus on what makes the office space necessary in the first place: easy
and democratic collaboration with others.
Locale, by Industrial Facility
It’s
this idea of enhancing collaboration, ease and productivity that
Industrial Facility’s Locale furniture collection, created by the
consultancy’s founders Sam Hecht and Kim Colin, aims to facilitate.
Hecht
says, ‘We started off by having a conversation about what work meant.
The idea that work is attached to a specific place is a historic
concept. Previously, we needed to “go to work” to use equipment and be
face to face with people – but with technology, what’s the reason to go
there now?
‘We still need face-to-face conversation – so with Locale, we wanted a place for spontaneous, quick collaboration’.
‘The ideas are all based on proximity’, Colin adds. ‘Creativity happens where there’s movement. We have to learn to move more’.
The
designs are in part inspired by the pair’s travels in Scandinavia, a
region where office design looks to create adjustable spaces, both for
ergonomic and social reasons through an ease of movement that creates a
more dynamic, democratic feel.
Locale, by Industrial Facility
As
such, every design in Locale is adjustable. When a colleague comes to
speak to another, rather than hovering over them or perching on their
desk in an almost patronising, domineering gesture, desks easily move up
and down, so two people can stand around them in a more convivial
arrangement.
During the development of the collection, Industrial
Facility created a number of prototypes, working in each for a period of
around three months before making the relevant tweaks. The final
collection includes the D Desk and L Desk – both circular-shaped modular
workspaces that are height-adjustable.
They also have adjustable
screens at the back, meaning that for all the collaborative working they
encourage, workers can also close themselves in for privacy.
Locale, by Industrial Facility
The
other solutions to emerge from the Herman Miller research are the
Public Office Landscape designs, created by Yves Behar and fuseproject.
According to Herman Miller, the concept is the ‘first office system to
support causal work and provide comfort, at the desk, in circulation
space, and in group areas – all within a consistent design vocabulary’.
The
concept is based around the Social Chair piece – a soft seat that
promises to be able to accommodate ‘a range of people and postures’.
Public Office Landscape collection, by Yves Behar and fuseproject
Behar
says, ‘Collaboration is everything. There’s no real reason to go to the
office any more – the only reason is to collaborate with other people.
‘But in the [traditional office set-up] collaboration isn’t intuitive’.
He
points out that meeting rooms are usually separate entities from the
main workspace, and often hard to book through a series of request
forms, diaries and office managers. Bypassing this, his Public Office
Landscape concept allows collaboration and meetings anywhere, at any
time, using pieces such as seats with bi-directional movement; moveable
screens and AV facilities in open spaces.
Public Office Landscape collection, by Yves Behar and fuseproject
While
all these designs are beautiful, and promise a very seductive and
utopian way of working, it’s hard to imagine companies investing
en-masse in these sort of design-led solutions any time soon. While this
is, of course, a shame for workers – surely almost everyone wants to
work in beautiful environment, supported by ergonomically savvy
furniture – it’s also a shame for businesses too.
A Design Council report entitled
Leading Business by Design
was published in November last year, investigating how physically
embedding design thinking into workspaces could affect productivity. It
showed case-study-based evidence that improving the ‘employee journey’
was as vital as improving the ‘customer journey’.
The report was
followed by a conference of the same name this year, which saw many
companies speak of how significant improvements to employee and brand
performance can be brought about through redesigned office spaces.
So
we have to agree with Herman Miller’s assertion that it’s time to
rethink office design: the space itself, as the company says, has the
power to ‘drive innovation and execution and bring an organisation’s
strategy to life’.
(Tue, 24 Jun 2014 | By Emily Gosling, Design Week)
