Efficiency and beauty are not two conflicting values, on the contrary. In workspace design, they represent two drivers that underpin the company’s culture
Combining beauty with the functionality of an object or a physical space has always been the challenge par excellence of design, indeed its true ultimate mission. If we talk about offices, design and architecture have just the task of merging the dichotomy smart vs beautiful so that theirs, no longer a dichotomy, but a harmony of forms and aesthetics at the service of corporate culture and economic objectives.
“Design must work, art must not”
Donald Judd
Beauty is one of the most debated themes in over two millennia of philosophy. Yet it does not require too many explanations. Intuitively you grasp it immediately, a bit like Saint Augustine’s answer to the question: what is time?
“If nobody asks me, I know: but if I wanted to give an explanation to those who ask me, I do not know”
One thing is beautiful “because it is beautiful”, or rather, “because it pleases”, as it generates a deep emotional connection through its contemplation.
HANDSOME, BUT AT WHAT COST?
IInstead, on the part of top managers, you say “smart” and behind Anglism you mean the options that ensure maximum productivity and efficiency of workers while keeping fixed costs at the lowest possible level. As the perfect storm for real estate, the pandemic has placed the emphasis on this last budget item. But even the guarantors of the “beautiful” have their work cut out for them.
The aesthetics of an office intersects and shapes the corporate culture: the internal and external image, the values, the stimulus to the creation of a collaborative and performing environment.
Post-2020 we must also deal with more humbly mundane themes. Convincing employees and giving them good reasons why every day going to the office is better than staying to work from home. Remote working should be an equal alternative, not a fallback or the “least bad” option.
“SMART” GEOMETRIES
Jim Prendergast, Design Director of Gensler’s Chicago office, in an article on the company blog illustrated the double track that guides the design of the workplace. The “strategic” point of view, linked to business, and that of “beauty“, the basis of corporate culture and experience.
On the first slope, Prendergast highlights three features:
- Intelligent geometries
- Built-in flexibility
- Intentional improvisation
The first aspect concerns the design of the surfaces (the central core of the building, its distance from light sources, height and width of the floors) and moves from a consideration at first glance trivial.
While the world of work is going through cycles of innovation and very rapid transformation, the architecture of an office complex must be designed to have a long lifespan, with all that it achieves with respect to the patrimonial value of a property. Precisely because of changing requirements very quickly, the design must ensure the interchangeability of space, reducing as much as possible the costs of transformation (built-in flexibility).
This aspect is complementary – from the point of view of the worker – to the possibility of adapting an office to different purposes and methods, in an agile and flexible way. For example, by turning the coffee corner into a meeting room. Why are we talking about intentional or deliberate improvisation? The apparent oxymoron serves to emphasize that the concept of the space must be preceded by a phase of study (the company mission, the various divisions of the organization…) that makes predictable and therefore available the different desired of those who go to the office.
A range of solutions able to put an employee in a position to choose if, how, when and where to work, to benefit the productivity of these.
THE EXPERIENCE OF BEAUTY
The one between efficiency and beauty, for Adriano Olivetti was never the need for a choice. These were not two self-excluding alternatives, neither with regard to the products that left the Olivetti factories, nor in the organization of the factories themselves.
“Facing the most unique gulf in the world, this factory has risen, in the idea of the architect, in respect of the beauty of the places and so that the beauty was of comfort in the work of every day. We also wanted nature to accompany the life of the factory”
These words were spoken by Olivetti on 23 April 1955, during the inauguration speech of the Pozzuoli plant. Low windows, open courtyards and trees: the architectural volumes integrate discreetly and in full respect of the landscape. That one was a place of work on a human scale and that put the individual at the center.
The “beautiful” that becomes “functional” and therefore design, is a generator first of all of emotional connections that can be transformed into greater creativity, and secondly of values and beliefs that contribute to shaping the identity and corporate culture. Prendergast combines three components of the aesthetic design of the workspace with three results in terms of value:
- Diversified choices ⇨ Collaboration
- Tailor-made experiences ⇨ Community
- Premeditated astonishment ⇨ Differentiation
The third association is the easiest to grasp. A working environment that generates a “wow-effect” in the customer/visitor, conveys with immediacy and effectiveness the aspirations of the company, allowing to get out of the competition. Account managers will thank you for the facility.
Collaboration and cooperation can be encouraged by providing a variety of work environments (from a single room to a meeting room, or a café-style room).
In this way, opportunities for movement, informal contact and exchange of knowledge between employees in the various sectors are promoted within the headquarters.
This is why – as we told here – the design of offices now tends to “steal” from the hospitality industry (and vice versa), to design workplaces with spaces and structures with a high socialization rate, environments more “warm” and less aseptic and depersonalizing cubicles.
If in the ‘900 the combination home/office has characterized the lives of millions of people, the remotization of work today pushes towards hybrid forms, ways but also places.
HOME AND OFFICE: MIX AND DON’T GIVE UP
All research on the change of work organization since the spring of last year, converge on the preference for a hybrid model. Solutions to the two extremes of the range (full-time office/full-time home) are unpopular. We missed the hated desk, and the lockdown led to the emergence of comfort, but also of the risks of work-agile (here we talk about loneliness).
A survey of 2500 UK workers by the Gensler Research Institute in August 2020 found that only 12% would like to virtually clock out five days a week; and only 21% (1 in 5) On the contrary, he would like to spend the whole week in the office. A similar result comes from the survey of the Future Forum of Slack on a sample of 9000 professionals in 6 countries. The latest update shows in 12% the share of employees willing to always work in the office and in 17% the aspiring full-time smart workers.
In short, after having transformed the living room into an office, now is the time to furnish the meeting rooms with a more domestic touch.