Informal zone for collaboration and conversation at Deloitte, Oslo. Photo: Ketil Jacobsen.
Creating an office: meeting present day as well as future needs Presently, workspaces are created for current as well as future employees. As interior architects, IARK take this into account in their mission to design workspaces that meet the needs of a rapidly changing work environment. By Pernille Johnsen
Partner and manager at IARK, Elisabeth Paus, explains that the new generation’s entry into the workforce includes new assessments that influence organisations to take a different direction. The freedom of choice, speed and twoway communication as well as network and further education are central pieces of terminology for the millennial generation, which is used for disruption and multitasking.
A meeting place With current technology and constant availability, we are able to execute work 58 | Issue 93 | October 2016
wherever and whenever. Work is no longer an eight-hour stint at one location and employees are no longer chained to a certain desk. Instead, it revolves around executing a task, which we can do at the airport, the local coffee shop, from home or from a hotel room. Work is something you can do without needing a specific place. If we can work from practically everywhere, do we even need an office? “I believe an office’s most important task is to act as a meeting place, a space for interaction with colleagues, and thus
create a platform for organisational development. The workspace’s primary function moves from square metres to points of contact. Therefore, it is important to create office environments that reinforce this belief,” Paus explains.
Design that follows function The workspace of tomorrow will solve every issue in unity and across departments. Employees will work more closely across cultures, education, gender and age, and we will commute from one collaborative project to the next. The starting point must be what employees in the 21st century actually do: speak on the phone, attend meetings, work independently or in a community regarding shared projects. This is how environments for different needs ought to be created. The result