The malaise about large rooms. Green offices and corporate gardening. Photo: GettyImage/Colorblind Office life: Road Warrior.

About henhouses, Road Warriors, corporate gardening, and a different kind of dinosaur dying. On my latest business trip to Asia I was faced with a haunting version of the topic “open-plan office: pros and cons”. We’ve truly seen a lot of peculiar things in Asia, where space is scarce, but an office, where employees are kept like laying hens? This is indeed totally unlike any idea we have of an open-plan office. So what’s behind this concept? What are the advantages and disadvantages of an open-plan office in terms of employee efficiency and well-being? Do open-plan offices even adversely affect...

Good ideas take time to ripen greutmann bolzern is an award-winning designer duo who found each other 28 years ago when they were both studying at university. Since then they have been together both professionally and privately. For Wiesner-Hager, the likeable Swiss have designed four furniture series so far, among them veron and n_table. We met them in their studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where we talked about offices, their teaching activity, and designer dreams that have not yet come true. In your work, you concentrate on the world of offices. What is your own experience with...

Reference project You two studied in the 80s. Comparing that time with today – what has changed? Carmen: We had no computer and no Internet back then. We went to the library, we drew on sketch-pads, and we had more time to develop ideas. A lot has changed since then. Urs: Time was not this fast moving. Today, many things are more superficial. Customers have grown more impatient, and globalization has made competition more fierce. Indeed, I see certain things go wrong, at the expense of creativity and quality. You’ve already implemented some projects for the Zurich Airport and for Swiss. A special...

Office Life The malaise about large rooms Open-plan offices are a great thing – always provided, of course, that the office is large enough and offers sufficient possibilities to retreat. But only few employers observe these empirical corner points. The consequences: concentration fades, the output declines, and in the end the sickness absence rate of employees rises. What is to be done? Many years ago, the European railway companies changed from compartment cars to open-plan carriages. The reason is simple: fewer partition walls, fewer access facilities, less space requirement. In return, there...

„A commitment to communication.“ Inspired by the article on open-plan offices printed on the previous pages, Markus Wiesner, CEO of WiesnerHager, and Bernhard Kern, Managing Director of Roomware Consulting GmbH, met in Linz for a panel discussion on this subject. Wojciech Czaja asked the questions. Mr Wiesner, could you give us an idea what the office of an office furniture manufacturer looks like? Wiesner: Being the CEO, I have the privilege of having an office of my own. But it’s not one of these typical prestigious executive’s offices. Instead, my office is subdivided into three areas: There’s...

Office Concepts Acoustic solutions for open space offices So it is a question of comfort and cosiness? A certain living room character? Wiesner: Yes, there is a strong tendency towards living room offices. Last year I was at the Orgatec trade fair in Cologne, and I noticed that in many cases you almost can’t distinguish between a living room and an office any more. Is this good? Bernhard Kern The trend to multi-person offices and open (middle) zones also increases the demands on acoustics. In addition to the conventional sound killers like wall-to-wall carpets or acoustical ceilings, there are...

Office Life Positive effect on health Green offices and corporate gardening 97 % of the irrigation water is emitted to the room air. Google does it, PepsiCo, too, and Yahoo, of course. What? Corporate gardening, very trendy in the USA, which has started to bear fruit in Europe, too. From the leased company field to the green office – nature is finding its way into everyday office life. And this has a lot of positive effects. Tiredness by 30 % Dry throat by 30 % Cough by 37 % Dry, irritated skin by 23 % (Source: Prof. Dr. Tove Fjeld, Grüne Nachrichten) The half-life of corporate gardens varies....

Office Concepts The new middle zones in the office Living room, market place, or lounge? In today’s offices various types of middle zones are created. Even if there’s almost no limit to creativity, the organizational and communicative aspects should remain in the focus. The bad news first: the conventional office area is getting smaller and narrower, hardly offering any opportunity for individual development; space efficiency has priority, storage room is reduced. But there are also good news: creatively designed middle zones - so-called “shared spaces” - are significantly on the rise, offering...

Smart shell, soft core Raise the curtain, turn on the spotlights! Wiesner-Hager presents the new swivel chair poi. It combines cool design, well-engineered ergonomics and noticeable comfort with a surprisingly attractive price. “We want to enhance the functional office world by adding some emotion and to create a vivid and inspiring environment with the a view to the needs of people, offering an atmosphere full of energy and ideas that whets people’s appetite for something new.” – With this spirit in mind the neunzig° design team created the new swivel chair poi for Wiesner-Hager. The elegant...

Offices all over the world Top five office technologies and trends that might become extinct in the next five years: 1. Tape recorder Office dinosaurs: I’m building my own think tank The Rotterdam-based building company IMD bought an empty old steel factory and entrusted Ector Hoogstad Architects to convert it into new and attractive headquarters. What an office! A survey carried out by the worldwide online network LinedIn investigated which office technology is threatened with extinction. The tape recorder, fax machine, and Rolodex (rotary index card holder) are acutely endangered. 2. Fax machine...