Ramy Fischler
Designer
Has the health situation changed the way you design your offices?
In the long term, no. The crisis has accelerated certain trends, but overall we're going to get back to basics, for better or for worse. Now, if we want to think about how Covid has changed the way we use our physical spaces, we need above all to consider the mental space in which we move throughout the day. Today, to say that people spend less time at work is totally false! On the move, at home, as soon as you have your smartphone in your hand - children remind us of this often enough - we are in a work situation! So the time we spend working is governed not only by a defined, compartmentalised space, but also by the technologies that have been intruding into our private sphere for some years now, capturing our attention. That's why the designer's job cannot be limited to thinking about spaces as they were before. Teleworking is therefore also becoming a design issue, which needs to be dealt with more closely in terms of the physical and mental spaces (connected and disconnected) that we have at home, or in a third place... We are also rediscovering that seeing colleagues in the office is a natural need, just like getting out of the house and having a social life. As your study shows, all generations are concerned. Working from home when you're 25 - how sad! That's what we have to bear in mind when we think about offices today. Our job is not to look at functional, siloed categories, but to take into account the whole, the whole life of people and their otherness.
"Working from home when you're 25, what a pity".
What does this mean in terms of seat design?
Firstly, I think we're going to see the emergence of a lot of projects that enable communities of interest and activity to get together and recreate links. Even if this approach does not address the problem of mobility and time lost in transport, one of the main obstacles to returning to the office, which raises the crucial issue of the notion of proximity. Secondly, I think that as well as taking into account this strong need for collaboration, offices will have to provide spaces for disconnection. We often think of the office as a place of performance, creativity and collective intelligence, but this can only be expressed if at the same time we encourage the right to disconnect, to be alone, often NOT to be creative or captive. Regeneration is very important: in the course of a working day, it's vital to let off steam, no matter how much it's frowned upon today. So we need spaces where we can relieve stress and feel physically and mentally safe. And not in basements, but on floors, or even rooftops. The company's social role cannot be an excuse for squeezing more people into fewer square metres, or for offering only social spaces as an alternative. So there is a lot to be done to balance and refine the uses of office space.
With teleworking, more and more 'cosy', 'living room' type settings are finding their way into offices. What are your thoughts on this?
I'm not in favour of breaking down the barriers between the workplace and the home: under no circumstances should the office become a second home! In reality, the office borrows more from the hotel industry, with its comfort and services... In the case of the new headquarters of the bank Lazard, whose design we conceived, there was a major challenge to soften the usually rough codes of finance, to open up the premises while respecting confidentiality requirements, to design meeting rooms that were pleasant but not disconnected from the difficult and strategic decisions that are taken there... In short, to make young talent want to come and work there. I often say that for each project, you have to be tailor-made, functional and daring. And above all, you have to involve the directors and managers in the development of the project, because their offices will become not only a working tool for them, but also a means of stimulating and identifying with their teams.
So what role will the office of tomorrow play?
In the same way that you might be more attracted to a hotel than an AirBnB rental because of all the associated services on offer, commercial property needs to provide services, meet expectations and even anticipate them in order to be competitive. This applies not only to the head offices of large companies, but also to smaller ones, via a shared services model. Companies that adopt this model will be better placed in the race for talent, as a new generation enters the job market with new codes and more assertive values. Let's look further afield: by thematising buildings around shared activities and interests, for example, you can unite not only the occupants but also an entire neighbourhood, with the shops and homes in the vicinity. In the future, an office will only make sense if it is open to the outside world, and if it benefits a local ecosystem, because employees are not meant to stay cooped up!
