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'Combi-office' shapes the future
From Liz George and Andrew Carey
WEIL AM RHEIN, Germany (CNN) -- The design brief given to the architects was: "Make us the best office in the world." It took two years to turn the plan into a fully furnished reality at Vitra's furniture factory in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Gone were the dark offices and isolating cubicles. "The space has been opened up and allowed to breath," says Vitra's product manager Trent Baker. Vitra bosses were convinced that offices and their furnishings had a decisive influence on staff motivation, performance and health. So the interior was stripped back to reveal the building's basic structure, including concrete beams and pillars, a metal roof deck and concrete floor. Spaces for desks, meetings, cafes, break areas and group rooms were integrated. "People in the office have the opportunity to modify their workplace to suit the task in hand," adds Baker. "So employees can take one of the screens, move it on and begin to define their own personal working area." The working day begins when employees grab their own trolley holding their personal utensils and plug in their laptop where they please. The flexible office design is a far cry from those of the 1970s with office cells and endless corridors, and the regimented cubes of open-plan spaces of the 1980s. Now the emphasis is on the "combi-office" which recognizes the need for communal work as well privacy. In this office space you can work alone in a private booth or together on a large platform. "One's chair and desk gets stale after a while, the familiarity becomes too much," says British interior designer Sevil Peach, who won numerous awards, including Office of the Year 2000, for her work with Vitra. "People want that change to get up and go somewhere and refresh their minds and then maybe return to their desk."
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