Unlike many other architects, I had not fancied myself designing furniture for domestic use. But since we all spend a lot of time in the work place, I am intrigued by office furniture. I think that most of the office furniture available in the market today is rather dull and corporate. The time has come to design an office furniture system that is both casual and accommodating for today’s digital workplace.
Several years ago, I worked on some office furniture for the USTRA Tower project in Hanover, Germany. This collection was made with Douglas-fir plywood and had a playful geometry to compliment the interior of the architecture. However, I felt that in terms of usage, the pieces remained somewhat conventional.
During the Novartis project, we had another opportunity to design an office furniture system. This time, we wanted to approach the design by first understanding how each piece would relate to the user experience. Accordingly we constructed a large-scale interior model (at a scale of 1:50 M) and laid out the location of each workstation based on requirements of each Novartis user group.
From this model, we began to develop a prototype workstation (image on left); then evolved and elaborated this prototype into a fully functioning workspace including file-storage and privacy screen (image on right).
This system was then represented in another large-scale model (at 1:25M) and presented to the client and their user group for review and comment.
Incorporating the user group’s inputs, a yet larger scale model (this time at 1:10M) was presented on site to Novartis’ CEO Dr. Vasella.
After the system has been approved by the client, we began the fabrication process collaborating with the Swiss furniture maker Vitra to produce the pieces. Our interactions with Vitra’s chairman Rolf Fehlbaum were a tremendous learning experience.
I’m pleased that we were able to create an office furniture system that incorporates the infrastructure required for all the ‘smart’ gadgets in its design and meets the persistent demand for flexibility in the digital workplace. Most importantly, I’m happy to learn that the Novartis employees are pleased with the furniture we created for them.
The projects in this section were designed and executed during my time at Gehry Partners LLP (the office). I am grateful to Mr. Gehry and the team at the office for their generosity and support over the years. All intellectual property rights of these projects continue to be owned by the office unless otherwise mentioned. The narrative texts on the projects are entirely personal, they do not represent the views or opinions of the office, its clients or any other third party or organization.