Hygge
Creating intimacy in a corporate world
Re-imagining the Gensler Workplace
CORPORATE
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, USA
DESIGN PRINCIPAL: JOSH KATZ
PROJECT DESIGNER: AYUMI DATE
親密
Shinmitsu
As a part time employee hired for a five-week charrette process, I started my career at Gensler borrowing desks of vacationing employees, those on maternity leave and even empty offices. This offered me a unique opportunity of experiencing the workplace in a non-proprietary manner. A changing vantage point every few weeks and squatting in different studios, my itinerant work style attracted attention. At this time, many firms were geared for efficiency, pigeon-holing or “branding” employees into a single role though their skill sets may be more broad. I was difficult to pigeon-hole and continued to challenge this non-egalitarian viewpoint throughout my duration at Gensler.
How does one create fellowship in the corporate world? These conditioned, territorial patterns carry over from a bygone area where dominance and entitlement are a norm. Corporate executives who value their prominence by the size and location of their office– the coveted cornered office. Where the executive suites line the windowed perimeter of an office building and the general pool of cubicles are organized in the windowless core of a building. What values do these spaces reflect? What value is there to proprietary workspace unless it supports fellowship and reflects life acceptance? How can the corporation sustain its community when they restrict movement, versatility and pigeon-hole its talent?
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There is often a myth in large firms that a designer is indispensable, cultivating this idea of “specialty” sometimes restricts a designer from branching out, ultimately to their own detriment. Restricting mobility and versatility in order to climb up the corporate ladder seems counter intuitive and a misalignment of professional values. Many skilled employees become branded as one dimensional designers, manufacturing the same design of the same type for their entire careers.
Asked to create a diagram of lessons learned from the Deloitte project, I created fictitious scenarios reflecting design for office spaces, interactive cafés and sprinkling of communal spaces for presentations. They were meant to change the behavioral patterns of employees, relooking at space to create intimacy and allow natural light to be shared by all employees.
The goal of these diagrams was to transform this corporate environment into a fun, interactive and unexpected arena–like stumbling into an indoor piazza, enticing employees to bring and/or share food and get to know their co-workers.
The design broke conventional boundaries. It dissolved the executive suite and dispensed with labeling space by personal identity, use or function. It encouraged employees to move around and not settle in and claim territory. It activated the public areas off the elevator level and connected them visually and spatially. Employees and clients were drawn to share space. It was continuous, engaged, and inviting.
We were creating a holistic organization where the talent is seen as their whole selves, and not as the single skill the corporation had branded them as having. We were developing a new corporate design vocabulary.
Realizing the importance of valuing each individual’s strengths, but to embrace the fact that weaknesses, like scars, can transform. Pursue diversity in self-development rather than seeking a single-dimensional job title. Become a warrior of agency and origin.
