A NEW WORLD OF WORK.

For more than two decades, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby have been at the forefront of design, producing furniture for business spaces among their many high profile projects. The BMW Friends of the Brand talk to us about how work and offices are changing. 

YOU’VE BEEN DESIGNING WORK SPACES AND FURNITURE FOR MORE THAN A DECADE. HOW HAS WORKING CHANGED IN THAT TIME?

The last few months have sort of reconfirmed observations we made, probably 10 years ago or more, about how people are changing the way they work. 

The smartphone and the 2008 financial crash came about at roughly the same time. The smartphone meant you could begin to work from anywhere, while the crash resulted in a lot of people losing jobs, or work. And when they were being rehired they weren't given long-term contracts, so a lot of people did start working from home, or out of hotel lobbies and cafes. 

It culminated in a project where we designed work space in the reception for the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch, and it became a sort of working hub; everyone just piled in there because they had really good coffee and good wi-fi. It created a community, and a prototype for co-working on a larger scale. 

It led to the project we did with Vitra called the Soft Work office system that launched in 2018. Technology had moved on and you didn’t need computers with wires everywhere, which meant people could move about more. They didn’t always want to sit at a desk either, while at other times they needed private space, so it was about creating less formal, structured, office environments that offered various solutions depending on what any person needed during the day. 

Covid has accelerated this trend, and I think the last 18 months or so have put a lot of pressure on companies to make their workplaces more attractive, as well as being safer and more flexible.  

A lot of people now want more freedom in the way they work, while at the same time businesses need to have offices that still allow them to function. So managing that tension is going to be really important. 

I think what we'll see is that shift away from rows of booths with employees sitting in front of PCs grinding out thousands of emails, to offices that are almost ‘company clubs’: places where you socialise, share ideas and have meetings. 

SO IS THE TRADITIONAL DESK DEAD?

We think for a lot of people, yes, it is. The desk in the traditional sense was just a place for putting a heavy typewriter, or a clunky computer. But you don’t need that now. 

Also, the desk is a signifier of power. The boss sitting behind some big oak table, separated physically from the staff. I think that strict hierarchical structure is changing for a lot of companies. They’re becoming a lot more collaborative, and less formal in the way managers and employees communicate. 
 

IF BIG DESKS ARE OUT, WHAT REPLACES THEM?

We see the modern office as being an agile space that enables transformation and change. So you really want to have dedicated spaces for work, but also social areas and places to share ideas and have meetings. 

But crucially, they should be spaces that can move around. As we said, with technology not needing to be rooted with lots of wires now, you can have an office space that has smaller tables which move, so for example in the morning you shift them around to create a big meeting space, then build a workshop to look at ideas, and then move it all again so you have a presentation area for a client.  

It creates energy too. Those days when any office move took months of planning, with management, facilities and IT all involved, or when the manager was in a little office and everyone lined up outside in their cubicles, is disappearing. People want to be inspired when they go into work, and this agile approach helps that. Every day is different, and that keeps things fresh and inspires new ideas. 

Home working is a big thing now. How do you see people balancing home life and work life in the same space?  Some people are lucky enough to have the space to dedicate an area of their house to working, but a lot of people haven’t.  

What they're really looking for is an area to be able to work that they can then instantly tidy away, so they don't feel like they’ve got a work shadow hanging over their house. 

It doesn’t have to be large, with technology such as laptops and tablets now, but it needs to be able to fold out and away, and also signify to the rest of the house (and yourself, psychologically) that you’re now working too. And a comfortable chair is really important, but one that doesn’t look like some functional office contraption. 

So there are definitely challenges for designers now to come up with furniture that kind of blurs the boundaries between the two worlds of home and work. 

YOUR PROJECTS ARE VERY DIVERSE. HOW DO YOU FIND INSPIRATION?

Well, it's not really about inspiration, it's actually more about problem solving. We take a problem, and then we think of the best, most functional, most beautiful way of solving that problem.  

Clients will often have a vague idea of what they want, but actually the more you question them – and that’s a massively important part of the process - that first idea moves and changes quite significantly, and what they really need becomes clearer. 

Our job is to produce things that do not already exist, that bring new angles to that type of object and solves the problem the client has. 

WHAT IS YOUR DAILY WORKING ROUTINE LIKE?

People sometimes think being designers it must all be very arty and unstructured. But we are actually quite systematic in how we work. We have a team of people, we have many projects on the go at one time all at different stages, and so process is very important. 

That includes daily routine. If we’re in the studio, then there is quite a lot of structure in the way we do things, but it’s a really great space so it’s a really invigorating environment.  

There’s nothing wrong with routine and process, even in creative business such as ours, but it must still take place in surroundings that are enriching.