SFF 2017: Office encounters

Stockholm – Students from Beckmans College of Design presented a range of furniture that stimulates social interaction in the workplace.

: The project highlights the importance of physical workspaces as opposed to working remotely

: Individual products are designed to challenge the sedentary set-up of office environments and stimulate greater focus

Developed in collaboration with Swedish furniture manufacturer Edsbyn, The Working Office consists of six individual projects. The starting point was questioning the benefits of traditional workspaces at a time of growing digital communications and social media platforms. ‘All media simplify the social encounter by reducing the number of senses that are activated. Physical encounters with humans activate all of our senses at the same time: vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. It is this social aspect that needs to be the starting point for all office furnishings,’ explains Andreas Nobel, senior lecturer at Beckmans.

Projects on display include the Soul Office, a collection of blocky, DIY objects featuring visible joints that can be easily unscrewed to allow users to reconfigure elements of the furniture. Designers Isabelle Tapper and Jonatan Nilsson believe that active participation in building your workplace creates an emotional connection between the furniture and its users.

Another project, OAS by Hanna Wik and Ella Westlund, re-imagines the office couch as a creative oasis, ‘a vital space for spontaneous meetings and dynamic work’. The visual cues of the product reference fluid lines and patterns created by water in sand.