contact_office_magazine_#38_EN

Office Concepts
Hub is hip: All about modern
coworking landscapes.
What was once a traditional business centre is now a modern coworking space. More and more
companies are following the trend and creating their own coworking landscapes within their offices.
Better together – coworking as
a collaborative venture.
Coworking spaces originally came about as a modern
and cost-effective alternative for freelancers and
startups. They are places for people who don’t work
together directly, but still want to take advantage of
the synergies generated by a shared, inspiring workspace.
Instead of working from home alone, several
people come together in a working environment that
encourages creativity. These spaces become the foundation
of a community, and thereby play an important
role in making people feel that they belong. Famous
coworking spaces such as bluebird.space, the Impact
Hubs and Broeinest are already implementing this
concept.
Part of the hub – the concept of a
coworking landscape.
But we are now starting to see a shift towards companies
creating their own coworking spaces within their
offices. While primarily intended for their employees,
these can also be used as a workspace for external people
such as crowdworkers and freelancers. Temporary
project teams can use them as a creative workspace,
remote workers can spend their sporadic office days
in them, and working groups can use them for quick,
spontaneous meetings.
In modern New Work offices, coworking landscapes
are generally positioned in the public hub areas to facilitate
collaboration and communication. Embedded
in the open room concept of the hub zones, they offer
spaces to take telephone and video calls in peace and
quiet, or to focus on specific tasks. All workstations
are hot desks and not assigned to any one person.
This gives coworking landscapes their highly flexible
nature. Ideas tend to arise in an open and creative
working environment, away from the employees’
traditional desks. Coworking landscapes are a creative
zone for temporary working, informal meetings and
different forms of discussion. Their more casual nature
encourages collaboration and facilitates spontaneous
brainstorming.
Flexible and creative – versatile
furniture options.
There is plenty of freedom in design when it comes
to these spaces: industrial style, club or living room,
lounge, creative landscape or urban marketplace. The
important thing is that coworking landscapes can be
shifted around to create different working environments
and provide a supportive ambience for the task
at hand. This open concept requires acoustic measures
to be taken, preferably through textile flooring and
sound-absorbing materials on walls and ceilings, or as
free-standing or suspended elements.
Furniture supports the versatile concept. Benches or
islands that can be easily screened off can be used as
desks and tables. Concentrated work, communication,
coordination and temporary use can all be catered
for conveniently without wasting space. As they will
be used by a great number of different people, swivel
chairs should ideally feature automatic weight detection
to save wasting time manually adjusting them.
Conclusion: In a world in which flexibility and
networking are becoming increasingly important, coworking
landscapes are an exciting concept. They not
only create space to work, but also for conversation,
inspiration and innovation.
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