Engineering workplace karma

Brand mattered to Rohan Vij*, a freelance writer/designer, who quit his day job before recession was even rumoured. But, as it turned out, design factored even higher up on the scheme of things.

Following months of skint days, he gave in to looking for a full-time job again. He chose to apply to a top city publication, which had shifted to what was before a software firm: tall, grey cubicles, each team linearly arranged, and artificial lighting. To him, “that soul-sapping facility” almost informed him of the pattern of life that would emerge from such a setting. He did not turn up for the interview.

Vij could come across as quick to judge, but says architect Siddharth Tailor, “People today not only require a good salary, but also care about the image of the organisation they work with.” And employers are beginning to tune into workplace design in terms of brand projection, right materials, exact lighting load, keeping the right volumes in the working room, predominant age group of workforce and interchangeability of workspace.

Tailor observes that some new offices are in the mode of experimenting, and age of the employees plays a major role in developing ideas and conducting experiments. The biggest design imperative today is factoring in long-term flexibility warranted by a “fragile workforce with flexible timings”.

The one intervention that has proved almost revolutionary, given a reluctance to push budgets and time constraints, is glass. Glass has managed to promote — it being cheap and easy to install — values that new firms have come to embody: transparency and communication.

Design firm DCOOP recently transformed a ’70s office at Marine Drive, which had introverted 4-feet high cubicles, by introducing glass. “What they wanted was seamless communication. So, we went for cabins made of glass running from top to bottom. Glass is ideal even from a practical angle; you can see, but not hear. What that has created, unlike before, is communication and transparency,” says Quaid Doongerwalla, principal architect, DCOOP.

With the emergence of new firms, employers keen on projecting the right corporate image are giving their designers free creative reign, although, on a budget. And that has led to some creative workspaces in the city. Take Indigo Consultancy, a website design firm, housed in Sun Mills compound. Driven by the vision of its CEO, Vikas Tandon, designers at DCOOP broke away from the average office setup to create an industrial look with workstations and cabins made of corrugated metal sheets and fluorescent fiberglass.

“An office space is a reflection of the personality of a firm, especially for a start-up. Our brief to the designers listed out three criteria: it should be youthful, cost effective and creative — that it should have a unique identity of its own. Fundamentally, we are an open office space because that achieves social interaction. In such a setup, you find it easy to shout around. If you sit in cubicles all day and run into someone in the isle, you don’t know what to say to each other. Transparency is important,” says Tandon.

Media services company VivaKi, located in Kanjurmarg, is another example of reinvention. The office incorporates nine interrelated companies that are housed under one roof. Their four common conference rooms are fashioned like trains and the area around it like a train station. Men’s wash rooms are pink and women’s blue.

Not only that, thanks to plumbing issues, the rest rooms are located just a few feet from the conference area — both staring into each other through glass walls and windows. “We created a face-to-face dialogue between functions that are not combined together,”  says Sanjeev Panjabi, principal architect, Spasm Designs. The recreation space doubles up as a meeting venue by elevating the platform carrying a pool table and beanbags using hydraulic jacks whenever desired.

Tailor, however, admits that a majority of office projects fall in ‘fit in the box’ category. “The number of employees keeps changing. (And) factors that guide such tight and compact projects are efficiency and maintenance values. Therefore, creativity and concepts often (not always) have very little role to play,” he says. Doongerwalla adds that “a lot of the employers will still not explore a whole lot because existing setups are cheaper and easy to put together.”

“It’s about building images: the client’s as well as yours. If he is convinced, then there’s nothing like it. Else, the project is like a Rubik’s cube — trying to get the right arrangement,” says Tailor.

*Name changed on request