Designers embrace uncertainty principle

THE hybrid work model is no doubt among the more positive by-products to emerge from the pandemic, at least from an employee standpoint.

It’s a shift Hassell senior associate Polly Gee says has placed considerable emphasis on the importance of having a strategy for workplace design, to reflect these new ways of working.

“It’s just amazing how the conversation has kept evolving and changing,” said Ms Gee, who has led Hassell’s interiors team for nearly two and a half years.

“The impact that COVID has had on what we do, but also on the way our clients are thinking about workplace, is that they’re understanding we’re not really going to 100 per cent know what the impact is for a while.”

However, she noted one theme was clear.

“Everyone recognises that we need to be flexible and need to be able to adapt,” Ms Gee told Business News.

Of the 500 Australian workers Hassell surveyed in April 2022, 43 per cent said they preferred a flexible hybrid workplace model over working from home or returning to the office.

This may not be a majority, but it’s a solid signal that a significant cohort of the working population has embraced the shift in workplace habits largely accelerated by the pandemic.

Flexibility remains the principle of the moment from a design perspective.

“Some of the ideas that we had been working on with many clients have become even more relevant because people can see the benefit in exploring or nutting out that strategy at the start so that it can be adapted over time and that the workplace can grow with the organisation,” Ms Gee said.

Conceptually, she referred to the prominent design principle of an ‘agile’ or ‘active’ workplace whereby employees were free to work in a different space each day.

For some, that looks like the equally celebrated, equally dreaded exercise of hot-desking or having an unassigned desk.

Ms Gee acknowledges the term comes with connotations due to its initial awkward introduction years ago, but said its application was an appropriate concept for a changing work environment.

“I think it had a bad or unfavourable association … because when it was first introduced it wasn’t as part of an overall workplace strategy and it was really pre-activity-based working,” Ms Gee said.

“Whereas in the contemporary workplace, the trend has really been towards having a range of spaces to work in, including enclosed focus rooms, semi-enclosed spaces, collaborative settings and social spaces.

“It’s more about having an unassigned desk, and a choice of places to work within a whole workplace environment.”

Ms Gee noted that while widely predicted that the hybrid model of remote and in-office work was set to continue, the extent to which it is adopted in different industries and groups could vary.

“I think most clients can see the advantage of that, even if they’re not going to adopt that type of workplace strategy wholesale, they can see the benefits in having different types of spaces throughout their workplace to suit different activities and the way that staff want to come together to work,” she said.

Ms Gee said several clients were opting to make smaller changes to their spaces as opposed to a full refit, which she said typically occurred every 10 years.

“We’ve had quite a few clients contacting us about interim measures and how they can make little tweaks and adjustments to accommodate what’s happening now, but don’t necessarily want to make wholesale changes because it might change again a bit further down the track,” Ms Gee explained.

For many workplaces, that includes temporary furniture solutions such as phone booths, small capsules and petition systems to minimise disruption.

Ms Gee said these interim options could also be more viable from sustainability and financial perspectives.

Ironically, though, one might assume this generates the need for a closed-off quiet space – something like the seemingly outdated permanent cubicle – but Ms Gee said it instead spoke to a broader change in approach to office design.

“I think it’s more the short-term focus route, rather than an individual long-term space,” she said.

Employee needs were at both ends of the spectrum, Ms Gee said, calling for more spaces for focus work but also more spaces for collaboration.

Free lunch, fresh air, green spaces and enough room to focus without distraction, were also high on the list of features workers wanted in their office building.

“When staff are coming into the office they are wanting to meet with other people because when they’re at home they can do that individual quiet work,” Ms Gee said.

This increased flexibility has given way to a blurring of home, work and leisure, which has also influenced design.

“Workplaces have a more domestic feel in terms of aesthetics and style,” Ms Gee said.

Visually, this manifests as neutral palettes with coloured accents, mostly furnished with plants.

“You’ve got co-working spaces but there’s also co-living spaces now and that kind of blurring,” she said.

“Hotels … that have got co-working spaces in them and that blurring between all aspects of our lives, it’s not something that’s new, but I think it’s something that will continue.”

Leisure

Mata Design Studio director Paul Lim said his company’s most recent interior fit-out – Gage Roads Freo – also drew inspiration from the concept of home.

“They’d called it the home of Gage Roads … [we] said ‘okay let’s make it like a home’,” Mr Lim told Business News.

“With venues like warehouses, there’s so much character that you don’t have to overdo it.”

Mr Lim’s team of eight has carved a particular niche in the hospitality space, designing for myriad venues in Perth including La Lola, Miss Chow’s Chilli Panda and George Kailis’s Island Market Trigg.

Island Market in particular has become well-known since opening in 2017 for its signature pink Miami-inspired interior.

“George Kailis is really good, he loves design … he knows what he wants but he’s willing to listen, some clients will just kind of tell you what they want,” Mr Lim said.

“Even in the planning, he had his own ideas of this Bondi Beach club feel, with this kind of modern Miami design.”

Mr Lim also worked with the Perth restaurateur to remodel Kailis Fish Market Cafe in Fremantle.

Most of Mata’s work has become referral-based, momentum Mr Lim said had flourished throughout the pandemic.

“Surprisingly as we’re finding with COVID we’ve never actually been busier in our whole lives, it’s been an incredible journey,” Mr Lim said.

But the period had also brought about familiar industry challenges such as staffing and supply disruptions.

“The hard thing has been getting staff,” Mr Lim said.

“Cost of materials, supply of materials have all been hugely impacted.” He said shipping costs had driven up prices on products needed for a recent project to more than three times what was originally budgeted.

“Just trying to get everything in time was the key,” Mr Lim said.

“I think with COVID everyone knew there was always supply issues, so we just had to try and pre-plan with supplies and say, ‘Look, what’s the timeframe?’

“But we were okay, everyone worked together to make sure critical dates weren’t missed.”