This image Erik Svensson, senior associate, Perkins and Will
Opposite page, from left Ewald Damen of Virgile & Parnters, and Adrian Norman, head of design, Morgan Lovell
Adrian Norman, head of design at Morgan Lovell, agreed: ‘Yes, we get accustomed to colours and then opinions change. When you look at the seventies when everything was brown and everyone thought that looked great. But by the time you got to the nineties, the idea of brown was really not so good!’ So, how do clients themselves feel about colour? Are their requirements strict when it comes to the design brief, or is colour something they are more inclined to leave to the experts? ‘I’ve actually found that a lot of my clients, more recently – probably within the last year – have actually made a point of saying we do not want our brand colours involved in the design, which is actually quite interesting,’ said Connor. ‘T at seems to have been a massive shift. If I even think fi ve years ago, if you even brought a colour in that wasn’t represented by their existing branding,
they would be looking for an explanation of why. T e switch seems to be that how the company is seen in the outside world doesn’t necessarily need to be replicated within the offi ce space.’
Norman suggested: ‘Perhaps it’s because people are more aware of the impact on certain colours in the workspace and how it infl uences people and behaviour. For instance, if your brand is bright red, will you end up with a workspace full of angry people if you go too far with it within the design?’ Connor replied: ‘I did a project for a client who had a strong red corporate brand – almost black, white and grey. It is a very corporate look, and when I redesigned their offi ce, they said that as staff can be there for up to 15 hours a day, they wanted the space to be soothing. T ey had a real focus on colour and understood entirely that having black
carpets throughout with pops of red on the walls was just not an especially good working environment for them. T ey were happy to bring in biophilia and diff erent colour tones because the project was really about softening the space. ‘T is was all achieved through colour and lighting. It’s particularly interesting because they’re not necessarily saying that their brand needs to change in any way, just that their offi ce and working environment needs to. It’s a completely diff erent way of looking at it because in the past I think the general feeling was that the offi ce had to be a physical refl ection of the brand but now it is understood that the two do not have to be inextricably linked. T at’s changed from even just a few years ago.’
Norman said: ‘Perhaps there is more of an awareness that people know who they
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