096 FOCUS
Q&A Square Dot
Square Dot have been designing ofice interiors for almost 23 years. Their principals, David Kramer and Kris Krokosz, reflect on the changes, influences and ofice identities since 1984
What are your thoughts currently on office design and what do clients now require from architects and designers since Covid?
Ironically, Covid should have been the most radical and influential event on the office. On the whole, it certainly woke up all those lost souls that thought they knew the future.
As workplace design consultants, we are perfectly positioned to help businesses understand what space they need in the first instance and how they should be occupying it in the second. We need to analyse what their individual requirements are because, if one size didn’t fit all before Covid, it certainly doesn’t now. It was always the wrong agenda to plan in swathes of workstations and make everyone work in the same way. So, if Covid has brought about a sea change in a design approach, then at least some good has come out of the pandemic.
Choices are bringing out a plethora of settings that will suit both introverts and extraverts and should be pushing the boundaries for manufacturers to be thinking along the same lines and bringing to the market a whole host of new and variable products that need to match the new horizons. All designers in whatever field they are working in need to play their part in creating that ‘wow’ experience, because that’s what it needs to be about. Innovation – [It’s] time to draw up a new landscape, which supports building new relationships and settings in an environment to encourage and have a sense of belonging.
How proactive are clients on thinking ahead for projects for next year or beyond?
On 26 March 2020, one client advised us that they were suspending all activities on their project, since the government advice was to stay indoors as part of the lockdown strategy. I asked them what they were going to do, to which they replied, ‘Adopt flexible working, have an open approach and, above all else, trust our staff to do the right thing.’ Tis should have been the programme well before Covid and if presenteeism hasn’t been consigned to the history books after the pandemic, then surely it never will. Te clients who have an opportunity to make a difference, maybe because of lease breaks or the need to move, together with an appetite for boldness and brave decision making, are already benefiting from making those changes. But too few clients are taking the opportunity to re-engineer their offices to be appropriate for future needs. Te key will be adaptability going forward as we are still in a state of flux and change – the only thing that’s pretty certain is the uncertainty on how businesses and office space will
adapt to future working practices. As Charles Darwin stated: ‘It’s not the strongest or fittest that will survive, but those that are most able to adapt to change.’
What would you say are the seismic changes from office design pre-Covid and now?
Te move away from banks of workstations is a clear visual and operational change. Te reality though is understanding the influences and alternative solutions. If collaboration is a new buzzword in place of ‘hot desking’, we need an environment to support not only meetings, but social gatherings and changing behaviour.
Definitely, the move away from desk numbers is the norm, and the shift away from space allocation, x amount of people does not necessarily equate to y number of desks – and why were we ever addressing this?
What have been the biggest design challenges and opportunities to emerge from the shift in the role of the office in recent years?
Technology. Less about plates full of cable spaghetti and more about freedom to move anywhere and work anywhere. How businesses would have coped if Covid had struck 10 to 15 years ago without the advent of MS Teams and Zoom is anyone’s guess. But it made a difference in 2020, and continues to have a huge impact on how we communicate with each other. Furniture manufacturers have certainly responded to the need for a new setting, but have the concepts evolved sufficiently? Or are we manufacturing too many ‘me too’ products? Equally have we simply gone full circle and are heading back to the screen-hung system furniture?
Talking to an estates director of a university recently who suggested that if you lost hot water, they might get a complaint from students after a week. Lose Wi-Fi, and there’ll be a riot after 20 minutes. People yearn for a sense of purpose – to make a difference, so the workplace should
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