Transforming office spaces with Paolo Pampanoni and Deano Concetto.
Covid-19 changed the concept of office work as we used to know it. Employees turned their sofas and empty house rooms into offices and companies are adapting to this shift by re-organizing office spaces for the future. «The concept of home has gone back to its old status of residence and workplace. – says Paolo Pampanoni, a long time Las partner, architect and designer, specialized in the design of offices and working spaces – In the past, farmhouses in our countryside or artisan workshops functioned both as production and as residential areas. It is only after the industrial revolution that factories, construction sites, offices became perfectly defined places, “outside” the house. Today, technology allows us to work everywhere, however we want, whenever we want, following organisational modes that were never used before. In this perspective, various co-existing and multiple functionalities occur in one’s home, like in the past, and the single person individually goes on with this work while opening up to the world at the same time. I consider it an evolution, and not an involution, although it is a fact that our houses are not adequately equipped to provide the same comfort level and efficiency of the office».
Las has been able to promptly identify this change, meeting the needs of those who had to set up comfortable home office stations, adapt them to the house environment and at the same time offer clients the same tools they can find in the office. «For this, we created an ad-hoc products range called Home Office- explains Deano Concetto, Research and Development Manager at Las. This offer includes articles which takes reduced, small spaces and home working functionality into account; a series of small desks, panels, frontal panels, which, once integrated with containers, allow to work harmoniously in the home spaces without giving up the office comfort.»
«The health crisis imposed new ways of using and accessing work spaces, other than the search for perfectly sanitizable materials, – continues Pampanoni. – Morever, nowadays the operational domestic space is another aspect to take into account as integrated part of the layout. The layout itself is different from how we always meant it: now it is better to talk about «diffused layout», meaning an integrated system of functionalities and equipment which ranges from office spaces to domestic ones, forming a galaxy of interrelated functionalities. Nowadays, architects are asked to design enviroments which integrate with different directional and domestic spaces, distruibuted over a territory and united by technology. Designers, instead, are requested to make simple and flexible products made with sanitizable and low impact materials: solutions based on the principle that today it is possible to work at the office, whether there is a desk or not, and that contact with remote workers needs to happen efficiently and comfortably. On the other hand, companies are asked to better plan and understand the market, to implement productive and commercial strategies in response to this shift imposed by Covid. Las totally understood the urgent need to change approach, rationalising its current products and considering new solutions for the post-Covid office».
What will be the focus in the coming years, in terms of research and innovation?
«More and more often, the office – says Concetto- comes to be seen as a meeting hub, its function being that of a meeting point and catalyst for people. Many people work from home and meet at the office once or twice a week, to share how their own work went and to reassess the objectives. I belive it will stay like this for the upcoming months, however, people will go back to work in dedicated places because the sense of belonging, the company strength and success rely on human resources and their ability to blend in a group.» It is for this reason that the next challenges Las will embark on wiIl be about the home enviroment. The company management has develped a strategic plan for completing and updating products, adapting them to new scenarios: not only desks or containers but functional solutions making the office an exchange point of functionalities and relations, from the inside towards the outside. Forward-thinking and sense of responsability are the key words for this new chapter, in which innovation and change have to be pursued and obtained without rhetorics, according to Las style and philosophy.
