Clare Sausen As the brief for the office and its definition continues to change, we look to industry experts Stuart Oldridge and Mark Klos for insight. Having recently joined our London office, the pair are leading our workplace interiors activity across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Forming part of our global workplace team, Stuart and Mark are preparing commercial environments for new, diverse and inclusive ways of working that better reflect the people they depend on and their hybrid lifestyles.
As a principal, Stuart brings nearly 30 years of experience to CRTKL. Supporting Stuart as an Associate Principal, Mark adds a wealth of specialist workplace delivery and management experience. Having shaped workspaces for companies across the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe, they complement our existing leadership team in the region and amplify our interior capabilities across all mixed-use projects. Workplace design is high on the agenda as companies look at how best to rebuild their spaces to bring back human connections and collaboration, while at the same time attracting and retaining the best talent. Our team’s wealth of knowledge and expertise will be key to build on clients’ cultural values and designing premium spaces that instill a cultural identity for staff and a sense of belonging.
What are some of the biggest shifts we are seeing take place in workplace culture? How do these affect design?
Stuart Oldridge: The biggest shift is the balance of power between employers and employees. Not so many years ago, the employer was still very much in control of setting out the culture, of how businesses came together, of the way people worked – despite technology’s best attempts to release us from the industrialization of our administration and subsequent knowledge work. Now, employees are not forced to work in office five days a week, they have unlocked more support for their mental health and they have a better understanding of the people they work with. We are seeing a great acknowledgement of the differences in how people work, even with a simple delineation like introverts and extroverts. Employee empowerment is what’s driving this cultural shift. For me, as a designer, it’s more engaging and welcoming.
Mark Klos: Culture and community are key to the success of offices going forward. I think offices should be dynamic, interesting, draw the staff in and give them pride of place. When they do return to the office, they are in a place that reinforces the company’s culture and mission statement. You can feel like you are a part of something – something that supports and nurtures or inspires them. We need to always be teaching our replacements, so we want to make a space that allows for that. There is no ceiling – the office can even provide all the comforts of an offsite conference center, too. The shift is towards creating a place of community that reinforces the culture of the firm.
What is your design philosophy? How does CRTKL’s mission complement your own?
SO: I think at the core of the mission is the opportunity to be much more aware of other design languages and disciplines. Part of what was so exciting to me about coming to CRTKL were the other Principals and what I could learn from them. They are all looking at very different areas of the built environment and seeing there is a crossover. The workplace is starting to reflect other elements of the built environment – particularly around hospitality. That fusion began to swing the corporate workplace away from the rows of desk and repetition of all-eyes-forward-ism into something like the modern social element of coming to work.
For staff and clients alike, there is a hospitality element. For me, it has always been about working a greater number of people, of creative inputs, into the project – that has always made it much stronger. It’s important to look at the bigger picture – the story and the narrative of the project, for me, is key. We are designing projects to make something – not just for the sake of design.
MK: I concur with Stuart – an integrated approach creates the strongest result. We were chatting over lunch earlier today about a technique of extracting the best ideas in the early stages of a project, the successes across disciplines of the conversation – every level of the design team, potentially. Some of the best ideas can come from more junior staff because they are unjaded and open-minded. It’s exciting to be a part of this period of re-building for CRTKL: because we have genuine, honest relationships with each other, we can build trust and develop meaningful relationships with our clients.
When it comes to clients, we see the greatest successes when we invite the people working in those spaces – from the CEO to a building staff – to come to design workshops. It is a place designed for these people, after all, and we need their input to know what might work best for them; we cannot presume to know what’s best for them when we haven’t asked. Trust is key — if you don’t have trust, you don’t have anything.
Where do you see the future of workplace interiors headed?
SO: Wherever workplace interiors are headed, culture will be the driver. This is the key to a successful workplace and to the attraction and retention of talent in the age of the Great Resignation. The future will be governed by the workforce not the workplace. People will be put first, with the design of workplace interiors seeking to serve their needs and hybrid lifestyles ahead of a brand or image. Rather than trying to fit people into a space and letting it dictate a certain work style, office environments will be shaped around them. Spaces will be designed with inbuilt flexibility to accommodate different ways of working and different types of people.
A variety-based approach to work styles accommodates issues of privacy, comfort, safety and productivity. It also moves us closer to a more equitable and inclusive model that better supports people of all identities – factoring in gender, race, sexual orientation and more.
In terms of design changes, we are moving away from the commodity office and toward an experience instead of a product. There is a lot of industrial architecture in the UK, we have been influenced by the laidback workplace designs of places like California, where warehouses and other wide-open spaces are built up from scratch into a place that suits its people. This is something we will see more of as informality continues to creep into the corporate world.
MK: Technology is absolutely key to the future of workplace interior design. The pandemic accelerated the sophistication of our technology so rapidly – and we are leveraging technology to better communicate every day. We are designing spaces that utilise new technologies: smart rooms with no screens, just walls you talk to; destination design wherein the lobby will recognize you when you come in and change somehow; furniture that charges phones or seamlessly connect to present. Whatever the application, we are using technology to study our clients and use diagnostic equipment for headcounts and workflows.
SO: I totally agree, the future of design and technology are one in the same. The other application of technology besides advancing workflows is the sustainability concern – there is going to be a lot more reuse and recycling as part of the whole design story — particularly in established centers like London, which has a massive building history. We will reuse a lot more materials and I anticipate anything new being made with more sustainable resources like timber as opposed to steel or reinforced concretes, whose carbon footprints are huge.