Priyanka Shroff
Aug 26, 2017 · 5 min read

The Evolving Urban Workscape

An open plan, with community work tables staggered across the space. Our idea is to encourage interaction and facilitate collaboration on projects. The work environment should be google-like in nature”. This excerpt is extracted from a client briefing at a leading corporate organisation based in Mumbai. It involved a redesign of an office space for one of their in-house departments.

The mention of ‘google-like’ subconsciously triggered a sense of freedom to design, breaking away from conventional boundaries and creating spaces that restrain from looking like conventional office layouts, borrowed from ephemeral visual trends. This natural co-relation was so strong and easy to fathom that it triggered a parallel thought process of contradictions and questioning the obvious.

The evolving work landscape has changed the way office spaces are perceived. Start-ups are transitioning into new age corporations and established organisations are reinventing their existing work models. The ones resisting this transformation are unable to attract the next generation workforce.

Considering this shift of today or the near future, companies are embracing the emerging trend of conceptualizing an office space that is cutting edge and inspired by the current Google-Facebook-Airbnb syndrome. A trend that overlooks a company’s functioning, values and most importantly company culture, without the executioner grasping its core relevance.

For example, can an insurance marketing company compromise their competitive work structure in order to create a free flowing, easy going environment? Can a textile manufacturing industrial set-up with well-defined tasks, attempt to create a collaborative workspace or a newly launched e-commerce start-up aim to establish a linear structure?


The answer lies in understanding the most fundamental need for designing a workspace. Every company has an inherent DNA system, which results in the creation of a core work culture. It is a gradual and natural outcome that evolves over time or is consciously nurtured with a larger vision in mind. Dig deeper and observe the daily functioning of an organization. Invariably, their end goal is to create a core structure that remains proprietary to the company, facilitates productivity, creates high working standards and retains talent.

Companies today are not consciously understanding, establishing and preserving a relevant work culture. They need to realize that culture is a sustainable binder that makes sure the company is at a competitive advantage. A family owned business is a vision of an individual, a multinational aims to indigenize a core culture with incomplete local knowledge and a corporate organization attempts to project a definite image. Rarely does one create or nurture a culture, which stems from the nature of work, process of work and method of work in a company.

Thus, an office design or lets rephrase it, a workspace environment should be created keeping the existing and anticipated company culture at the center of the project.


Reaffirming this ideology, I stumbled across the Haworth White Papers, a research paper published by the furniture giant. The research questions and attempts to answer the basis of designing an office space. It validates that a company’s culture is defined by a consolidated perception brought together by several variable elements.

These elements are fluid, and blend into each other to form a longstanding structure. One needs to consider the behavioral patterns noticed while delivering a company project, the approach in dealing with stakeholders within and outside the company, the method of working towards a larger goal and a value system that does not lose its charm in the eyes of the employees even in a new age work environment.

The Haworth model categorizes company culture into four types — Collaborate, Create, Control and Compete, each one distinctive and clearly defined based on the work system in a company. Titled, How to Create a Successful Organisational Culture — Build it — Literally, describes “control” culture as focusing on “doing things right”, whereas a “compete” culture likes “doing things fast” with a focus on results. A “collaborate” culture is typically a “doing things collectively” organisation that focuses on team building, flexibility and concern for people. While a “create” culture has a “doing things first” approach that differentiates itself externally, and values experimentation and individuality.

Designing a holistic environment entails understanding and then integrating various competing cultures as well as the subcultures that exist within an organization. The white paper’s research suggests that architecture, interior design and furnishings provide a tangible way to foster or even change the culture of an organisation.

Understanding and applying the right cultural context to an organization will help design a workspace that stimulates a desired behavior, generate positive work outcomes and fuel employee satisfaction. Each culture can be supported through a systematic design of space layout, furniture and spatial elements.


Coming back to our initial project brief — The usual process of designing an element and then validating its existence within a space was reversed. Each concept stemmed from the larger intent of creating an end space that corresponded to the identified culture.

Through in-depth interviews with employees in different departments, the workspace environment that we identified for our project was a combination of ‘collaborate’, ‘create’ and ‘compete’ culture. The inferences drawn from diverse work teams and their working methods, helped us visualize a space that nurtured key attributes of each culture.

The space was designed to initiate inter-departmental dialogue and celebrate achievements through an open yet cohesive layout. The organic nature allowed one space to seamlessly blend into another. Designated social pockets were combined with untailored work areas, with secluded ‘me time’ zones created in every available dead space.

Communication and contemplation were identified as key contributors to a successful day-to-day work functioning. Leveraging this insight, individual and group workstations were designed with medium enclosures and accommodated spaces for deliberation.

‘Boss pods’ and ‘thinking pods’ were conceptualized as two separate modular structures, scattered across the space to perform specific functions with an aura of candidness. Workstations were kept light in structure, incorporating essential details like a designated handbag storage, a desk organizer and concealed charging points.

To create a larger sense of belonging, the engagement and community space integrated a felicitation wall where teams could share their stories and accolade an achievement. ‘Buddy time’ seating spaces were created in peripheral areas for one-to-one interactions.

Our interpretation of the company’s evolving working method, helped us create space subtleties that brought us closer to the envisioned project approach. However, it takes an inherent shift in management mindset and a collective openness to change and experimentation at an employee level to manifest a thought process with a dynamic vision.


Thoughts put together by

Priyanka Shroff

Credits: Haworth White Papers

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