We Moved!

Much more than an address change on the business cards

Snapping some pictures at one of the many office parties we organized after moving in the new space last October

Few months have passed since the first batch of the Proximity staff moved into our new, three-story office building, located in Bahan Township and within walking distance from our previous office. As we recently wrap up the ground-floor construction, a space for and by the people at Proximity is feeling like home now more than ever before.

A hotpot restaurant in its previous life, the new building provides the extra space needed to host our fast-growing Yangon team, as well as the periodic meetings for our hundreds of staff nationwide. But to turn an old-style restaurant into a modern office requires a good deal of renovation. In July 2016, a group of our staff, most of whom new to the work of interior design, started to create a space that is in line with the functions and visions of Proximity.

No kidding!

The result, after several months of planning and ongoing work , is a space filled with natural light and equipped with a canteen that drew its design inspiration from both the Burmese-style teahouse and the modern coffee shop. There are rooms and areas to gather, make private phone calls or lie down if you feel like it. This is a space that’s inherently us, as it embraces our design-thinking mindset and is sprinkled with our love for Myanmar agriculture.

With exposed metal pipes, cement columns and polished concrete floor, we renovated the space with what’s minimally required. This is not because we intend to leave the office bare — booths and nooks have quickly filed up as we moved in — but because for most people, a space that’s just a little incomplete signals few restrictions and little stiffness.

Workers were finishing up the second-floor wiring in December 2016. Our design intends on filling the space with natural light and bright colors.

There’s no worry with spilled drinks or putting sticky notes all over the window. Instead, the space welcomes trials and mistakes and continuous improvements upon what already exists. In the months that we’ve been operating in the new building, we’ve seen our staff morphing the office into a workshop space, several office parties, and at one point an art exhibit, taking the effort to transform the environment to meet their ever-changing expectations.

Left, several staff members brainstorm solutions to improve cross-team communication at a design-thinking internal workshop held on February 15. Right, a patron examines the artwork by Proximity’s photographer and graphic designer at an art show on March 10. Both events took place at the ground floor of the office.

The №. 1 comment we hear from our visitors? — “It doesn’t feel like I’m in Yangon when I’m in here.”

We are, indeed, located in a busy area of the city, just across from the shopping complex Pearl Condo and surrounded by other businesses. It’s bustling and hustling outside. But sitting in a patch of urban greeneries, the office, enclosed with floor-to-ceiling windows, looks more like a tropical greenhouse both inside and out.

We took full advantage of the natural light by placing clusters of individual tables around these windows. Everyone has a table, which we thought was important for people to feel settled in a place they spend eight hours or more a day. On the contrary, no one has an office. Surrounded by these tables, meeting rooms, phone booths/individual working space (comically coined by some staff as the “reflection rooms”) and social areas gather in the center of each floor. There’s always a place to either be by oneself, or be with others (though there never seems to be enough meeting rooms).

Various spaces for various purposes. From left to right: meeting area, individual table and office canteen.

We’ve looked into the many complaints of a complete open-space office while starting off the design process, and our methods to address those drawbacks — giving everyone a table, creating quiet zones and individual rooms — have made it easier for our staff to alternate their working spots to complete the various tasks that demand concentration, or collaboration, or often both. While many of us share lunch at our canteen, resorting to a quieter spot is always an option.

Knowing the Myanmar market, we realized that finding the variety and large amount of furniture that suit the needs for this office will not be a simple task. This is why we work with a local carpenter to custom-make the pieces we desire. Meanwhile, we scout for local gems and oldies we could plug into our modern design: folded wooden chairs, long colorful benches and locally made cushions decorate every corner.

For finishing touches, we printed wallpapers featuring the photographs our staff took in the field. Images of rice, paddy field and in one particular picture, a farmer riding a water buffalo, covered the walls. These additions to an increasingly fuller office serve as the constant reminder of where we are, and what we are here for.