Boss Design: furnishing shared space with thoughtfully-conceived focus pods that don’t fight the architecture

Our living and working habits have changed radically in the past 10 years. There is increased fluidity in where and when we work, grab our time-outs, read, lunch. Flexible days stretch into nights, and snatches of downtime might be peppered through the daylight hours too. Remote meeting alerts pop up at alarming frequency at all times of day and increasingly there is the expectation that you are to join wherever you are; a bonafide reason to be on the move is seen as no barrier to participation.

It is left to the ingenuity of the designers of our interior spaces to accommodate these new habits, to smooth the way, and find the new ergonomics of our mobile lives. Furniture designers are combining architectural thinking to carve out spaces where we can conduct all life on the move – the more private moments as well as social times – and a new category of furniture has become a fixture in offices and public spaces: the booth.

The booth exists at various scales and levels of sophistication. Functioning as a space for privacy and focus, it may be large enough to accommodate the essential infrastructures of a meeting room, or simply a seat for one. But the latest designs bring more modularity to the category, with Frida, the new focus booth from Boss Design, raising the bar both aesthetically and functionally at a smaller, more homely scale.

A gently curved screen is at the core of the Frida design, carefully scaled in height not to cut off the user entirely, but padded with foam and exquisitely upholstered in organic shades and textures to create a stylish 40mm deep acoustic shell. The basic model is fitted with a soft seat and back rest – incorporating ergonomic CMPF cut foam technology – that appear to float in the space, and leave room for under-seat storage of bags. But it can also be fitted with a desk, and it comes with options for a coat hook, charging points, ambient or task light, and ledges. Frida feels decidedly different from what’s come before.

‘Our brief with the Frida was to design a focus booth that departs from the corporate look-and-feel of existing products and provides a level of comfort inspired by residential furniture,’ explains Frida’s designer, Aaron Clarkson. ‘From our earliest sketches, we developed a design that would convey a sense of comfort and tranquillity. We prototyped a sling-like structure with a curved seat base suspended from each side of the straight-sided pod which is reminiscent of a hammock. The seat appears to float on air – a soft and comfortable notion in itself.’

Positioned alone or lined up to divide space and create a bank of havens, Frida is conceived to bring privacy and comfort to an office, hospitality spaces, airport lounges or hotel lobbies. It blends with ease into architecturally elevated spaces with its simplicity of form and potential for quite graphic arrangements. The space beneath the seat brings a sense of security to travellers stowing a suitcase temporarily out of reach, while there is a choice of a small coffee-sized or larger lap-top sized shelf to the seating version. The coat peg brings the feeling that this is truly a temporary piece of home.

If it didn’t also consider its carbon footprint, it wouldn’t be doing the whole job, and while comfort is a top priority, the silhouette is slimline and its materials limited to three: plywood, PE foam and fabric, while no adhesives are used in the assembly.

As long as life and work is on the move, booths are the answer for our momentary need to escape notice and focus the mind. Frida additionally is furnishing that escape with style and a sense of home from home, wherever we pick up that call.

© Architonic

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