Ch-ch-changes: Conde House's new Open Office space

It's Sunday and I've just read (another) article in the papers about the future of work. Corporations are getting their ducks in a row, preparing for The After Times – when the Covid virus is under control enough for us to live our lives normally once more. Or according to the new normal, rather, as one thing is certain: we've been fundamentally changed by this once-in-many-a-generation collective experience.

Our received behaviours in terms of how we work have been permanently altered. Someone has opened up the lid and tinkered about with the hard wiring. The genie is out of the bottle. Insert your favoured metaphor here.

I'll be honest with you. Before the pandemic, I was already finding it hard to sit in an office all day, every day. The niceness of Architonic's HQ notwithstanding. I always felt the need to be more physically unbridled during the course of the 9-to-6, especially for me to deliver on the creative parts of my job. Jump cut to today and I'm champing at the bit to spend more time in the same space as my colleagues.

I guess how I'm imagining the ideal scenario is precisely how the majority of employers are choosing to recast their corporate work cultures now, creating future-proofed work locations, as part of a hybrid model, that allow their staffers to drop in for all-important collaborative and creative sessions, as well as high-level meetings, but which are counterbalanced by the home office for more concentrated work and on-screen get-togethers.

Japanese brand Conde House, long known for its exquisite craftsmanship-meets-industrial-design wood furniture, has taken up the mantle for the New Work phenomenon and launched an ‘Open Office’ a few streets away for its Tokyo showroom in the Aoyama neighbourhood of the city. The objectives for such an undertaking were plural. Firstly, the company wanted to practice what it preaches and offer its team a flexible, drop-in collaboration space, where employees could come together to work up ideas, share information, or receive clients and partners.

Needless to say, the space – which is housed in a small, recently renovated office building – is fitted out with some of Conde House’s most iconic designs (such as their TEN armchairs and lounge chairs, designed by Michael Schneider, Nendo’s SPLINTER chair, and Naoto Fukasawa-authored KOTAN barstools and high tables), with an equal emphasis on function and comfort. The message here is clear: the new office landscape is softer, more visually and literally tactile, and less permanent. Its reconfigurability is built-in, so to speak.

‘COVID-necessitated working from home,’ explains Conde House Open-Office director Takashi Machiyama, ‘has made people recognise the irrelevance or underperformance of the stereotypical office, and the importance of comfort. But also the importance of having a space beyond home for creation and face-to-face communication.’

The second and simultaneous aim was to create a ‘living showroom’ of sorts. If customers were to believe the fitness-for-purpose of Conde House’s furniture for work environments then what better way to do this than invite them to witness the products in action, being put through their paces. ‘It’s not always easy for visitors to our traditional store to get a true sense of the suitability of our products for workplaces,’ says Machiyama. ‘The Open-Office allows them to experience this first-hand.’

Coming through the doors to the new venue have been not only architects and planners – who get to see how Conde House is able to create total landscapes for offices as opposed to just supplying individual products – but also sales teams from the more traditional, dyed-in-the-wool office-furniture manufacturers, such as Okamura and Itoki.

The latter are increasingly inviting brands like Conde House to partner with them on projects, in order to provide their clients with a hybrid furnishing solution, where task-optimised utility is twinned with the comforting haptics of home. For Machiyama, such collaborations are a win-win. ‘It makes total sense for us to propose our particular products through office brands, where they’re unable to fulfil a client’s needs in full. Everyone is happy as a result.’

You heard the man. Collaborate and feel the love. New Work is here to stay.

© Architonic