28 THONET
THONET 29
EN
How we come to terms with the pandemic and create a new reality for ourselves is exciting to watch. It could be a coincidence, but the fact that cafés were the first
businesses to be allowed to reopen in Austria and restaurants the first in France reveals specific manifestations of people’s overwhelming desire to meet, socialise and interact
with others. After months of social distancing, the need for communication and human contact is clearly discernible wherever there have been lockdowns. We have learned from
our recent experience that office work can actually be done differently than we previously thought. We have seen that there is another way of doing things, one that offers options
for the future. Yet we are not about to do away with offices altogether. At least some of the time, we need the spontaneous creativity that comes from people sharing the same
physical space. But, as the pandemic wanes, structural change in production and services along with the challenges of climate change remain as high up on the agenda as ever.
The pressure to hold on to remote methods of working is therefore likely to be huge. The offices of yesterday are dead. But what will take their place?
THE CAFÉ AS A METAPHOR
When we talk about offices being the new coffee houses, we mean it both practically
and metaphorically. For the office culture of the future, what matters is not just the physical
space but what happens within it. Cafés have always been a type of community hub,
somewhere for people to withdraw into their own space and focus on their own tasks,
even if only for a short time, but also a place for social interaction and conversation.
For some years now Thonet has focussed on cafés as spaces with their own particular
rules, and their intrinsic character could play a key role in the office design of the future.
The design of our stands at Orgatec, the office trade fair, and at the furniture and
interiors fair imm cologne, was based on a “Café Thonet” theme. Showrooms in the
form of pop-up cafés are also being used to bring this idea into city centres. Meanwhile,
by adding new, reworked and updated products to the Thonet portfolio, we are
providing a way of introducing the coffee-house concept to the office in practice.
As workers return to the office after working from home for so long there are great
opportunities for reinventing our workplace. If we make the right moves now, we stand
to enjoy substantial improvements. Inertia (using the “but that’s how we’ve always
done it” excuse) is no longer a valid argument. We now know what the alternatives
are, although we also know their weaknesses. Digitalisation and the transformation
of our lives and our workplaces are creating new structural options. We are embracing
the positive effects of these and want to enshrine them in our company.
The idea that you’re only working if you’re at your desk was a widely held view for
a long time. And Thonet was no different. Just a few years ago, the office was
dominated by allocated workstations, which were generally set apart from one another.
T
E
X
T
CON
WORKING
MAGAZIN 2021
KULTUR / CULTURE
08
OFFICES
ARE THE NEW
COFFEE
HOUSES
218 BUGHOLZSTUHL /
BENTWOOD CHAIR
S 32 V FREISCHWINGER /
CANTILEVER CHAIR
