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that on others? What must the person next to you feel
like? In our offi ce, we have personal things but things that
we can all relate to, they are not alienating, you are not
creating a territory.
We have worked with Microsoft and they chose to work
100 percent non-territorially. Nobody has a desk, nobody
has an offi ce, not even senior management, so they are all
moving around the building to work in places that suit
them. As belonging to your team and personalisation can
be an issue, there are zones allocated to teams. Within
those zones there are pin-up boards, trophies, silly toys,
but they are all shared, communal objects of choice.
NC
Don’t you spend all day trying to fi nd people?
SP They can tag each other, so they know
exactly where everybody is. Microsoft’s program assists
them in this type of work. They are happy, it suits their
business. They have 1,000 people a week coming to see
how they do it.
NC
But you have the same amount of people using the same
amount of space, so what is the benefi t to them?
SP There is a lot of activity,
communication and transparency. There is no
perceived hierarchy. The staff love working there, it
has been awarded as “The Best Workplace in Europe”
for the fourth consecutive year.
If we want to reduce the number of new buildings
– and there are so many reasons why we should – we
have to learn how to work in similar ways. If your
directors have cellular offi ces and you take on more
directors, suddenly you need more offi ces and before
you know it you are going to need a new building.
That does not strike me as a sustainable approach.
I think offi ces are going to get much smaller in the
future. They are just going to be hubs for interaction,
NOVARTIS CAMPUS, AMSTERDAM
MEXX DESIGN CENTER, AMSTERDAM
