In 2006 Vitra launched office concept Net ’n’ Nest: space, furnishings and atmosphere transform the office into something more: a meeting place for teamwork – netting – and a place where employees can retreat to for concentrated working – nesting. Does this kind of office suit every company?
We go into the office in order to communicate with one another, to exchange opinions face to face, to tackle assignments flexibly in teams, to pass on or to catch up on information – to help ourselves to knowledge in the appropriate marketplace. If we did not have to do this, with today's technical facilities, we could stay at home and work. In the office, as well as the opportunity to communicate, we need places where we can retreat, concentrate, conduct a confidential discussion, thus enjoying the advantages of working at home in the office, as well. Net ’n’ Nest is devoted to this balancing act of different work-related requirements.
Offices are more than work-related systems, they are also the personality profile of a company, its organization, its business model and its way of working – in short, its culture. Seen in this light, they have top priority: Firstly, corporate culture is an important argument when recruiting those knowledge workers who are increasingly difficult to find, who self-assuredly seek out the best options for balancing their life and their work and for whom financial incentives alone are no longer enough. Secondly, at a time when brands have a fundamental influence on corporate value this corporate culture has become a tool for defining and managing corporate identity vis-à-vis clients and staff. A harmonious exterior appearance, smart shopfronts and branded stationery are no longer enough. Brands are now experienced from the inside and staff are becoming the most important ambassadors of just what values a company stands for.
Wherever rooms act as a stimulus, where their function is to express the creativity of a department or even of a whole company, an expressive solution with inspiring colours and accessories and a strongly comfortable, homelike atmosphere can be the right one – or the wrong one. Because the opposite is equally possible: a purist environment with neutral colours that does not distract, has a calming influence and promotes creativity too. Both approaches can foster productive work. And where rooms are intended to impress and highlight the size of a company other solutions are required than in the liberating simplicity of a start-up studio in a former industrial hall. The signals sent out by all these fundamentally different establishments illustrate different corporate cultures.
In other words, there are at least as many solutions for offices as there are companies. And Net ’n’ Nest addresses this rich diversity – as a concept and not as a furnishing style. As a concept Net ‘n’ Nest is just as able to fulfil organizational and technical, work-related requirements as it is subject to different visual interpretations and to various forms of implementation. The focus is on matching the identities of companies with the Net ’n’ Nest office that matches their business model and of changing them as required, rather than just walls and furniture.
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