OneLook by Gerard Taylor Design

BI MONTHLY

ONE WORKPLACE

A world tour of inspirations from San Francisco to Milan.

PRODUCT ISSUE

NUMBER 3

WELCOME TO ONELOOK

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SAN FRANCISCO SHOWROOM

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ZEN PLAYLIST

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STEELCASE NEOCON 2017

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FURNITURE FAIR MASH UP

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GERARD TAYLOR INTERVIEW

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GET TO KNOW WHAT’S INSIDE We know you’re going to love what you find inside. Let’s make it easy for you to learn more. Each product has been labeled by name and reference number (NAME / 1). Call us with the reference number and we’ll be better able to help you.

WELCO ME TO O NELO OK Several months ago, we completed the renovation of our San Francisco office, located on Brannan Street in the heart of SOMA. Our vision was to create a timeless and sophisticated space that celebrates the One Workplace brand and culture. We believe deeply, that places shape behavior and that behavior over time creates culture. With this insight at the core of our approach we reshaped this one hundred and ten-year-old heavy timber and brick structure, into a place that encourages employees to come together to work, share ideas, and collaborate to solve problems; a place where our employees, clients and visitors feel supported, inspired, welcomed and engaged. Critical to the project’s success, was the effort to foster a high-performance culture. Employees perform better when they can control their space - so we allow them to decide when, where, and how they work. By doing so, they are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs, perform better, and see their work as being innovative. With these goals in mind, we designed a variety of spaces that offer our employees greater choice and control. Our goal was not to design just for function or just for the eyes, but to design for all the senses. Bringing sound and scent into a space can impact your mood. Scents can leave us feeling calm and refreshed. Music can energize or relax us. Biophilic design too, can leave a lasting positive emotional impression on the occupants of a physical space. Natural themes therefore, have been incorporated into our moss logo at the entry, tillandsia plants and living walls in our Piazza area, a large planter in the open office, and a green vine-like feature that climbs across a concrete structure. Various other materials used in the space also link back to nature, including furniture from repurposed wood beams, grass-like flooring, connectivity to a courtyard with bamboo plants, transparent materials that provide unimpeded views, and architectural screen dividers that evoke mystery. Carefully selected materials such as blackened steel, gold metal tones, grey stained oak, concrete floors, herringbone and houndstooth patterned textiles, and custom felt screens, contrast the heavy timber and brick. Italian inspired tile and textile patterns decorate floors, walls, ceilings, table tops and accessories. These design elements thread together the proud Italian heritage of One Workplace’s founders and serve as the perfect gesture connecting the old with the new. Aside from featuring our San Francisco office, the third issue of the ONELOOK magazine contains information about Steelcase NeoCon 2017 product introductions, products from the 2017 Milan and ICFF furniture fairs, and an interview with Gerard Taylor, Creative Director with Orangebox. We hope you find our world tour of new products and the look in our new home in San Francisco as inspiring as we have.

Andreas Androutsellis Director of Design | Workplace Studio

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SHOWROOM

Piazza This is a space that supports social interaction, collaboration, individual work and creates a sense of community. It offers our employees a sense of escapism without having to leave the workplace.

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TAYLOR

AN I NTER VI E W WI TH TH E CR E ATI VE DI R E CTOR OF ORANGEBOX

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WHERE DID YOUR INITIAL INTEREST IN PRODUCT AND FURNITURE DESIGN BEGIN? My initial interest in product design began during my education in the UK. When I went to art school, I thought I was going to be an artist. But, when I saw how good others were in school, I said to myself, “I better be a designer.” I knew I was creative, but not creative enough to be a great artist. Designing furniture seemed like the best fit for me. The idea of building things with my hands and making things in the workshop was the rationale behind doing furniture design in the beginning. Subsequently, I have learned it is a much more complex process. HOW DO YOU DEFINE CREATIVITY? A great designer defines their own creativity. One thing I say to the guys who work for me, you should never work for your client, you should only work for yourself. You should always be pushing beyond what the brief is asking for, and should always be demanding more. It is definitely a vocation being creative. It’s not something you do from 9 to 5; it’s something you do your whole life. For me, walking the dog is the best for creativity because it’s like a washing machine for the brain. Designers are visual creatures. Their eyes are connected, maybe, in a different way to their brains. When you are designing, if you design (20) solutions and a client chooses one, you never throw away the other (19). Creativity is continuous design. If you are authentic and true to what you do, ideas you had (5) or (10) years ago will come back into play in some form in the future. That’s why the young designers that work with me, sometimes they get a little frustrated, they say “we’re doing (1) chair and you’re asking us to design (25) chairs.” My answer to that is; that is creativity. The leg detail, or the upholstery details of one product might not come into life for that product, but it will definitely be something that carries through. You have to have an amazing visual memory and you build that up over experience. That allows you to enjoy all the projects in the past, all the projects that may not have come to fruition. IN THE WORLD OF DESIGN, WHAT DO YOU FIND TO BE THE MOST CHALLENGING ASPECT? The challenge for design is to stay vital in a world that is changing and to not be intimidated by the dynamic of technology. Technology was supposed to make our lives easier. It has done the opposite. It has demanded more of us. That is why my new thesis is “THE POWER OF DESIGN NOW IS TO HUMANIZE THE OFFICE”. The big role of makers of office environments is about a counterpoint to technology. If we don’t do this with confidence, technology will push us too hard. I remember a world without technology. The world produced stuff before technology, quite successfully actually. When you walk about a city and look at the architecture that was built in 1890, these people who were making architecture, they had the long view. They knew they were making cities, building buildings that would transcend their time. We live in the exact opposite. We think that last year will be irrelevant to this year. I like the idea that design slows things down.

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CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE DESIGN VISION AND DEVELOPMENT BEHIND ORANGEBOX? When we started Orangebox, we were coming into a very mature market. A market with brilliant companies like Vitra, Steelcase, Miller. We knew as a newcomer we had to find leverage. There is a great phrase that says you never take competition head on, you always have to go above it, below it, or around it. When we formed Orangebox we made the decision to go in between the powerhouses of corporate furniture. We said, these cornerstones, these power houses that already exist, we’re going to build a business from the gaps in between them. That was the vision that we set up for Orangebox. When we did this, Orangebox was on the periphery of the market. Now? It is increasingly the center of the market. The big issue is technology; the idea that you need to be in a precise place to interact with technology is very rapidly changing. Of all the design markets, the most interesting place to be right now is in the office. More changes are coming through the office than any other environment. Design in the office is reinventing itself. WHAT EXCITES AND INSPIRES YOU THE MOST AS CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF ORANGEBOX? I’ll end as I began. I originally thought I was going to be an artist and I realized I wasn’t good enough to be an artist. One of my greatest inspirations is art that thrills me. I visited the de Young museum in San Francisco last time I was there; what a delight. What a beautiful building. If you are ever in trouble as a designer, go look at some art, because art is the most difficult thing. It has the power to make something relevant in my world that has no function other than to inspire, make me see things afresh. In the end what inspires all creative people? Other creative people.

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WE KNOW THAT ORANGEBOX FOCUSES ON BRINGING INNOVATION TO THE CONTEMPORARY WORKPLACE, WHAT DO YOU PREDICT THE FUTURE OF THE WORKPLACE WILL BE LIKE 50 YEARS FROM NOW? 50 years is pure science fiction, even 5 years. I think especially for companies that are growing rapidly, the good people will be the ones that will say, 2 years we can get a fix on, but 5 years we don’t have a clue. The biggest thing is that I hope I won’t be replaced by an algorithm. Look at companies like Adobe. They would happily replace the world of designers with the world of technology. The designer would no longer be involved in the process. I think that is a potential reality. The challenge for designers, is to find new narratives. To say okay, the technology can do this but the technology will never be able to do that. I’ll give you example. I’ve just done a new product which is a big table called BAE Table. I was in a big country house, a luxurious, aristocratic house where there are many servants to make the house function. In the kitchen, they had a huge refectory table for about 20 people. The simplicity of that, the community of that, is what I loved. We are building communities for people who will sit down for ten minutes or for two hours. I looked at that refectory table and I thought, that is exactly what they were doing in 1860. It was the communal table where all the servants had their meals. It is not that much different from an organization. You have this collective group of people who are a community, and because of them the organization can exist. And there you have it. I’ve just designed this new table, but actually I am just picking up on the dynamics of function and comradery and companionship that was existing in 1860. I always say to everyone, you don’t design product, you design stories. It’s stories that make the world go ‘round and make us connect to each other. If design doesn’t have a story, it doesn’t have a life, period. IN WHAT WAYS HAS THE DESIGN INDUSTRY EVOLVED FROM THE BEGINNING OF YOUR CAREER UNTIL NOW? Human dynamics are exactly the same. That’s the beauty of furniture design. A chair from 1920 is essentially the same as a chair of today. The chair is consistent and the table is consistent, but what is not consistent is the dynamic of the context around them: what happens at the table, all the paranoias and ideas of the people sitting at the table, that’s what’s changed; changed unbelievably, dramatically, in ways we did not think. When I give a talk I often end with a slide from Blade Runner. And I use the example of Blade Runner, it is one of my favorite movies, I’ve watched it 50 times. At the beginning of it the title comes up and it says: Los Angeles 2020. It was made in 1984. 2020 is a couple of years down the line and Los Angeles isn’t going to look like it does in Blade Runner. We’re not very good at making judgement calls on how our world is going to shake up. We really don’t know. The dynamic of change is so dramatic, let’s design for it. Let’s not make it a problem, let’s turn it into a virtue.

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