How is designing a coworking space different from traditional offices?
For us, every office space is a ‘coworking’ space since people of varying skills and individual goals, often from different geographies and cultural backgrounds, come together and work towards one common goal. So, every office design should inspire a spirit of collaboration, communication and conviviality.
Coworking spaces lend an additional dimension and challenge to the design brief. It must cater to extremely varied needs of the workforce as well as businesses. They must instill a feeling of personalised and owned space to the end user. As designers, we had to place additional focus on allowing experience, community, flexibility and scalability to add to the fabric of the space.
Tell us about your design for Garage Society…
As a brand, it was conceived around the ideology of numerous success stories of business that started from modest garages and warehouses. The design for The Garage Society’s pilot project in India establishes the brand as a unique one that stands out from the crowd. Taking off from the ideology of the garage and then taking cues from the brand’s existing centres in Southeast Asia, we developed a design language and punctuated it with elements that feature subtle Indian contexts. A balanced use of these elements along with technologies and functionalities required to support business operations were added to provide a holistic, differentiating solution.
We used seemingly raw elements such as corrugated sheets, wooden benches, metal and wooden grids but with a sheen to blend in a modern contemporary design language. Muted integration of Indian elements such as floral motifs in tiled borders as well as decorative light fixtures and fabrics in furniture provide a local context. The Garage Society is committed towards building a long-term appeal, growing technological trends and viability to customers. Therefore, it integrates distinct elements such as podcast zones, one-on-one VC rooms, and unwinding/recreation rooms alongside state-of-the-art meeting and conference facilities, individual control of access, lighting and temperature to business suites.
What about the spatial planning?
The design drivers don’t only reflect in the visual, touch and feel elements of the workspace but also the physical planning. The ‘Plaza’, the central hub, is placed close to the reception with a teasing view from the lift lobby/entrance of the space. It serves as the heart of the office, drawing occupants together and throbbing as a community. It provides a warm welcome to users and visitors.
The layout provides a mix of differently sized suites to align with the requirements of businesses of different sizes and their growth needs. The fit-out details also enable Garage Society to quickly reconfigure or resize suites as per changing client needs. Plus, an array of ‘me’ spaces such as phone booths, work-pods and one-on-one VC rooms provide ‘concentration’ zones to the occupants of this coworking space.
Factfile:
Area: Around 19,000sqft
Location: Cyber Greens, Cyber City, Gurugram, Haryana
Designers: The Design & Build team of Colliers International India included Saurabh Singh, Mansi Pandita, Rishabh Arora and Saga Vadera