contact office magazine #30

Issue 30 

Teamwork: the analogue 

and digital we. 

Change-Management 

in disruptive times. 

Suddenly working from home: test 

run for future working models? 

Offices from all over the world: 

LocHal in Tilburg.

A guide for difficult 

times. 

Of course the virus has also reached the latest edition of our Contact 

– fortunately in a positive sense. It ultimately offers a series of constructive 

thoughts, information and tips for, during and after corona. 

In our cover story, we take a close look at how team play and team 

leadership work during an extreme crisis like the one we are experiencing 

now and what insights we can preserve for the future. 

The fact is: COVID-19 has turned organisations’ playbooks upside 

down. Well thought-out, step-by-step change management processes 

are currently pipe dreams – many decisions have to be made 

overnight now. Read an exciting interview with Christian Vieira dos 

Santos, Managing Director of SYMBIOS and expert for Change- 

Management & Transformation on this. 

We are also doing a test run for future working models, addressing 

the often invoked but rarely spatially implemented team office, showing 

three examples of how shared offices can be practised, as well as 

having rethought conference rooms for you. 

Afterwards we take a look at renowned residential construction 

specialist Stephan Gratzer’s desk and visit perhaps the most beautiful 

and unusual revitalisation project in Europe: LocHal in Tilburg, the 

Netherlands. I am delighted that we can offer you a real guide with 

this issue of Contact! 

Be inspired and stay healthy. 

Markus Wiesner

Teamwork: the analogue and digital we ............................................................................04 

Team offices: Demand and reality ......................................................................................08 

Interview: Change management in disruptive times ..........................................................10 

Shared Offices: from private to public space ......................................................................12 

Useful things for everyday office life ..................................................................................14 

Reference story: Smart workplace solution by & for ACP TEKAEF ......................................15 

Suddenly working from home: Test run for future working models? ..................................18 

Offices from all over the world: LocHal in Tilburg, the Netherlands ....................................20 

What‘s on your desk, Stephan Gratzer? .............................................................................23 

The „Boomer“ at work ......................................................................................................24 

Showroom .........................................................................................................................26 

Publisher: Wiesner-Hager Möbel GmbH, Linzer Straße 22, A-4950 Altheim, T +43/(0)7723/460-0, altheim@wiesner-hager.com, 

www.wiesner-hager.com, thinknewwork.com; Concept/editing: Wiesner-Hager, plenos creative; Layout: plenos creative, plenos.at; 

Guest author: Wojciech Czaja; Subject to typesetting & printing errors; 05/2020.

Office concepts 

Teamwork: 

The analogue and 

digital we. 

How do team play and team leadership work in times of corona? What are the main differences 

between analogue and digital communication? And which findings from the current crisis, but also 

from labour research in the past can we preserve for the future? A story about slack, commitment 

and online after-work beers. 

4 contact

“We can talk on the phone tomorrow, sometime 

between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., and then you can ask me 

your questions”, says Jens Kapitzky, “but 

unfortunately, we can‘t do that today. It‘s just after 5 

p.m., and my team and I are already in the middle of 

our online after-work beers. We’re calling it a day”. All 

right, cheers and goodbye! See you tomorrow! The 

phone call is over. 

Kapitzky is an organisational and strategic consultant 

and heads the Metaplan Leadership & Organization 

Academy in Quickborn near Hamburg. As with most 

companies in April, the German head office and the 

branches in Zurich, Princeton, Versailles, Singapore 

and Shanghai are currently closed, and most of the 

approximately 65 employees are working 

from home. Every day at 5 p.m. Central 

European Time, they meet virtually 

and treat themselves to a glass of beer or 

pint or panaché – or even a Far Eastern 

midnight drink. “Teleworking has been 

on our agenda for several weeks now”, 

says Kapitzky the next morning, “and 

although we have been used to remote 

working for years, there is a significant 

difference between communicating with 

each other virtually, or in fact 

exclusively, as is currently the case. If 

there are no other possibilities for 

informal meetings, chatting at the coffee 

machine or having lunch together in the 

cafeteria or canteen, then you have to react 

flexibly to the situation and proactively introduce 

substitute rituals”. Top priority: professional matters 

are only spoken about in a rudimentary way during 

online after-work beers, and if so, then only funny 

stories and anecdotes. 

“For weeks the phone has been ringing off the hook, 

one video conference after another, hundreds of emails 

a day, as companies from all sectors find out how they 

can manage their teams efficiently and facilitate 

collaboration in times of the corona crisis and 

teleworking”. Kapitzky explains that customers 

include trade fair and event organisers, machine 

builders, pharmaceutical companies and educational 

institutions – both large companies and SMEs and 

individual entrepreneurs who are considering how 

The management 

role becomes more 

complex with 

distance. 

best to take their services online in this era of social 

distancing. Kapitzky also heads brand eins safari, 

where he teaches the differences between analogue 

and digital leadership management in the form of 

Learning Nuggets webinars on behalf of the German 

business magazine. 

“May I be completely honest? The world is full of crap 

meetings that take up a lot of time, have no 

measurable results and make you feel like you are 

falling into a black hole as life rushes by. And these 

meetings that are so crap when you attend them in 

person, are just as crap in remote mode”. Kapitzky 

demands: “Clear rules of the game are required as to 

what a meeting is for, how long it should last, who 

is going to lead the discussion, what 

result is to be achieved and who is 

going to implement and carry out the 

agreed points, to what extent and by 

when. If this distribution of roles is not 

clear, then the consequences in remote 

working are even more tremendous than 

in everyday work when you are actually 

physically present, because the 

management role becomes more 

complex with distance”. What helps: 

training sessions for meeting hosts, 

ideally also the introduction of a 

separate moderator role. 

A study conducted in 2019 by the 

globally active ADP Research Institute 

(ADPRI) proves that such orchestrated teamwork in 

teleworking is not necessarily a disadvantage 

compared to the traditional office with physical presence. 

The study analysed the involvement of a total of 

19,000 workers around the world, with a 

representative sample of 1,000 workers in 19 

countries. The result is surprising, if not positively 

shocking. Firstly: the commitment increases 

exponentially with the ability to work in a team and 

the trust in the team leader. While only eight percent 

of all the employees surveyed working without a team 

said that they feel fully committed, the commitment 

in a team already rises to 17 percent. At the top with 

45 percent commitment are all those who work in a 

team with good confidence in the team leader. And 

secondly: the more often and more intensively 

© Shutterstock 

contact 5

Office Concepts 

employees work away from home or on business trips, 

the more committed they are to their work. While 

employees with a permanent physical presence in the 

office are only 12 percent fully committed, the 

commitment increases to twice that with four or even 

five days of teleworking per week. 

“The rise of the gig economy has raised concerns about 

the social isolation of gig workers”, write Marcus 

Buckingham, research director and co-managing 

director at the ADP Research Institute, and Ashley 

Goodall, senior vice president at U.S. telecom 

company Cisco, in a recent article in Harvard Business 

Manager. “However, the ADPRI study shows that 

this way of working actually encourages commitment 

more than the traditional model. The results show 

that gig-work can not only be very 

appealing, but also contains elements that 

we can integrate into our 

traditional work”. 

In plain language, Buckingham and 

Goodall continue in their documentation, 

this means: ”Employees should be able 

to exercise more control over their work 

and have more opportunities to do things 

that inspire them. They should be able to 

combine the best of both worlds – 

a predictable, stable role in a home team 

and a part-time job in the form of various 

opportunities to join dynamic teams within 

the same company”. For this 

communication and leadership culture to gain a 

foothold, it is not only necessary to have good, 

empathic team leadership, but also a clear allocation of 

roles in the team and equally clear feedback rules with 

attention and appropriate appreciation. 

Anachronistically, a role model that was developed almost 

five decades ago and that deals with the question 

of how to put together a perfect team comes into play 

here. The British researcher and 

management consultant Raymond Meredith Belbin, 

who has been researching this topic since the 1970s, 

assumes that people behave differently depending 

on their personality traits and take on a typical role 

according to their abilities and habitus. Belbin defines 

three categories, each with three matching team roles: 

The action oriented roles include shaper, implementer 

and perfectionist. The people oriented roles include 

coordinator, team worker and resource investigator. 

And the cerebral roles are made up of deviser, monitor 

evaluator and specialist. 

Virtual space demands 

and prmotes 

self-organised 

work. 

“Belbin‘s role model is still relevant today”, says 

Viennese industrial and organisational psychologist 

Bettina Wegleiter. “And I find it fascinating that his 

model continues to be used as an important basis, 

even with disruptive upheaval such as digitalisation, 

the corona crisis and changes in usual wor Isuk and 

communication processes. Especially in times of 

teleworking, digital communication and disembodied 

team leadership using Zoom, Moodle, Slack, Webex 

and MS Teams, Belbin‘s model is a very useful and 

helpful orientation for putting together harmonious, 

efficient and productive work and project teams”. But 

Wegleiter does see a change to the seventies: “In 

contrast to the past, it is not the constants who win 

today, but all those who are able to swap roles and 

switch back and forth between different team roles, 

like in holacracy”. This 

flexibility and elasticity is indispensable, 

particularly in the new working world, 

says the psychologist, because it makes 

a difference whether you are physically 

on site, whether you are contributing to 

a video conference with a show of hands 

or whether you are expressing a creative 

idea during an informal meeting in the 

corridor. “Virtual space demands and 

promotes self-organised work. The bigger 

and more extensive your role repertoire, 

the faster you can integrate into the team, 

the better prepared you are for the work of 

the future”. 

The Viennese furniture and product designer Thomas 

Feichtner is looking at how the previous findings 

and achievements in the field of team play and team 

leadership, as well as the current corona crisis, will be 

reflected on the job market. “The way teams function 

and how they are managed in the best possible way 

is currently involuntarily undergoing a complete 

upheaval. We are working differently, communicating 

differently, moving differently, and our attitude 

towards the classic office is changing as a result. This 

will have an impact on furniture, on office design 

and most likely even on the residential and office real 

estate market post-corona”. 

We are able to work efficiently and productively from 

home. As the ADP Research Institute has 

emphatically demonstrated, we are doing this with a 

comparatively high level of commitment. And 

indispensable work qualities such as team spirit and 

the ability to work in a team can be surprisingly 


maintained even without a permanent physical 

presence, assuming good leadership. “So perhaps the 

office of the future will be an office base with a lounge, 

coffee house and a few work cells for concentrated 

work, if someone is going stir-crazy working from 

home with their children and partners around”, says 

Feichtner. “Perhaps the office of tomorrow will serve 

less as a workplace and more as a social meeting place 

to discuss work tasks and personal anecdotes – and 

perhaps just to celebrate a real evening together once a 

week with a real beer”. 

Wojciech Czaja 

© Shutterstock 


Interior design 

© Visualisierung: Studio Perspektiv 

More than just a room to work in: 

team offices 

Demand and reality. 

Collaboration before confidentiality. 

Open-plan office, combi office, management 

office and cellular office. The notions of what 

is meant by the different types of offices vary 

widely. After all, the types of offices used in 

a company are as varied as the areas of responsibility. 

In this article we take a look at 

the often quoted but rarely spatially realised 

team office. 

As different as team offices are designed in companies, 

depending on the respective area, this type of office has 

some basic things in common that characterise it as 

such. Cooperation and communication are paramount, 

the work processes are geared towards collaboration. 

Efficient working in a team office means short 

communication channels and instantly sharing 

information. Team members should therefore also 

work together in the same space. Open-plan or cellular 

offices are not suitable for this purpose, but „open 

units“ - small-structured, yet open zones - are called for. 

These are visually and acoustically shielded to a greater 

or lesser extent depending on the area and purpose. 

The shielding from the outside should be chosen in 


such a way that concentrated team and project work 

is guaranteed. For reasons of efficiency, the number of 

employees who share a common workspace in the team 

office is 20 people at the most. They need the 

opportunity to share information quickly and to easily 

keep up to date. 

A team office must offer more than just a place to 

work. The focus is on cooperation and requires the 

appropriate support in terms of space and equipment. 

The aim is to provide an environment that is geared 

to the team‘s tasks entirely in line with the principle 

of activity-based working: concentrated (team) work, 

coordination and communication or creative 

brainstorming. If necessary, an acoustic and visual 

retreat should also be available, e.g. in the form of a 

telephone booth or a silent room. The workstations are 

ideally equipped with electric height-adjustable desks. 

This not only increases the ergonomic quality, but also 

creates space for coordinative, spontaneous 

conversations while standing. Teams are also supported 

by digital workspaces. The shared (team) cloud often 

takes over the storage space function in the form of 

shared storage locations. Metres and metres of wall 

units are a thing of the past – at least in team offices. 

Scrum gives the team office a new dynamic. 

Integrated or separate communication areas should 

facilitate the high demand for internal coordination 

within the team. Contemporary multimedia 

equipment also envisages flip charts and pin boards 

for creative exchange. One meeting is hot on the heels 

of the next one with Scrum teams in particular. With 

this agile working method, the team office virtually 

becomes a project office with flexible settings, which 

can take place with different team members depending 

on the project phase. This also requires the flexible 

adaptability of space and furnishings. There are no 

limits to the creativity of the design: high tables for 

short meetings, media furniture for brainstorming 

sessions and middle zones equipped with upholstered 

furniture or tables and benches that are also used for 

team meetings and lunches together. 

Clear rules of the game are required for 

cooperation. 

The openness of this type of office and the subjective 

perception of the team members also poses challenges 

for the office space, which are best solved at the office 

design stage: acoustic and climatic comfort must be 

created for the whole team. On the one hand, this 

requires structural measures, on the other hand it also 

requires rules and a willingness to compromise for each 

individual employee. 

In general, people’s conduct plays a crucial role for a 

successful team: it brings together individuals with 

different experiences and needs. What constitutes a 

team’s strength under normal circumstances can 

quickly become a weakness if employees do not get 

along well with each other. Ongoing disputes and 

friction put cooperation within the entire team at risk 

– even the best office space is of no use then. Inconsistencies 

should therefore be addressed at an early 

stage and ideally be cleared up with the help of team 

coaching, before the work together is affected and the 

entire team suffers. 


Interview 

Change management 

in disruptive times: 

© shutterstock 

What we can learn from COVID-19 for the design of new working environments. 

COVID-19 suddenly turned the rules of the game upside down for organisations. The consequences 

will be felt for a long time to come. Instead of introducing processes and changes step by step into the 

corporate culture, changes have to happen overnight in exceptional situations. We asked Christian Vieira 

dos Santos, CEO of SYMBIOS and expert for transformation processes in new working environments, for 

an interview. 

During the worldwide corona crisis, many companies 

have reached their limits and are operating in 

„emergency mode“. Is there any way to prepare for such a 

horror scenario? 

The corona crisis is making many things that were 

there before even clearer. It‘s like being under a 

magnifying glass. Corona has clearly shown us how 

interconnected, complex and dynamic our world is. 

Dynamics describes nothing other than the 

probability of being confronted with surprises. 

Something is complex, on the other hand, when simple 

solutions no longer work on the basis of „if-then“ 

relationships. So in the sense of: If A happens, I have 

to do B to get C. Corona is both. Dynamic and 

complex. It appeared unexpectedly and cannot be 

solved using simple responses. 

Our current organisations are not designed for 

dynamics and complexity. On the contrary, they are 

based on predictability, plannability and stability. In 

an environment that cannot be planned because it is 

full of surprises, these forms of leadership and organisation 

no longer work. The systems that brought us 

prosperity in the 20th century are failing in the 21st 

century. 


How can companies respond to dynamics and complexity? 

In the meantime, we are aware of good solutions for 

how we have to design leadership, organisation and 

cooperation so we can master dynamics and complexity 

better. That‘s what New Work and agile do best. Instead 

of planning, centralised control and processes based on 

the division of labour, there is a need for adaptability 

(agility), creative problem solving and the ability to 

organise yourself independently. Corona therefore offers 

us a great learning opportunity to develop these skills, so 

we can deal with dynamic events and complex problems 

better in future. 

What do you think companies can do in 

concrete terms to seize this opportunity? 

The corona crisis, for example, has meant 

that even the most hesitant company has 

had to switch to virtual collaboration. And 

this happened overnight, without any long 

negotiation processes through working 

from home regulations. In many cases, 

companies also had to find creative solutions 

to make this possible from one day 

to the next. That was agility in its purest 

form. These companies then also realised 

that you can trust your employees to work independently, 

even if you only see each other from time to time by 

video conferencing. 

Corona has shown that many tasks can also be done 

remotely using video conferences and collaboration 

tools. Will we even need offices at all in the future? 

Corona acts like a magnifying glass here too. Because 

even before corona, more and more companies 

recognised the importance of the office for corporate 

culture. Corona is showing us that much more work can 

be done remotely and independently of location and 

time constraints. This offers, for example, a great 

opportunity to reduce business and commuter traffic in 

future. But corona is also showing us how 

important social exchange is for us humans. The office 

will therefore become a place of lively interaction even 

more so than before. A place where a sense of 

community, team spirit and cultural identity 

are made possible. 

What is important to integrate this newly 

acquired knowledge into a normal working 

day and not fall back into our „old rut“ 

again? 

In my opinion, relapsing into old patterns of 

behaviour should not be underestimated. We 

Corona offers 

learning 

opportunitites for 

the future. 

are familiar with this effect from courses, for example: 

the different environment in a seminar creates a different 

context that makes something new possible. Once this 

context disappears again, the old routines quickly creep 

in again. Companies should therefore ask themselves 

which learning experiences from the corona period can 

become the new norm in everyday life. 

What kind of people are needed to steer change in the right 

direction? 

Self-organisation, personal responsibility, 

interdisciplinary problem-solving 

competence and the ability to change need 

a completely new way of thinking, a new 

mindset or consciousness. In my opinion, 

this is one of the major tasks facing managers 

today. To create an environment in which 

employees and the entire organisation can 

develop these skills. If this is successful, 

corona will also have done some good. 

We human beings are born as highly creative 

beings who want nothing more than to grow 

beyond ourselves independently and in 

cooperation with other people. Every human 

being therefore innately has exactly the 

prerequisites that we need in future. Unfortunately, 

many people have unlearned these natural abilities from 

infancy to adulthood. Therefore this is one of the great 

tasks facing managers today: to create an environment in 

which these skills can flourish again. 

© SYMBIOS 

Christian Vieira dos Santos 

Founder of SYMBIOS, expert for transformation processes 

and new working environments 

Christian Vieira dos Santos has been working in the 

fields of organisational development and consulting 

for 25 years. With SYMBIOS, he supports companies 

in transitioning into the new world of work and 

designing new working environments. 


Office concepts 

Shared Offices. 

from private to public space. 

Strictly private! Confidentiality, privacy and the security of their buildings or rental properties go 

without saying for most companies. After all, who wants to show their business hand? 

Nevertheless, the dogma of absolutely protected company buildings and office spaces is about to be 

broken down. Companies and organisations are increasingly offering „shared offices“, which create 

a partial public sphere. We show you how this can be implemented in practice using three examples. 


Creative breeding grounds. 

Little space available and high rents are increasingly 

leading to several companies sharing office space in 

partnership. The internal organisation for this requires 

a zoning concept that combines shared areas such as 

a working café, small kitchen or meeting rooms with 

clearly assigned work areas, so that each company can 

also preserve its privacy. 

The Dutch company Broeinest has just opened its 

fourth location in Utrecht. Broeinest, in English 

„breeding ground”, is a crossover concept consisting 

of an office, showroom, coworking and creative space. 

Broeinest leases to partner companies that share the 

premises. It also showcases itself to external architects, 

who can use the creative breeding ground as a playground 

for material tests, interior products or tools. 

Designerwerkschau in Munich is similarly organised. 

As a shared showroom, it opens its doors to an 

audience interested in architecture and design and 

organises a series of events on its premises. 

Coworking spaces. 

Originally, the trend towards coworking was intended 

as a modern and cost-effective contact point for 

freelancers and start-ups: people who do not work 

together directly, but who can use mutual synergies 

through the shared and inspiring workspace. At the 

same time it forms a community, fulfilling the 

important social tasks of people being together. This 

community spirit is clearly evident in the Czech Impact 

HUB. The coworking centre in the heart of Prague has 

been a contact point for aspiring start-ups for many 

years. 

In the meantime, more and more companies are setting 

up and using their own coworking spaces, even within 

their own organisations: They allow employees to work 

together with external freelancers and crowd workers, 

form temporary project teams and create retreats for 

meetings. Collaboration is encouraged and the spontaneous 

sharing of ideas is virtually stimulated! 

Coworking spaces offer a lot of freedom in terms of 

design: industrial style or living room, lounge or open 

space, creative landscape or urban marketplace. 

Reinterpreted foyer areas. 

Foyers and entrance areas are taking on a completely 

new meaning more and more often, especially at larger 

company locations. They are being made „public“ and 

available to an external audience. The classic reception 

area is transformed into a working café. The reception 

counter, a bar. Instead of „sitting and waiting“ it’s now 

„meeting and working“. The „café entrance“ is a public 

zone – how public, that‘s something every company 

decides for itself. Guests and business partners, such as 

suppliers or customers, can make themselves 

comfortable here, spend time and prepare for their next 

appointment. Some companies even go one step further 

and open the entrance bar area to visitors who have 

nothing to do with the company. What‘s the point? 

Networking and branding, for example. Extended by a 

campus area, the foyer quickly becomes a fully-fledged 

event location. 

© Visualisierung: Studio Perspektiv 


Trend watching 

Useful things for 

everyday office life 

(and working from home). 

ROXXANE. 

© Microsoft 

The Roxxane cordless 

table or floor lamp with 

integrated rechargeable 

battery offers a wide range 

of applications and is easy to 

transport. This makes it the 

perfect companion in offices 

and also illuminates darker 

corners in central zones and 

lounges. The light can also be 

adjusted to the time of day by touch 

using the integrated light control. 

Manufacturer: nimbus 

© nimbus 

Microsoft Teams. 

As part of Office 365, MS Teams offers everything your virtual conference room needs: from a classic 

schedule overview to a messenger and video chat function to simple file sharing and various additional 

features. It is intuitive to user and the user interface is very clear and clean. As a result, MS Teams is also a 

pleasant business tool for newcomers to working at home. 

© LINTEX 

NOTE WHITEBOARD. 

Note Whiteboard is a versatile, mobile writing tablet that can be 

carried easily thanks to its lightweight construction. Both sides are 

magnetic and can be written on. The Note Whiteboard is therefore 

the ideal companion for project groups and Scrum teams in creative 

meetings and spontaneous brainstorming sessions. 

Manufacturer: Lintex 


Reference story 

Smart Workplace Solutions 

by & for ACP TEKAEF 

At first glance, an office furniture manufacturer and a company for print and 

digitalisation solutions do not seem to have much in common. But the truth is that 

Wiesner-Hager and ACP TEKAEF not only have their roots in the same region, but 

also share the same mission: modern and flexible workplace design. No wonder 

that ACP TEKAEF chose interior design and office furniture from Wiesner-Hager 

for their new company head office. 

© www.raumpixel.at 



Reference story 


ACP TEKAEF is a market leader in intelligent 

solutions, products and services for the modern 

workplace, with 4,800 active customers and 75 

employees. 

The company offers a complete portfolio in the areas 

of print, workplace and mobility management. As 

an innovative partner, it supports its customers in 

designing work processes flexibly. ACP TEKAEF 

primarily commissioned regional companies for 

the new building in Hohenzell, Upper Austria. The 

construction planning and management was carried 

out by the architecture firm Arev, while the interior 

design was entrusted to the office consulting 

company Roomware. 

Turning old into new. 

The company founded in 1994 has grown strongly 

in recent years. The company was therefore looking 

for a new location that could meet the demand for a 

New Work working environment. A former factory 

building in Hohenzell proved to be the perfect place 

for this. While the three existing warehouses were 

adapted for the company‘s own purposes, it was 

decided to demolish the old office building. The new 

administration building was to be built here. The 

office building was designed for 100 employees to 

enable further growth. 

The spacious reception area is impressive, as it has 

been extended by an auditorium with a striking staircase. 

In the style of a university campus, it functions 

as a meeting area for employees and guests and offers 

space for events. There are conference and meeting 

rooms as well as individually designed working 

cafés, a canteen area, a spacious terrace and of course 

workstations over three floors. These were equipped 

with ergonomic, electric height-adjustable desks. In 

between, niche areas were created on all three floors 

for collaboration and short meetings – supported 

by high tables, seating groups and lounge furniture. 

These were designed as working cafés with integrated 

small libraries, which allow for both concentrated 

work and confidential meetings. Cleverly used 

bookshelves and laser-cut solid surface walls act as 

room dividers. 

A multifunctional room is available on the ground 

floor for larger meetings and seminars. Thanks to the 

flexible and mobile furnishing, it is no problem to 

react quickly and spontaneously to different usage 

requirements. A „Creative Room“ and some smaller 

meeting rooms supplement the need for 

communication. They have been deliberately kept 

small to allow for more effective team meetings. 

Interplay between hard and soft. 

The high standards that ACP TEKAEF set for the 

new location’s design can be seen as soon as you 


enter the building. Hard and soft materials have 

been coordinated to create a pleasant lightness and 

a feel-good atmosphere. Exposed concrete and hard, 

wipeable surfaces alternate with soft textiles and 

warm wood tones. The deliberate use of natural 

colours and organic forms is a style that runs 

through all rooms. 

The ceiling suspensions in the form of the company‘s 

logo element ensure pleasant acoustics in the 

auditorium. This honeycomb shape appears 

repeatedly in the room concepts. In addition to 

the honeycomb-shaped elements and the angular 

columns, the designers used curves, which were 

incorporated, for example, into the shape of the 

auditorium‘s seat staircase. This design language is 

encountered once again in the shelving systems and 

in the textile-covered room dividers between the 

workstations. 

„Bright“ new building for the employees. 

Teamwork and employee satisfaction are very 

important at ACP TEKAEF. “Our team has made 

our business success possible. That is why we are 

building the new head office for our employees”, said 

Managing Director Christian Heit at the 

ground-breaking ceremony. It’s no wonder then that 

the workforce was happy to volunteer to help with 

the company‘s relocation, thus ensuring a smooth 

and speedy process in February 2020. The planning 

process and construction phase took a total of two 

years. 

Despite the open spatial structures, each area has 

fixed workstations with the necessary task-related 

additions. To ensure that this zoning does not 

counter the open space concept, transparent glass 

cubes and lightweight solid surface partition walls 

were used. The lighting concept with a skylight and 

an impressive rooftop terrace with large glass fronts 

creates a natural ambience flooded with daylight 

throughout the building. 

ACP TEKAEF paid particular attention to the 

regeneration and canteen area. GENUSSwerk 

prepares fresh meals for the employees in the open 

kitchen every day. Thanks to the pleasant homely 

atmosphere, the canteen is also used as a working 

café, where employees can meet customers outside 

lunchtime. 


Project space 

Office space: 1,200 m² 

Building architecture: AREV Architektur 

Statics & construction: ZTW Weilhartner 

Office concept and 

interior design: 

Roomware Consulting 

Furniture: 

Wiesner-Hager, 

olina Küche, 

Schachreiter Interieur 

contact 17 

© www.raumpixel.at

Office life 

Suddenly the home office 

is here: Trial run for 

future working models 

Drinking a cup of coffee by yourself, going to 

the office in your pyjamas and taking a shower 

during your lunch break. Most of us imagine 

the home office to be simpler than it actually is. 

You suddenly find yourself sitting alone in the 

kitchen with your laptop and missing a 

comfortable office chair to sit on and a chat 

with colleagues at the very least. 

The current corona crisis doesn‘t tolerate excuses 

anymore and is confronting many companies with 

the task of making mobile working possible. A large 

number of organisations still have a lot of catching up 

to do in terms of digitalisation. But many employees 

are now sitting at home on the couch with their work 

laptop on their knees, despairing of an overloaded 

cloud or a server that is much too slow. 

Virus protection: for people and PCs 

For this reason, many companies have sent their 

employees to their home office without further ado. 

Cyber criminals are having a field day, though, because 

the home network rarely offers the same security 

standards as the corporate system. To protect 

your PC as well as your company from 

virus attacks, installing a VPN - a 

Virtual Private Network - is 

imperative. To ensure an 

optimum workflow, the 

appropriate hardware and 

software must be available in 

addition to the VPN. The 

motivation to work will be extremely 

dampened if, for example, loading 

times are too long or files cannot be 

opened. 

This of course creates an additional 

workload for the IT department, 

especially in a period of crisis 

of the kind we‘re currently 

experiencing. But 

although the time and 

effort involved is 


immense at the start, it defnitely pays off in day-to-day operations. 

Team meetings in pyjamas 

In the office, we‘re always exchanging information as we go about our 

business. This natural flow of information is missing in the home office. The 

best way to keep all employees up to date is to arrange feedback rounds via 

video conference. You should also make it clear which channels are to be used 

for communication. This way you avoid misunderstandings in communication 

and strengthen internal interaction despite physical distance. And as far as the 

pyjamas are concerned, though, they may go down well with colleagues, but 

they have no place in meetings with customers via video chat. 

A trial run for the future? 

Alongside all the obstacles and fears that have 

overwhelmed us due to exit restrictions and health 

regulations, the sudden switch to a home office can also 

be seen as a trial run for future working models and 

crises. Draw up a checklist that answers questions such 

as the following: 

• Which measures have proved successful? 

• Where does technology still have room for 

improvement? 

• What do you need as an employee to be able to work 

productively from home? 

• How can communication be improved internally and 

with customers? 

A feedback form for home office employees can also be 

helpful in optimising flexible working practices within 

the company and preparing for the future. 



Offices from all over the world 

© Arjen Veldt 

Coworking between 

rust & 

patina 

Where 

locomotives were once built 

and repaired, there is now a production 

site of knowledge and social 

networking. The so-called LocHal in 

Tilburg in the Netherlands is one of 

the most beautiful and unusual revitalisation 

projects in Europe. 


The old layers of paint and varnish stick to the riveted 

steel columns, sometimes red, sometimes green, 

sometimes magenta, and one is almost inclined to 

believe that there is still the smell of soot and heavy 

engine oil in the air, as if the last repaired locomotive 

had been pushed out of the hall a few minutes ago. 

Once upon a time, connecting rods, steam boilers and 

iron 

bodies weighing tonnes hung from the huge steel 

girders at a height of 15 metres, as the black-and-white 

photos 

framed in metal brackets in the corridors reveal. 

The LocHal – an emotional monument. 

“The locomotive hall was built in 1932, and there 

is probably not a single inhabitant in the whole of 

Tilburg who doesn‘t know someone who hasn‘t worked 

here at some point, or at least sneaked into the workshop 

of the Nederlandse Spoorwegen at night”, says 

Gert 

Kwekkeboom, partner at the Dutch firm 

Civic 

Architects. “This hall is an emotional 

monument that is firmly anchored in 

this city’s collective memory. It was 

therefore clear to both the city government 

and to us that the building and its 

unmistakable character should be 

preserved according to all the rules of 

architecture and that the new city library 

should be located here”. 

Where locomotives were once 

repaired, welded and screwed, there is 

now a workshop for networking and 

knowledge transfer. The LocHal, which 

If you want 

to protect the soul 

and the 

protective spirit 

of the place, you 

have to make 

compromises. 

opened in spring 2019 and whose official 

brand can be found on all analogue and 

digital channels as a word mark and logo, 

not only houses the municipal library, 

but also a café, coworking spaces, mixed 

media areas and event and conference 

rooms in various sizes that can be hired. 

All events have been suspended until 1 

June due to the current corona crisis, but 

a glance at the online calendar shows that 

the summer is already well filled with 

readings, project presentations and 

interdisciplinary think tanks. 


“It was a very enjoyable project, which we worked 

intensively on with restorers and the monument 

protection authorities”, 

recalls Kwekkeboom, who put this unusual mammoth 

project on track together with the partner offices 

Mecanoo and Braaksma & Roos. “The biggest 

challenge in all this was undoubtedly the building 

services, because such a unique industrial monument 

does not allow for thermal insulation, triple glazing and 

the usual climate comfort ideas. If you want to protect 

the soul and the protective spirit of the place, you have 

to make compromises”. 



Offices from all over the world 

The solution: the majority of the hall was designed as 

an outdoor space protected from the weather, where 

you can sometimes work up a sweat in summer, while 

the waiter in the „StadsCafé“ serves you a woollen 

blanket in winter if required. Temporary common 

areas, such as reading areas, a stage and auditorium, can 

be 

separated and locally heated or cooled with huge 

thermally and acoustically effective curtains hanging 

from the steel framework, designed by Amsterdam 

fabric artist Petra Blaisse. Only the permanent work 

areas such as the coworking offices, conference rooms 

and the entire administrative organisation are located 

in thermally separated house-in-house zones with the 

usual indoor temperatures. The heart of the 

15-metre high reading and coworking hall is the wide 

arena, which connects the upper and lower levels with 

stairs and comfortable wooden-clad seating steps. It 

seems as if the staircase is in operation almost round 

the clock, populated by people who are sometimes 

browsing through a brochure or who have sometimes 

set up a small, non-territorial office with their laptops 

and just dialled into the Zoom meeting with headphones. 

Nordic and Mediterranean plants hang from 

the steel galleries on the side as if in a crumbling palm 

house or a shabby-chic industrial jungle. The concept 

for this was developed by the Dutch landscape planning 

office 

Donkergroen. 

reading lamps between the cast-iron pillars and 

pilasters, we find the coworking spaces and the 

separate, glass-enclosed offices of the library staff 

employed here. The furniture is brightly coloured with 

purple sofas, orange cabinets, and neon lime green 

swivel chairs. Through the doors and glass walls you 

look out into the world of rust and patina. 

During the course of the revitalisation project, the 

once 5,000 square metre locomotive hall was more 

than doubled to 11,000 square metres using retracted 

platforms, surrounding galleries and dramatic stair 

landscapes for walking, sitting and lounging. The EUR 

18 million building on the site of the former Tilburg 

freight station is one of the most beautiful and 

sensitive revitalisation projects in Europe, with its 

preserved past that has been brought back to the 

present. Or, as one visitor noted in the guest book: “A 

compliment to the architects and designers of this 

building. So creative and inventive, it works so well in 

use that it fills you with happiness!” 

Wojciech Czaja 


Finally, at the back of the large public hall, where small, 

cosy reading and working areas have been set up with 


What’s on your desk? 

02 

01 

03 

04 

08 

05 

07 

06 

09 

© Woj 

What’s on your desk, 

Stephan Gratzer? 

In the middle of Geneva city centre, just a few steps away from the large 

Plainpalais, there is a factory site steeped in history. Where measuring 

instruments were once built for the Societé Genevoise d‘Instruments de 

Physique, graphic designers, architects, photographers, advertising agencies 

and catering companies now cavort. With MAMCO and the Centre d‘Art 

Contemporain, important contemporary and performing arts institutions 

are also located here. The offices of Jaccaud Spicher Architectes Associés 

( JSAA) are located in one of the courtyard buildings, accessible via a narrow 

external staircase. 

“This is a beautiful, listed industrial building from the 1930s”, says Stephan 

Gratzer. The 38-year-old is a partner at JSAA, which specialises primarily in 

large-volume, subsidised residential construction in the Geneva area. You 

can also see this when you walk through the offices: to the left and right of 

the centre aisle are architectural models made of wood. To give the viewer 

an impression from the perspective of a passer-by, the miniature houses are 

propped up on frames and filing cabinets. The effect is tremendous. “The 

advantages of an old industrial building are unparalleled. Because of the large 

ceiling height, we can afford to position the models higher than is the case in 

most offices”. 

From his own office, which he shares with his partners Jean-Paul Jaccaud and 

Lionel Spicher, you look down into the former manipulation hall. The old 

rails in the ground and the crane hooks, which hang down from steel trusses 

like talkative witnesses of that time, create a beautiful background picture. 

The iron industrial windows, the unfinished ribbed concrete ceiling and the 

walls that were only filled in, not painted, fit in with this. 

Wojciech Czaja visits Stephan Gratzer 

01 

02 

03 

04 

05 

06 

07 

08 

09 

We love to surround ourselves with art, especially minimalist 

art by local and international artists. 

The two-part, humorous work by Felix Gonzales-Torres 

fits particularly well with our working concept. On the left 

picture it says: “Nowhere better than this place”. And on 

the right one you can read: “Somewhere better than this 

place”. 

Our office is full of samples, patterns and colour catalogues. 

We work with Farrow & Ball paints, wherever possible. 

The Anglepoise is a classic British lamp. We have several 

dozens of these in the office for us and our employees. 

I am not a fan of renderings and computer generated 

images. We prefer to work with coloured pencils and lead 

pencils. This also includes the good old pencil sharpener. 

Aquafix and transparent paper are indispensable for our 

way of working. The rolls are lying all over the place. 

The many incoming and outgoing postmarks also go well 

with our analogue work. 

We work on Apple computers. 

A simple worktop, with a steel table frame by Egon Eiermann 

under it. 


Office Life 

The „boomer“ 

at work. 

If you don‘t know what the word „boomer“ is all about, there is a good chance that you are a boomer 

yourself. Why? The term „boomer“ is based on the common generational definitions and roughly refers 

to people from the post-war generations with high birth rates. In other words, those people who were 

born between 1950 and the middle of the 1960s. 


Why this well-known fact from sociology is worth a story 

of its own to us? Because the so-called boomer generation 

represents a not inconsiderable part of the workforce, 

especially in the highly qualified professions with an 

academic background. Because the general discourse often 

revolves around giving younger employees a good start in 

working life, but less often around what employers can do 

to ensure that older employees also feel integrated in the 

company until they retire. Because job satisfaction should 

not be a demographic issue. So how do you create a 

working environment in which older people feel 

comfortable? Some food for thought. 

It’s (not) all a question of age. 

The most important food for thought for employers: focus 

on each employee’s merits and key skills, regardless of 

their age. 

In general, it can be said that the boomer generation has 

experienced the technical development of the last 40 years 

and is also fit in analogue culture and working techniques. 

This combination can be of huge benefit to everyone 

involved in a company. Boomers have a high level of 

expertise combined with a great deal of experience. 

However, this can be counter-productive in times of 

digitalisation and become a stress factor. 

After all, digitalisation is almost radically 

changing the way knowledge is processed 

and communicated. 

Many boomers can‘t keep up with this, 

quite the contrary: they often insist on 

their practices and are reluctant to deal 

with the new media and tools. This can be clearly seen in 

the current corona crisis with working from home: what 

works completely intuitively with no problems for digital 

natives, causes difficulties for some of the boomers. They 

have to deal with modern cloud-based collaboration tools 

that were not essential in the past. But learning by doing 

is the best teacher here too. Targeted support from the 

employer and active involvement in teamwork is required 

– coupled with clear guidelines and a systematic approach. 

This is where we come full circle as the boomers are 

particularly strong in this respect. 

It’s all in the mix. 

Each age group has valuable skills for the big picture. 

And small teams with a good mix of ages make it possible 

to work together productively on equal terms. In best 

practice, every employee feels heard and understood. And 

no one overtakes or gets left behind. Ideally, all generations 

are willing to learn from each other. A meaningful team, 

in which everyone feels comfortable, can only be created 

through cooperation and exchange. All this is not a 

question of age or belonging to a cohort, 

but one of respect. And respect is, more than ever before, a 

universally valid component in the workplace that should 

not be a question of age. 



Showroom 

Reinterpreted 

The importance of good communication as a success factor for companies is undisputed. Multimedia 

technology and matching conference furniture make an important contribution to the quality of 

meetings. With the flexible skill system table range and the charming pulse conference chair, 

Wiesner-Hager counters the heaviness of classic conference furniture with lightness of design. 

pulse conference chair: 

lightness and elegance. 

A new four-star swivel base gives the pulse conference chair even more lightness and design 

variety. The swivel frame made of high-quality die-cast aluminium is therefore the ideal 

companion in conference rooms, where instead of the heaviness of classic boardrooms, the 

focus is on modernity – in keeping with the spirit of: understatement is the new important. 

With a wide range of fabrics and colours, it can be adapted to any architectural context. 

Design: LUCY.D 

© wiesnerhager 


conference rooms 

skill table system: 

the highly flexible conference table system. 

The skill table system is characterised by elegance and 

visual lightness. In contrast to rigid classic conference 

tables, the skill table system allows for a variety of 

configurations. The tables can be assembled and 

disassembled in just a few steps – without using 

any tools at all. A large selection of formats allows 

for completely new set-up options, tailored to the 

company’s needs. The skill table system demonstrates 

its full potential in large scale table configurations 

– individually and flexibly adapted to architectural 

conditions. The skill table system connects two table 

tops with just one frame. This not only accentuates 

the light look, but also saves costs, because there 

is no need for every second frame. If required, the 

elements can also be used as individual tables. 

Design: Andreas Krob 

© North Sea Port Authority 

The frame attached to the underside of the table 

top can be removed and latched into the desired 

position by releasing the locking mechanism in the 

table top support. The frames can be used flexibly: as 

an element linking two table tops or as an end piece 

flush with the edge. 

Click here for the skill animation 


m.zone: The freedom 

to choose: Our office 

instead of my desk. 

Büro neu denken: 

thinknewwork.com 

m.zone is a completely new furnishing concept for offices, which can be perfectly integrated 

into the organisation of agile companies. More on: wiesner-hager.com 

Design: Lucy.D

contact office magazine #30

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