contact office magazine #29

Issue 29 

Worlds of work in culture shock. 

Office culture: space for employees. 

Office grey zone: 

How colourful is the new world of work? 

Offices from around the world: 

McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago.

The many sides of 

(office) culture. 

No two cultures are the same. This can be seen in a compressed form 

at the workplace. There is no other place where so many temperaments 

encounter one another. In all places where people interact, 

there is social tension. 

In our essay on office culture starting on page 4, you can read about 

how consultants and architects define and experience the modern 

office culture, and shape a creative environment for employees from 

this social tension. 

Also a part of modern office culture: the clean desk policy. It’s the 

usage policy for workspaces which are mainly used by several employees. 

On page 14, we take a look at how this works. 

Culture in the office, space for employees .........................................................................04 

Smarter Ecommerce: A vintage look for young office culture .............................................08 

Something useful for the office day-to-day ........................................................................11 

Office etiquette: A code of conduct for open plan offices ..................................................12 

Clean desk policy ...............................................................................................................14 

Notino: Don‘t worry – be pretty! ........................................................................................15 

Office grey zone: How colourful is the new world of work? ..............................................18 

Worlds of work in culture shock ........................................................................................20 

Offices from around the world: McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago ..............................22 

What’s on your desk, Christoph Thun-Hohenstein? ...........................................................25 

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

In this issue, we also explore various interpretations of new work, 

enter the open space with good manners and deal with the question 

of which colour concepts can be used in office spaces to create more 

of an atmosphere. 

It wasn’t just colours which inspired the design of the headquarters 

of Notino, Europe’s largest perfume and cosmetics online shop. The 

original design idea was the visual interpretation of a fragrance, fully 

according to the Notino range. 

From page 20, we enter offices around the world and, supposedly, 

give ourselves a bit of a culture shock. 

A look at the McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago shows us how 

culture can literally be installed into office spaces. 

Finally, another artful conception which has become architecture: 

the office of Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, General Director of the 

Museum of Applied Art in Vienna. 

With this in mind: happy – cultured – reading! 

Markus Wiesner 

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; Design/Editing: Wiesner-Hager, plenos creative; Layout: plenos creative, plenos.at; Guest author: 

Wojciech Czaja; Typing and printing errors reserved; 10/2019. 

2 contact 

contact 3

Office Concepts 

Office culture: 

instruction manual for 

siestas and ball pools. 

Company culture sounds great. Let’s build spaces for our employees 

which are just good fun! But watch out: it’s not that simple. 

The spatial offer must always be in line and fine-tuned with the 

spirit of the company. 

For most travellers to Thailand, the address Chaeng 

Wattana is associated with bad experiences. The long 

street in the north of Bangkok is a nervous ordeal, 

since this is where the Foreign Ministry with authorities 

for visa applications and working and residence 

permits can be found. Here, there is usually a waiting 

time of several hours. 

For a few months, however, there has been the option 

to speed up the long wait in the truest sense of the 

word. On the second floor of the massive Ratthaprasasanabhakti 

Building, the covered atrium of which has 

an open space for trade fairs and events, a 412-metrelong 

running track with a total of three lanes has been 

set up. Corresponding pictograms on the ground 

give information about the speed you should choose: 

walking, jogging, running. You can track, measure and 

store your running distance via an app which you can 

install on your smartphone. On information screens 

along the track, you can see your name. “Sky running” 

is the official title of the indoor installation. It is one 

of the most unusual and media-effective projects 

of Bangkok property developer Dhanarak Asset 

Development. An important factor is that the track is 

not just open to the employees, but can also be used 

by customers and applicants. Guests who prefer to 

run some laps in the air-conditioned space instead of 

breathing in the exhaust fumes on the Bangkok streets 

are also welcome. 

Space as a promise 

“A great project”, says Martin A. Ciesielski, who 

founded the “School of Nothing” in Berlin in 2017 

and now presides over it as the Head of Nothing. He 

handles company consulting, social prototyping and 

training for digital leadership competences. “But these 

kinds of exotic offers in the office must always match 

the respective company culture. If this isn’t the case, if 

the running tracks, table football, hammocks, bunks 

and ball pits do not reflect the spirit of the company, 

sooner or later, this will lead to tension within the 

team.” In some ways, says Ciesielski, these gadgets and 

spatial features can be understood as a promise. “A ball 

pit promises a cool, casual company culture where it 

is legitimate to take time out at some point during the 

day and bury yourself in the plastic balls. If the company 

culture cannot fulfil this materially manifest, yet 

immaterial promise, however, then the plan backfires. 

Everything is no more than fake, and in the end, this 

will do more harm than good.” 

Bernhard Kern, Managing Director of Roomware 

Consulting GmbH, also warns against too much amusement 

at the cost of authenticity: “There are definitely 

companies where it’s suitable to install a running 

track, gym, slide, gondola or kitchen covered in graffiti 

by street artists. But I absolutely warn against using 


© Shutterstock 



these elements as a marketing instrument and fake 

employer branding. In any case, the spatial offer must 

be derived from the spirit of the company. First the 

culture, then the space.” This would also apply to the 

office layout with open-plan solutions and desk-sharing 

with the clean desk policy. A tangible discrepancy 

between space and culture must, according to Kern, 

result in conflicts sooner or later. 

The siesta dictionary 

“Workplaces are essentially living spaces. 

There, the everyday life actually labelled as 

private is continued”, writes emeritus social 

psychologist and former director of the 

Berlin School of Economics and Law, Peter 

Heinrich, in his dictionary on micropolitics, 

published by Springer. “The hours that 

someone spends at their workplace each 

day are lived life, the quality of which also 

depends on the attention that the company 

and the creators use when designing the 

working environment. This refers to both 

the spatial-physical level and the social-communicative 

environments.” From this viewpoint, we must deal 

with the space available in the office in a reflective and, 

above all, cautious manner – whether these are thinktanks, 

animated centre areas or contemplative silent 

rooms for naps or for carrying out religious practices. 

Architect Michael Anhammer, Partner at the Viennese 

office Franz&Sue, has experienced this first hand. 

Previously consisting of two separate offices called 

Franz and Sue, they merged within a very short time 

and have grown to a total of 50 employees. In their 

newly created residential and office building Stadtelefant 

in Sonnwendviertel, the giant city expansion 

area behind Vienna’s main train station, Franz&Sue 

created a two-storey architecture office with an inter-floor 

arena, meeting cubicles, standing desks, two 

balconies, a large terrace and even two reclining bunks 

arranged one above the other, which remind you of 

the classic sleeper cabin on the train. The new office 

has been up and running since the start of the year. 

The 

more 

precisely 

the goals are 

formulated, 

the better! 

manner”, says Anhammer. But then, we noticed: the 

things which work communally in a small team need 

certain rules of play in an office with 50 people, as well 

as a communication process initiated by the managing 

directors. “In the first few weeks, our employees didn’t 

know whether and how they could use these retreat 

spaces that we created. In the meantime, we have set 

up a format called High-Five which takes 

place every four to six weeks and where five 

partners meet five selected team delegates. 

Here, we work together on our office 

quality and organisation culture. This kind 

of oral history with room for negotiation 

is certainly preferable to hard, quantifiable 

rules of play.” 

Precise formulation of goals 

These processes are vitally important for 

any change within the company, confirms 

Sabine Zinke: “A spatial model must always 

go hand in hand with the definition, or 

with the change of a cultural, technical or 

economical model”, says the Head of the business area 

“Changing Worlds of Work” at Viennese Consulting 

Company M.O.O.CON. “The more precisely the 

goals are formulated, the better! Nothing is more 

counter-productive than empty, hollow marketing 

words which haven’t been properly thought through.” 

Above all, this relates to trend concepts such as flexibility, 

agile working and transparent communication. 

“I can strongly recommend thinking through consequences 

and interactions,” says Zinke. “If we suppose 

that middle management loses its individual offices 

and moves into the open plan office: what effects 

would this have on the everyday work? How would 

the communication processes change? And what 

contribution can we make so that the employees don’t 

perceive this change as control?” This all needs to be 

communicated, discussed and agreed – for example, in 

the form of regular neighbourhood councils. 

Focus on the spirit 

Jens Kapitzky knows that you always have to look 

behind the scenes with these kinds of councils and 

strategy workshops. Jens Kapitzky ran the Österreichischer 

Bundesverlag from 2010 until 2015 and 

today runs Metaplan-Akademie in Schleswig-Holstein, 

which specialises in organisation consulting. 

“Space and company culture can come together in a 

wonderful harmony. But you also have to dig deeper,” 

says Kapitzky. And he explains in plain terms: “In 

every organisation, there are three levels – the display 

side, the formal side and the informal side. Skip the 

display side! There, you will mainly only find naive 

hollow words which the company uses to adorn itself 

officially and for marketing purposes. If you want to 

create sustainable change, then this has to happen on 

the formal and informal sides. And this only works 

if you deal with the employees, their preferences and 

idiosyncrasies on a very profound level, with the spirit 

of the company – meaning with everything that every 

person affected feels and knows, but that isn’t written 

down anywhere.” 

According to a Gallup study carried out last year, 71 

percent of Germans perform their tasks by the book. 

14 percent even state that they have already mentally 

checked out of the company they work for. The numbers 

are alarming. There is an urgent need for action. 

Wojciech Czaja 

“We created the spatial offer and assumed that the 

corresponding culture would establish itself among 

our employees in an informal and uncomplicated 




Interview 

Culture 

is the set of 

established 

procedures 

created by a 

community. 

© smec 

Smarter Ecommerce: 

A vintage look for young office culture. 

When you arrive at the internal courtyard of the tobacco factory in Linz, an unusual calm sets in. 

The noise of the city is blocked out by the brick walls, and what remains is the hustle and bustle of 

the people who work here. The goods lift takes us to the fourth floor. From here, you can look out 

at the modern city through large windows, while the cracks in the old tiles tell tales of an industrial 

time long ago. 

We visited the service company Smarter Ecommerce 

– smec for short – which has made the Linz tobacco 

factory the setting for its new main office. On 

1700 square metres, 120 employees develop software 

solutions for search engine marketing. Here, they are 

free to work in a working café, at one of the many 

desk-sharing spaces or in the silent room. The managing 

director, Jan Radanitsch, greets us with a piece of 

chocolate cake, instead of the usual coffee. “Today, we 

are celebrating our 12-year anniversary.” What a great 

occasion for an interview about the development of 

office culture in the 21st century. 

In 2007, you founded your company with your colleague, 

Christian Gorbach, and 10 years later, your company, 

Smarter Ecommerce, has acquired a new office in the 

Linz tobacco factory. What was your main focus in the 

search for a new location? 

As we have grown quickly, our former office had already 

become too small only nine months after moving 

in. Our departments were split over various levels of 

the buildings, or between other locations in the city. 

Our various departments have to communicate a 

great deal with each other and work together in 

© smec 

software development. 

This is why it was important to me for us all to be 

accommodated in one area and for there to be enough 

space available for growth. Another criterion was 

proximity to the city centre. I like the feeling of going 

out after work to places where the city life is waiting 

for me. The Linz tobacco factory also has a campus 

character which has developed strongly over the last 

two years. 

What was especially important to you in the planning 

and implementation of the new office? Where did you 

find your inspiration and motivation? 

It was important to us to have a common central space 

where employees can meet. This is why we 

created a large central area in the form 

of an open community kitchen, and 

avoided catering units in the wings. 

Of course, there are also opportunities 

there for collaboration 

and brief team meetings, but 

the employees from various 

departments also meet during 

the day in our working café 

for a quick coffee, lunch and 

to exchange ideas. The second 

important point was to retain the 

character of this historic building. 

The spaces must remain in balance and 

this only succeeds if I engage in the history 

Jan 

Radanitsch, 

CEO of smec 

and give it its space. The signs of wear are part of 

the factory building, and now they are also part of us. 

Regarding the desk-sharing concept, we visited other 

offices and were advised by architects. Our own 

employees were also included in the talks. In meetings, 

© Jürgen Grünwald 

representatives of the individual departments came 

together and discussed what is important to them and 

how we could implement this in the best way. 

What were the greatest challenges during the renovation 

and how did you solve these? 

The low height of the rooms made it difficult to 

have an ideal ventilation plan for the large spaces. To 

retain the old brickwork, we worked together with 

the building preservation office. The central aisle was 

constructed by architect Peter Behrens in a lightly 

arched shape. We kept this free from technology in 

order to preserve this “banana”. 

How do you interpret the concept of “office 

culture”? What role does the architecture 

play here? 

Culture is the set of established 

procedures created by a community. 

Again and again, I remind 

my employees: everyone who 

comes in here helps to shape the 

office culture. As the managing 

director, I can’t control whether 

someone gets involved in the 

community or not – but I can 

create the framework conditions for 

this. The temperature of rooms, acoustics 

and the room design are crucial factors 

to make people feel at home at their workplace. I 

don’t believe that employees only achieve more when 

they work morethey have to be able to work effectively, 

at the right time and place. For example, our 

working café is not just used at break times, but also 



Interview 

as a place to hold meetings. 

Churchill once said: “First, we shape our buildings; 

thereafter, they shape us.” How do you view this 

regarding life in the office, particularly in 

your company? 

finished for the day. However, we don’t have to supervise 

our employees here, because they make each other 

aware when it comes to complying with certain rules. 

They point out things such as forgotten coffee cups 

via the instant messaging service: just 

like in a big shared flat. 

Trendwatching 

Something useful for 

the office day-to-day. 

Of course, we thought a great deal about 

it beforehand, and consciously left a few 

things open and observed how things 

developed. What was interesting was 

the development in the open-plan office, 

which was first regarded with scepticism. 

The noise level automatically decreased – 

which means that the open space shaped 

the way in which our employees worked. 

You could also see it as a waste of space 

that we left an aisle of 110 metres by 4 

metres completely open, because it has 

no other function than that of a corridor. Positive side 

effect: it brings people together. 

Your employees are free to choose their workspace. Which 

spatial measures have you taken so that this desk-sharing 

concept is positively accepted? 

What 

employees really 

enjoy is the 

possibility of 

using various 

zones. 

Your company also offers up part of the 

office as co-working space. How exactly, 

does this concept look? To what extent 

does this “opening up” of your company 

affect the culture in the office and the 

work of your own employees? 

Because of our growth, we rented 

more space than we would have needed 

in the beginning. We offered part 

of our office to a start-up company. 

The idea was for an exchange to take 

place, even if they were active in rather a different area 

of artificial intelligence. Of course, this influenced our 

decision to open up the company. This is why it is important 

to prepare such projects well for all employees 

and to set out rules so that cooperation can become 

advantageous for all participants. 

AirBar – 

Touchscreen upgrade 

With the AirBar, every laptop can become a 

touchscreen device thanks to a simple USB 

plug-in. The bar generates an invisible light 

field over the screen. If this light barrier is 

interrupted, the AirBar sends the corresponding 

signals to the notebook – and this turns 

it into a touchscreen. Quite practical. 

© AIRBAR 

© Sabine Kneidinger Photography 

At the beginning, it was a stressful situation for a few 

people. But this subsided with time to get used to it. 

The desk-sharing spaces are not changed often. What 

employees really enjoy is the possibility of using various 

zones – depending on what is most suitable for 

their specific tasks. Tables for a team can be reserved 

temporarily for special projects. We make structures 

for ourselves, try to break these down again and improve 

them – agility is the order of the day. 

Desk-sharing concepts are normally linked with a clean 

desk policy. How is this handled in your company? 

There’s an adequate number of lockers. There, personal 

objects, laptops, etc. can be locked away after work is 

If you look to the future: how do you see the further 

development of the interplay between office culture and 

architecture? 

This is a huge topic for me. We have the privilege 

of being in a really cool architectural environment, 

which also has certain limits, of course, but offers 

enough wiggle room for restructuring. The working 

environment can massively support or reduce working 

efficiency. Architecture must understand that it is not 

all about looking beautiful and tidy; rather, it should 

also allow mobility. We have to learn to create an 

environment with the simplest of means and with old 

buildings where people feel at home. We have to care 

for resources in the future and rely on quality, rather 

than quantity. 

© FEEDLY 

Feedly – all your newsfeeds 

in one app 

© Shapr 

Ember Coffee Mug – 

no more cold coffee 

Cold coffee makes you beautiful? Possibly. However, 

most people prefer to drink it hot. The Ember coffee 

mug ensures that your office coffee becomes something 

convenient. The coffee mug, configurable by app, 

is not just visually appealing, but the technology also 

packs a punch: using the app, you set your desired 

drink temperature, and you receive a notification to 

tell you that the contents of your cup is ready to drink. 

In addition, you can preset temperatures for different 

drinks – meaning that even tea-drinkers will be pleased 

with the Ember mug. 

© Ember 

All your news in one app: with Feedly, you can combine 

newsfeeds from countless news providers in a 

compact form in one app. You also have the option of 

creating lists with categories of various newsfeeds. 



Office Life 

The brief code 

of conduct for 

open plan offices. 

One metre radius. This is how anthropologist 

Edward T. Hall described the distance between 

two or more people which is perceived 

as comfortable for everyone. In the open-plan 

office, it isn’t always easy to preserve this 

space. Common work in an open-plan office 

can work well if everyone complies with certain 

rules. Here, the following applies: your 

own free space stops at the point where the 

boundaries of your colleagues begin. 

To prevent the open space from becoming an interpersonal 

and professional vacuum, we will give you an 

overview of the code of conduct in an open-plan office. 

But first: there is no ideal solution. What counts 

are beneficial compromises for the community to be 

able to perform as well as possible in the open-plan 

conditions. 

A collegial willingness to compromise should be paramount 

when it comes to all potential trouble spots. 

Taking into account that we spend an average of eight 

hours in the office each day, we should also consider 

working time as living time. 

Noise 

To be able to work in a productive and concentrated 

manner, most people need peace. So, what can you do 

if you have to sit near one or several “human loudspeaker” 

colleagues in an open-plan office? 

Tip 1: Self-protection. From headphones to earplugs, 

anything goes as long as the boss is fine with it. 

Tip 2: The protection of others. Talk to your loud 

colleagues in a targeted, yet friendly manner. Many 

people don’t know that they reach a disturbingly high 

number of decibels when they talk on the phone. If 

nothing about their behaviour changes: either follow 

tip 1 or, in particularly loud periods, complete the 

points on your own agenda which require less 

concentration. 

Smells 

One of the most frequent points of conflict in an 

open-plan office: exotic or hot foods have no place in 

an open-plan office. 

Tip: when their blood sugar level starts to drop, a 

cooperative colleague should turn to snacks with 

a neutral smell such as nuts or greens. If you have 

distracting combinations of herbs and spices and 

aggressively smelling foods, you would be better going 

to the break room. There, fans of smelly, hearty foods 

will find people who share their tendency and share a 

common joy for all things fragrant. 

An overview of 

the most frequent 

conflict triggers: 

Room temperature 

The trinity of the most frequent open-plan office 

frictions is completed with the topic of environmental 

temperature. Theoretically, the ideal room temperature 

is somewhere between 21 and 22 °C. In the wilderness 

of the open-plan office, however, this is often in 

dispute. The limits between a comfortable temperature 

for one person and a shock freeze threshold for another 

are fluid. Frequently, and understandably, these 

limits are very vehemently defined and defended. 

Tip: stay pragmatic. Agree fixed ventilation times with 

your colleagues so that sub-Saharan temperatures or 

arctic atmospheres are avoided. You can also adapt 

your own style of clothing in a functional manner to 

be either cooling or warming for the office. 




Office Life 

Reference story 

Clean Desk: 

let’s clean up now! 

Many companies offer a free choice of workspace in the form of desk sharing. The 

fact that individual employees no longer need a fixed workspace means that clear 

usage policies are required, also known as the clean desk policy. 

This so-called clean desk policy is stipulated 

in service contracts and applies to all employees 

and project groups – including the boardroom. 

For the latter, exceptions can be introduced if the 

spatial circumstances allow this. 

Influence of the clean desk policy on the 

working routine. 

positive perception of a usage policy. As this is a contractual 

agreement, the consequences must be agreed 

beforehand. A warning for leaving behind a coffee 

cup seems a little excessive, while it can be completely 

appropriate for forgetting confidential data sheets. If 

there are consequences, there should also be rewards: 

small bonuses such as free coffee or vouchers can 

strengthen the motivation to keep things tidy. 

A clean desk policy is introduced by companies which 

work with sensitive data, offer desk sharing or maintain 

contact with customers. To protect sensitive data, 

both electronic and paper documents must be locked 

away. Depending on the company sector, these are 

invoices, customer data or development plans. 

For desk sharing, the workspace is shared and should 

be left in a tidy condition. Motivation to work is 

reduced as soon as there are dirty coffee cups which 

have to be cleaned up. For regular customer contact, 

professionalism and neutrality are top priority. The 

workplace should give external persons an unbiased 

and tidy impression. 

Gaping voids vs. attractive 

design. 

The extent to which 

companies formulate the 

clean desk policy depends 

on the sector and personal 

experiences. Some companies 

insist on a tidy working 

environment. For this, 

however, the ideal spatial 

conditions must be created. 

A stimulating and attractive 

workspace is the basis 

so that employees have a 

Motto: Clean Desk Policy 

PLAN: Before you start your work, plan your day and 

only bring those utensils to your desk that you will 

really need. 

PROTECT: Protect your documents. Store these 

in physical or digital folders. Don’t forget: protect 

your electronic devices with passwords or biometric 

functions. 

PICK: At the end of the day, lock up your documents 

and company laptop and leave an empty desk behind 

you. 

Creative order instead of creative chaos. 

For many employees, creativity is a topic which is 

difficult to combine with a clean desk policy. Employers 

should counteract this issue and create spatial 

alternatives for creative and open styles of working. 

Activity-based working is the order of the day. However, 

the employer shouldn’t be too strict. At the end 

of the day, working time for many people makes up 

the lion’s share of the week. Employees find a way of 

expressing their identity. For someone, this is a sticker 

from their favourite band on their laptop, for someone 

else, this is a family photo as their desktop background. 

It is recommended to create a framework for personal 

things, because the individuality of every single employee 

strengthens the whole 

team, and therefore also the 

company success. 

NOTINO: 

Don’t worry – be pretty! 

A reference story from Brno. 

Naturalness and beauty. These are the two lasting values 

Europe‘s largest online shop for cosmetic products wants 

to illustrate in its new headquarters. Driven by the idea of 

visualising the scent of a perfume, the Kyzlink Architects 

architectural firm designed the new offices of Notino in 

2017. After all, it was a perfume which started the success 

story of Notino in the Czech Republic in 2004. 

© jirka hlousek 




Reference story 

The heart of the new office is the conference room, 

equipped with yuno stacking tables and nooi conference 

chairs. The room was kept in a sleek black-andwhite 

style to ensure that it can be reinvented for every 

occasion. Thanks to the flexibility of the furniture, a 

conference situation can easily be adapted to create a 

presentation or event atmosphere. 



The elegant, clear style put forward in the reception 

area continues throughout the entire architecture. 

The dark, almost black wooden floor seems to wind 

through the premises like a main artery. 

Notino started out as a small online shop for perfume 

and cosmetics products. 15 years later, Notino 

has more than 1000 employees in 22 countries 

and now sells cosmetics products in beauty shops 

as well. So it is no wonder that more space was 

required for employees. The Brno business park 

provided the best opportunity for this purpose: 

4000 sqm, distributed over a little more than two 

floors were set up by the cosmetics company for its 

new headquarters. In doing so, the company focused 

not only on the design competence of Kyzlink 

Architects, but also on its own employees. Since 

the new headquarters are located only a few 

minutes away from the previous location, it was 

clear that the employees were involved in designing 

their new office. Maybe this was also the recipe 

for success for the move of the entire company, 

which was completed within only one weekend 

without the online shop operations being 

suspended. 

The open offices are complemented by vitrified 

meeting booths, telephone boxes and comfortable 

lounge suites which can be used for meetings or 

quiet pauses for reflection at any time thanks to 

their acoustic shielding. The open space workstations 

were equipped with 220 paro_2 swivel chairs 

from Wiesner-Hager. 

The architects played with wood, glass and light to 

create a naturally looking work environment. The 

glass emphasises the beauty of the wooden material, 

which can be found again as part of the meeting 

rooms or on the walls. 

An installation on the wall of the entrance area 

of the second floor makes way for wood panels 

reminiscent of a huge palette of eye shadows. This 

interaction between cosmetics and nature makes 

the office timeless and touches the very core of our 

decade. A compromise which will still look modern 

and stylish even in 15 years’ time. 

Scope of project 

Area: 4.000 m² 

Interior architecture: Kyzlink Architects 

Implementation: PREMIER interiors 

Furniture: 

Wiesner-Hager, arper, ICF, offect, 

pedrali, ancal and viccarbe 




Interior architecture 

OFFICE GREY ZONE: 

How colour in the office 

Warm or cold? 

What colour should you have for the office? 

increases our performance. 

The living room impresses with soft green tones which remind you of ripe olives. The kitchen has 

a lively feel thanks to red wooden chairs. And in the bathroom, dark blue bath towels and candles 

break up the white surroundings. Only the office seems sad – almost lifeless, thanks to the greybeige 

monotony. 

In living quarters, the targeted use of colour has always 

had a great significance, because colours stimulate 

our mood and influence the visual climate. We spend 

more time at our workspace than in our living room, 

which is why it is just as important to think about the 

use of colour here: who is motivated to work productively 

by a bleak, drab office appearance? If we look at 

it the other way round: who feels balanced and calm if 

an office immersed in neon colours reminds you more 

of a disco? “The main task of good office architecture 

is to bring people, function, space and furnishings into 

a common context. This is why good interior architecture 

strives for a gentle balance between a low level 

of stimulation and an overload of stimulation,” says 

Helga Eigner, interior architect at Office Consulter 

Roomware. 

Colour, light and space in sync. 

For the beneficial effect of colours to develop, the 

colours and areas must be brought into the right 

proportions. A large, drab area is just as stressful for 

our eyes as a brightly coloured area. In nature, there 

are no larger homogeneous areas. Even a meadow is a 

mixture of many different shades of green. So, if there 

is too little or too much stimulation for our eyes, this 

can lead to problems with concentration, headaches 

and even to visual impairment. 

A vigilance study at the University of Vienna determined 

during a check of the error rate during 

sustained attention that colourful stimuli significantly 

increases concentration levels. Rooms without colour 

or rooms which were too bright increased the error 

rate among the test subjects. According to the study, 

a colour balance which generates a balanced level of 

tension would be the best for the eyes and the head. 

Light plays just as important a role in the selection of 

colour as the function of the room itself. Helga Eigner 

explains: “Colour is perceived in different ways depending 

on the type of light source. Surfaces which have 

a pleasant colouring in daylight can look completely 

different in yellowish overhead light.” The use of the 

room should be decisive for the colour selection: the 

design of communication rooms may be more open 

for bolder colour concepts than working rooms which 

are permanently occupied. Here, colour should only 

be used as an accent. 

Tastes are known to be very different, yet the influence 

of colours on people is not a question of personal 

taste, rather an objective theory of the psychological 

effect of colour. This is why there are definite applications 

for certain colours which we utilise in an office 

environment. 

Red isn’t used as a signal colour for nothing. 

It gets our attention in an instant. We associate 

it with danger, as well as with love and passion. 

In its pure form, red should only be used for 

accents, above all in rooms which should 

encourage communication. 

Blue is a cold colour and reminds us of the 

vastness of the sea or sky. It increases our ability 

to concentrate and has a calming effect. A blue 

pin-board, a blue picture or a blue desktop 

wallpaper are options for breathing new life into 

everyday office life. 

Yellow is the purest colour, apart from 

white. It radiates cheerfulness and liveliness. 

It is best suited to reception areas 

and working cafes, as well as for places 

where people want to relax. 

With its earthy effect, brown is primarily 

suited to flooring. Brown provides 

stability. 

Green is a mixed colour and can assume many 

shades and facets. It represents growth and 

reminds us of nature. Like yellow, it is used for a 

cosier atmosphere, but also in rooms which were 

designed for concentrated working. Nature and 

colour can be integrated into the room design 

using room plants. 

Orange is also a mixed colour and assumes the 

properties of red – signal colour – and yellow 

– cheerfulness. Used in communication and 

conference rooms, it combines the concentration 

and attention of the participant. 

White is a non-colour and is associated with purity, 

above all. It should be avoided as a homogeneous colour 

on larger surfaces. White or bright tables remind us of a 

blank sheet of paper and focus our concentration on the 

current activity. Here, you must ensure that the surface is 

matt and not reflective. 




Worlds of work 

in culture shock. 

Other countries, other customs. Not least, this can be seen in the way in which we 

design or office spaces. Owing to mentality, rental costs and individual space requirement, 

there aren’t just miles between Asia, Europe and America, but worlds. 

Monsieur Hulot wanders through the corridors and 

doesn’t understand the world any more. Just like in a 

futuristic anthill, the employees goose step hurriedly 

from A to B, carrying briefcases, tearing notes out 

of the typewriter, ignoring all their colleagues in the 

ether of anonymity. In the 22nd minute, the man with 

the coat, hat and umbrella ends up in a glass gallery 

and looks down onto the many little cubicles below 

which have been burned into the collective memory of 

film history. The cinematic satire “Playtime”, by French 

film director Jacques Tati, released in 1967, is a critique 

of the modern world as well as the increasingly 

characterless design of our living and working spaces. 

Today, the grey and beige open space cubicles, as the 

office scenes in many American feature films seem 

to prove impressively, again and again, can mainly 

be found in the economic and financial sector. On 

one hand, the shoulder-height partition walls ensure 

concentrated working with a certain level of privacy 

and acoustic protection and without screen glare, on 

the other hand, when you stand up, you can gain an 

informative overview (and supervisory view) of your 

colleagues. 

But even in architecture, you can find a few surprising 

and sometimes shocking work situations. Japanese 

shooting star Junya Ishigami sits with his team in a 

former discotheque in Roppongi, in the middle of 

the Tokyo city jungle, in a 400 square-metre cellar 

space without a view. “When I founded by office, I 

had to decide: small office with a view or a large office 

without one? But I admit: even if you have a lot of 

imagination and very good spatial and atmospheric 

conceptual possibilities as an architect, we all dream 

of an office with a window. At the end of the day, we 

want to see the sky.” 

The two Pritzker prize-winners, Kazuyo Sejima and 

Ryue Nishizawa, who run the SANAA office, spent 

years working in a warehouse in the south of Tokyo. 

Via a steep metal staircase, with a small sign on the 

door, you reached a bright, yet tightly furnished office 

where every employee had desk space of about 80 

centimetres each, owing to the exorbitant rental costs. 

Working hours: 2 p.m. until midnight. The unusual 

time-slot is based on the fact that SANAA doesn’t 

just build in Japan, but also supports many projects in 

Europe and the USA. 

In Europe and North America on the other hand, the 

office layout is mainly the expression of their own culture 

and company philosophy: at Christoph Ingenhoven’s 

office in Düsseldorf, the employees sit at a desk 

in the centre of the room which is dozens of metres 

long. In the Parisian office of Lacaton & Vassal, an old 

factory warehouse with a concrete floor, the orchids in 

the greenhouse are given at least as much attention as 

the people. And at Hermann Czech’s office in downtown 

Vienna, you literally vanish behind stacks of 

books and ceiling-high shelves fitted with glass doors 

which are filled to bursting point. 



© Photo: Jaques Tati Playtime (1967), alamy 


Offices from around the world 

Quarter Pounder 

with cheese. 

Last year, McDonald’s moved its headquarters from Oak Brook to Downtown Chicago, a distance of 

30 kilometres. The new office with its stacked departments makes such a healthy and comfortable 

impression that you wonder when their food will follow this successful trend. A highlight is the wellness 

suites set up on each floor with quiet rooms, a library and a prayer room. I’m lovin’ it. 

employees moved to Randolph Street, Downtown 

Chicago. 

The eight-story building designed by Gensler Architects 

looks amazingly tasteful. The brick façade with 

its steel strips and square glass panels doesn’t give in to 

the tried and tested McDonald’s aesthetic. Rather, the 

50,000 square-metre structure incorporates the construction 

materials typical of Chicago and conforms to 

the plot like an obvious piece of a jigsaw, where once 

there was a sober warehouse and logistics hall. Three 

partitioned entrances lead into the office headquarters, 

into the so-called Hamburger University, where 

future employees and franchisees are trained, and into 

the McDonald’s global menu restaurant where you can 

find all the burgers, fries and shakes on the menu that 

are sold all over the world. 

© Garrett Rowland 

At the centre of the building, a giant atrium with 

glazed walkways, galleries and stairways and landings 

running criss-crossed hither and thither, seemingly 

jerkily. Here and there, glazed meeting spaces over 

several floors protrude into the empty space, as if 

you wanted to have a curious peek in or out. And 

between all this, there is an installation by New York 

artiest Jacob Hashimoto hanging from the ceiling and 

filling the room. The oeuvre is called A Gateway to a 

Whispered Possibility of Existence, and it consists 

of hundreds of coloured, patterned, sometimes 

weightlessly translucent kites made from bamboo, 

resin and acrylic. It is as if you were caught in an exhilarating 

dream – somewhere between flower power, 

M. C. Escher and the elegance of a recently opened 

Louis Vuitton flagship store. For 47 years, McDonald’s 

headquarters has been at its traditional address in 

Oak Brook, situated around 30 kilometres west of 

Chicago. The offices were scattered over several 

buildings arranged across a large, green campus. 

With the identity change away from the suburban 

fast-food provider, however, to the urban lifestyle 

restaurant, as the burger empire likes to claim, the 

necessary symbolic step must also be made on a 

management level. In 2018, the company gave 

up the campus at the edge of the city and all 2,000 




Offices from around the world 

What's on your desk? 


Only once you enter the holy of holies, can you gradually 

get a sense of the company domiciled here. Via 

two asymmetrical arches – a reference to the Golden 

Arches, which have characterised the image brand 

since 1968 – you reach a lobby panelled in American 

walnut, and thus wrapped in a warm, pleasant 

atmosphere. There are also wall surfaces in black and 

white, textiles in different shades of grey and wooden 

surfaces with strong, lively grains. Here and there, the 

homogeneous image is loosened up with cool blue and 

turquoise tones and a few signature pieces of furniture 

in the unmistakable corporate yellow colour. “The 

furniture and interior design is timeless and discreet, 

in places perhaps even a little minimalist,” says Ruben 

Gonzales, chief architect and project manager at IA 

Interior Architects, the company which designed 

the inner workings together with Studio O+A and 

made these a reality. “Here, you can look for extensive 

corporate colours in vain. The only exception is the 

McDonald’s yellow which sets an accent here and there 

in the form of chairs, sofa niches and wall padding.” 

There are plasma touchscreens for the necessary digital 

communication, which are distributed throughout the 

whole building. Acoustically as well as atmospherically, 

you barely notice that the majority of the offices 

have an open-plan design. Niches and heterogeneously 

designed small areas counteract the usual appearance 

of an open-plan office. The floors themselves are 

designed in different ways. Like the layers of toppings 

in an oversized Big Mac, the themed departments of 

history, hospitality, world of flavours, packaging culture 

and design and architectural identity are stacked 

one on top of the other. The departments aren’t just 

condensed into the management system, but also in 

the architectural design of the floors. The crowning 

glory is a milestone gallery with the most important 

achievements in the history of McDonald’s, as well as 

a collection of Happy Meal toys from all ages. 

Perhaps the most beautiful and respectful gift to the 

employees is the so-called wellness suite which is set 

up on every floor. As well as a classic quiet space, this 

also includes a library, a playroom and parenting room 

as well as a prayer and meditation room. The Big Mac 

office could hardly have been built in a more tasteful 

and sustainably nourishing way. I’m lovin’ it. At the 

end, you ask yourself: when will the wellness and 

health formula applied here finally spill over onto the 

menu? Would you like an apple pie with that? No, 

thanks. 



06 

07 

08 

02 

What’s on your desk, 

Christoph Thun-Hohenstein? 

Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, General director of the Museum of Applied 

Art, probably has one of the most beautiful offices in Vienna. From his desk 

on the first floor, he doesn’t just have a view of the Stubenring, but also a room 

of around 100 square-metres and six metres in height. “Well, I’m quite tall, 

after all,” says the 1.97 metre-tall MAK boss. “The spaciousness does me quite 

well. It gives me the feeling that I can move here physically and mentally. This 

also includes the fact that I try to avoid calling my secretary from the office. 

I prefer to stand up and walk across the room and cover 15 to 20 metres in 

each direction when doing so. This is my compensatory sport, because I have 

far too little time for real sport, unfortunately.” Counted with his journeys 

by foot to the office and to meetings outside of it, he says he covers 15 to 20 

kilometres in this way, some days. 

The room is extensively decorated, is covered by a lavish panelled ceiling and, 

as well as his desk, includes an endless meeting table and a Franz West sofa 

with an orange and green fabric cover. “On one hand, the room is spartan in 

terms of furniture, on the other hand, the desk is relatively packed. I find this 

combination of emptiness and fullness pleasant and calming.” As he handles 

most of his emails and text work on his iPhone, Thun-Hohenstein has one 

wish for the future: “If someone is interested in so many things, then there’s 

not a lot of leisure time left. I would like to have more me-time. You can always 

wish!” 

01 

04 

03 

09 

05 

01 

02 

03 

04 

05 

06 

07 

08 

09 

10 

The walnut desk was designed by Karl Schreitl. I think 

it’s beautiful. And it has a history: according to our MAK 

inventory list, it was acquired in 1944. 

The MAK system is based on PC. In my private life, I use an 

Apple computer. I’m flexible. I can also use the mouse with 

both hands, sometimes left, sometimes right. 

There is a clear system of order on my desk: each stack 

represents projects and ideas in different phases. 

The most important hand movement during meetings is 

pouring water into a glass. 

The order continues on the Eames aluminium chairs. These 

three additional chairs are not for sitting, but serve as a 

basis for arranging documents. 

When it gets dark, the light installation from James Turrell 

switches on in the windows. Then, the room is cast in 

varying red, blue and violet LED light. 

The Toio standing lamp by Achille and Pier Giacomo 

Castiglioni is one of my favourite design classics. 

The concrete and stone lectern was designed by my predecessor, 

Peter Noever. I use it as a shelf for books. 

The wall piece by Donald Judd (aluminium and varnish, 

1989) used to be exhibited in the turret. However, when 

we had to close the MAK tower, it then became the central 

artwork in my office. 

The four hanging shelves on the wall made from steel and 

concrete were designed by Peter Noever. You can store 

many books on these without the colourful spines of the 

books dominating the room. 

10 

Wojciech Czaja visiting Christoph Thun-Hohenstein 



Showroom 

Think New Work. 

The working and communication space “office” is becoming more and more of a creative living space. 

Paramount here is the freedom to choose: “our office” instead of “my desk”. The following selection of 

products shows you a playground which is full of options – away from the classic desk frame of mind as well. 

yuno & nooi: 

Two bestsellers on a new mission. 

The desk itself always remains free from cables and 

retains its full mobility. Design: Andreas Krob 

Originally designed as a stacking table for events and 

seminars, yuno was expanded for use in the office: 

with yuno Office, Wiesner-Hager has developed an 

unconventional office range especially for the mobile 

requirements of co-working spaces, thus following 

the trend of flexible, uncomplicated office use in the 

world of “new work”. A plug-in box made from a 

powder-coated metal housing can be docked onto 

yuno and in an instant, it becomes a complete workspace. 

The plug-in box has connections for power, 

network and USB with a charging function. 

However, it also serves as a lockable storage box for 

utensils and valuables. If there are desks set up opposite, 

e.g. in double blocks or quadruple blocks, a textile 

pin-board style L-panel creates a simple privacy screen. 

The area of use of the nooi multi-purpose chair range 

has also been expanded: the new conference chair 

makes nooi an ideal partner for extended meetings 

or working now and then – for example, in co-working 

spaces or rooms for project work. The swivelling 4-star 

frame and armrest made from tubular steel offer comfort 

and flexibility during conferences, workshops or 

temporary work. As well as various seat shell configurations, 

there are also two different frames to choose 

from: the conference chair comes in a version with 

sliders, or in a mobile version with rollers. 

Design: neunzig°design 

element & m.zone Cloud: Living room, 

marketplace or lounge? 

Working in different, changing environments which create a 

supporting ambience depending on the task is one of the main 

features of “new work”. The office becomes a place for meetings, 

collaboration and communication. With the upholstery element 

and the m.zone Cloud “meeting island”, Wiesner-Hager presents 

two furniture ranges which can make classic offices into real 

creative spaces 

The unconventional meeting table 

cluster m.zone Cloud permits the exchange 

of information within a team. The textile 

decorative roof, available in many different 

fabrics and colours, serves to provide 

screening without the area feeling cramped 

or giving the users the impression of being 

trapped in a box while sitting at the table 

cluster. The Cloud is optionally available 

with integrated lighting and plug sockets for 

mobile technology devices. 

Design: Lucy.D 

The modular upholstered furniture range 

element was developed specially for centre 

zones in open-plan offices. The back 

elements of the couch can be placed vertically 

on top of one another, combined in 

individual and different ways. The height 

of the upholstered furniture determines 

the degree of visual and acoustic screening. 

In terms of space, element can be grouped 

from an individual sofa right up to large 

configurations. This makes it especially 

suited to new forms of communication, 

as a place of retreat or as a temporary 

workspace. 

Design: Boris Klimek / Cooperation: 

mminterier 



yuno 

The smart alternative to the folding table. 

“Stacking without folding” – yuno retains all the benefits of 

a folding table and avoids its weaknesses. wiesner-hager.com

contact office magazine #29

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