contact_magazine_#36_EN

Offices from across the world
What’s on your desk?
like round wooden islands in a small lake. A spiral
staircase projects out into the room as an organic,
self-supporting sculpture connecting the three office
floors – naturally intensifying the intended visual
“wow” effect. On the other side of the lobby is an
arena with seated stands for events and larger groups
of visitors.
The offices and conference rooms are arranged like
prismatic amoebas in an organic corridor system,
freely aligned without any detectable order. These
are acoustically separated with room-high, curved
glass panes and backlit plywood walls with CNCmilled
perforation. Although the matrix formed of
circles, triangles and hexagons gives the impression
of being the result of algorithmic processes or AI,
they were actually designed by the architect himself.
© Vinesh Gandhi
“You can’t outsource everything”, says Puri. “Particularly
if it’s about poetry, elegance and human
well-being, you can’t leave the design to
machines.”
No doubt about it, Office @63 is a haven of beauty,
and it appears to offer its 120 or so office employees
a wide range of respectful, outstandingly high-quality
work options. But it also testifies to a turbo-capitalistic,
economically boosting Tiger State, which
goes for the big time and doesn’t shy away from
doing things in a big way to attain this. “Stone, concrete,
steel, bronze, brass and the play with light and
dark: there was a moment when I had my doubts
whether everything in toto wouldn’t be too much”,
remembers Sanjay Puri. “But no, it works. In fact, it
is literally tailor-made for our client and the firm’s
business model. We couldn’t have done it better or
more complicated.” The project received the Architects
Award 2022.
Wojciech Czaja
We couldn’t
have done it
better or more
complicated.
© Vinesh Gandhi
09
07
06
© TU Wien
What’s on your desk,
Simon Andreas Güntner?
What’s the interface between work, office design and spatial sociology?
“During the work-at-home period in the COVID pandemic we realised
how closely these themes are connected”, says Simon Andreas Güntner,
professor at the Vienna University of Technology and head of the Sociology
Research Department. “But even in a loud and hectic open-space office
we notice how the social environment forces us to structure ourselves
when we can’t rely on external principles of order. Some people do this
with headphones, others with cat photos, whereas some do it with a very
precise work-and-break rhythm.”
Güntner himself doesn’t need to do this. His institute is in a side street behind
the Vienna University of Technology, in a stately residential building
from the time of Imperial and Royal industrial expansion. A long time
ago, this was probably a bedroom. “I can get my peace and quiet here and
concentrate wonderfully in this room.” At the moment he’s reading piles
of books, new publications on sociology, which have just come out. And
diploma theses. And PhD papers.
Güntner says the window has to stay open the whole time when he’s
working. Fresh air, birdsong, human voices. He shuts it very occasionally,
listening to punk and modern jazz while he works, the louder the better.
Wojciech Czaja
08
10
11
02
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
01
03
04
I don’t have a particularly emotional relationship to my conference
table. I had the choice between a few models from the
university catalogue and opted for the completely white version.
Plastic chairs are out of the question for me. There were still a
couple of black wooden chairs in the University of Technology
archive.
A waste paper basket with my name on it. A bit odd, don’t you
think?
I use the small trolley case for transporting books for work at
home.
05
Looking at art thrills me anew every day: “Nevada” (2017) by
Irina Eden and Stijn Lernout, a beautiful panorama painting three
metres wide!
To be honest: I’ve no idea what kind of plant this is. At any rate,
it was waiting for me in the old office and said: “Take me with
you!”
The window is actually open the whole year round, summer and
winter. I need fresh air and the feeling I can hear life going on
outside.
I moved in here two years ago. The removal boxes are still
stacked in the corner. I think arriving somewhere is a process
lasting years.
Fortunately, many sociology books – particularly from the Suhrkamp
Publishing House – are bright and colourful. That suits me
down to the ground!
I got the cup from the Creative Bureaucracy Festival. A fantastic
event format!
“Cubed. A Secret History of the Workplace”, a really entertaining
and obligatory read for everyone planning office workplaces.
22 contact
contact 23