'A lot of people reflected on the value of a well-designed space': Robin Rizzini's workplace vision for Pedrali

Man of the moment and seasoned provocateur Elon Musk threw the cat among the pigeons over the summer by announcing that staffers who weren’t prepared to put in a minimum of 40 hours in the company office should expect to face dismissal. Just the kind of headline-grabbing self-PR we’ve come to expect from the Tesla and SpaceX founder, some would argue. There’s a growing sense, nonetheless, that we might have reached peak remote-working. International business magazine Fortune is reporting that, in the UK, the number of jobs advertised as remote has declined, with a shift in power back to employers as recruitment decelerates. 

One thing is clear: we need the environments where we choose to work to respond more flexibly and effectively, as well as sustainably, to the increased diversity of our activities and to our increased desire for comfort, well-being and, dare I say it, aesthetic performance. 

I was lucky enough to catch up with Italian-British industrial designer Robin Rizzini in Cologne recently, who’s carved out a reputation for himself as a consummate author of immaculately considered tables, to discuss the wherefores – and, indeed, wheres – of work today and to take a closer look at the latest iteration of his Toa table (what else?) for Pedrali. 

No. The way I see the office today and in the next ten years is a place where people don’t go every day, where the meeting factor is predominant. Where encounters, getting together and serendipity takes place.

If you look around here at the Pedrali stand, the space is very loungey. Softness, textiles and colour. This is really the Zeitgeist of today. Most of us don’t realise how much time we spend on social networks without really being social at the end of the day. Physically social. So, the tendency now is to translate work as we knew it into something that is part of an exchange and a social relationship and being together. And then do the dirty work on your own. That’s the vision as I see it for the next iterations of the office.

The desk will have a minor role. The focus-work desk. I think people are looking for comfort. Visually comfortable, less noise. The problem with the office, of working together in a space, was the sound. The phone calls, the printers. That’s part of the past. People are not looking for something that looks like a home – they have that already – but something that’s functional, that protects you, that lets you work comfortably. A sense of the pleasant. Our design sensibility has changed. And social media has played a role here, where people see nice environments and desire to work in one.

Cultural change is always difficult. It takes time. Covid forced me to work from home, like many others, in a place that I found out I didn’t actually like – up until that point, houses were designed to not really be lived in. We used to spend a lot of time in the office, at the gym, out with friends or for dinners. The amount of time we actually spent enjoying our homes was limited. 

A lot of people reflected on the value of a well-designed space. They actually let go of their jobs and didn’t return to the office. Makes a lot of sense. They are forcing the paradigm to change. A lot of companies, big corporations, are facing problems because of their control culture. They have to change their culture to be results-oriented and let people manage their work the way they want to.

Absolutely.

Yes, that’s right. The Toa table. What we’re presenting here at Orgatec is a new, dedicated workstation version, however. The idea at the beginning was to do a multi-task table. Light contract and residential was the aim. Now, we’ve expanded this to a more complete office solution, which was always my wish.

The need was for a more desk-like table, where the two legs – in the form of a ‘T’ or bridge configuration – are positioned at the extreme ends of the table top. That results in a better use of the top, essentially, and more space under the table. The original version, meanwhile, allows users to also sit at the shorter ends of the table for meetings. It really depends on the needs of the users. 

The folding screen is a child of Covid. We saw a lot of companies releasing unsustainable acrylic-glass screens in a hurry, but wanted to do something better that would last for a long time after the immediate emergency. Ultimately, fabric is no less protective than acrylic glass. The time pressure led to us making some strange decisions, material-wise.

So, it’s an articulated screen that can create a lot of configurations – from independently focused workstations to a L-shaped composition… Different situations around the table. In the office, there is no place where you do the same activity for the entire day. You can go from being in a meeting, via concentration work to group activities. Or having your lunch. All using the same work surface but one that can be changed quickly, flexibly and effectively. This is our ultimate aim with the Toa table and Toa folding screen.

© Architonic

Head to the Architonic Magazine for more insights on the latest products, trends and practices in architecture and design.