It seems that the experience of living through a pandemic will have a long-lasting impact on the way we work. In the social distancing context, the demand for office space increased to ensure more space between desks, partitions, and sanitation stations, to respect the new rules on the use of common areas, meeting & conference rooms etc.
Our teams are prepared with tailored solutions to accommodate the current tenant’s needs, to help them respect the social distance inside their spaces. Therefore, some of our tenants took the opportunity to rearrange and refurbish their working area, to expand the rented premises or to rebrand the office space.
One very good example is Mazars Romania, our tenant in the Globalworth Campus, Tower B, that enlarged and rebranded the office space during the last 3 months. Prior to the expansion, Mazars operated its activities on an area of 1,685 sqm (three-quarters of the floor); now they occupy the entire 2,226 sqm floor.
Mazars, together with the Globalworth Fit Out team, came up with a new concept for the extension project, which aims to make the working environment more adaptable to the government guidelines regarding health and hygiene, but keeping it modern and friendly too.
The Globalworth fit-out team has been in charge of planning, designing, monitoring the construction works, implementing the space expansion project. One of the challenges was that the new space needed to match the existing office spaces, while it was also expected to bring a new vibe to the employees.
The concept design is aligned with the nowadays trends in the fit-out sector, using the industrial design, with open ceiling, apparent ducts and pipes, light grey paints, and suspended lighting fixtures.
The architect used the natural light as much as possible, taking good advantage of the floor-to-ceiling glazed facade. In this respect, the interior walls are solid walls with clearstory windows, providing privacy for the closed offices, and allowing the natural light to enter the entire office space. Green walls have become a rising new trend of built environments in recent years, so this trend has also been adopted in the Mazars office. Incorporating living nature into office environments not only looks much more inviting but also has several benefits and purposes.
Since there is more space, the new office helps the employees to stay safe and brings more comfort within the teams. The area consists of 80% open space office with collaboration area, encouraging flexibility at the working place.
For the entire office area, changes have been made to ensure that people have a comfortable, safe place to come back to more private spaces or personal offices for individuals, a wider distance between desks or various types of barriers highlighted accordingly, more space in the kitchen, disinfecting the office very early in the morning before the working schedule, reducing and sanitizing the touchpoints within the common areas, but also individual offices at the beginning and the end of the working day.
Even though during the last months, many companies have implemented teleworking, the need for direct communication and interaction between people is strongly felt by the employees. This is why, the flexible spaces, the collaborative areas, and the informal meeting areas will continue to be the key elements of the post-pandemic office space.