Erasing the Border Between Residential and Office Space – Is That What We Really Want and What Does the Future Bring?

Source: eKapija Wednesday, 22.09.2021. 15:25
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(Photo: Pixabay.com/expresswriters)
Erasing the borders between residential and office spaces is a tendency that has been dominant in the past decades. The situation with Covid-19 has turned our residential spaces into offices. However, I believe that this will not be the direction of the future development of office and residential spaces, Mihailo Lujak, a professor at the Faculty of Contemporary Arts, says for eKapija.

– The needs, the manner of use and the experience of these spaces vary and believe that they will develop differently as well. Office spaces place focus on the appearance, the look, in other words, they are based on making an impression on occasional users-clients, they strive for company presentation through space design. Office space becomes a means of representation of the company’s philosophy – branding. Of course, attention is paid to permanent users – employees and their needs, their comfort, but I believe that the primary focus in designing an office space is on the impression and the sensation. In the organizational and functional sense, office spaces can almost be said to be pre-defined within the Open Space concept of organization, which enables a simple reorganization of space and adaptation to various purposes – professor Lujak believes.

As he explains, the idea behind the concept of the erasure of the border between office and residential space is to feel at home while working. At the same time, this means that we feel like we’re at work while at home.

Do we really want that, to feel like we’re still at work even after leaving from the work place and getting home? I believe that the idea of feeling at home while at work has its positive aspects, but I also believe that the border between office and residential spaces should never be erased. I believe that the situation with the pandemic has shown the downsides of this concept and that we don’t want our residential space to look like our office space. I believe that there will be a pushback against the erasure of the borders and that, in the future, it will be even more pronounced than today – eKapija’s interviewee points out.

Although, according to him, there’s a tendency toward the individualization of office space, he believes that office spaces will rather develop toward corporate design and that then, within it, through certain modifications and mutations, a certain degree of variety and partial individualization will be sought.
(Photo: Pixabay)

– Residential spaces will develop more in the sense of functional organization, in line with our needs, by which I primarily mean that they will open toward the exterior, natural space, with larger window openings or glass walls, balconies and bathrooms for each bedroom etc. I believe that, in that process, one traditional characteristic of a house-home, privacy or intimacy of a private space, will be modified or transformed considerably – Lujak says.

He adds that our need for a natural ambiance in an urban context, and perhaps also the very work in Open Space environments, will soften our privacy requirements, which have been very pronounced in the past.

– I believe that the changes in office space will mostly go in the direction of its visualization, appearance and corporate design, whereas the changes in residential space will go in the direction of the development of functional organization, whereas, regarding the design, they will go in the direction of forming various ambiances within a single or a unified daily living zone of an apartment or a house – our interviewee concludes.

Ivana Milovanovic

The full contents of the Special Edition Newsletter “Interior and Exterior – How to Achieve Superior Home and Office Space” can be found HERE.

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