Biophilic offices are becoming prominent in the new landscape of office interior design. Sustainability and a love for nature as a companion are at the foundation of this concept, and every office should begin to implement at least one of the cheapest biophilic practices, like allowing your employees to keep more plants around.
It blends the seriousness of our current climate change situation with a newfound way of looking at our surrounding environment: as a healing force against the troubles of the 8-hour shift. Here are 3 offices that are leading the race to become happier, healthier, and environmentally-conscious without skipping work.
Jacada Travel’s London Office
This company arranges personalized tours for individuals and groups. They offer you the chance to create your own adventure around the world while still keeping your carbon footprint at a minimum.
Jacada values authenticity, community outreach, and conservation, and they make an effort to create private journeys that teach you something important about the world. In keeping with this vision, they completely decorated their new London offices with lots of plants and elegant pieces of furniture made with recyclable and eco-friendly materials.
Jacada’s office layout is mostly open-plan, with plants hanging from the ventilation systems. There are almost no opaque walls as the structure is composed mainly by wooden frames and glass panels from floor to ceiling. The installed sound-absorbent work pods, however, to serve as private spaces and breakout booths, and most windows are open with very few office lights hanging. This is a very flexible workspace that maximizes the idea of collaboration end employee wellness through constant contact with nature.
Joany California Office
Joany is a company that helps people find and make use of an affordable health insurance plan, as well as aiding them through the process of finding doctors and available coverage options. They designed their California office with a focus on brand identity and green-living.
There is a huge picture of Joan D’Arc at the front desk (their company icon). In previous articles, we mentioned the importance of using brand imagery and style to create employee engagement, the people at Joany are excellent at this.
Moving on from that, their huge open layout extends in various directions with at least one plant per square meter, with lots of hanging pots, planters, and even private booths that resemble circular gardens. Only a few key spaces remain untouched by chlorophyll.
Those spaces, however, maximize privacy and employee comfort. Large meeting rooms with loads of natural light include daybeds in front of windows, so they can act as breakout rooms when they’re not being used for meetings. Very smart use of space.
Long benching with contemporary workstations and mid-back mesh chairs is also present, but if employees get tired of all the activeness, they can retreat to a small library room with reading hubs that resemble upholstered cocoons.
Typeform Barcelona Offices
Barcelona is one of the most creative cities in the world: an adventurous urban landscape that breeds ideas such as the ones permeating Typeform’s office spaces. Typeform is a tech startup that creates forms and helps clients to get actual insights into their customer base. They crafted a huge collaborative environment with a plurality of spaces, making it the most functional on the list (probably).
The first one of these spaces (that we should mention) is the bar, and yes, we are talking about an actual bar space for drinking (though we’re not sure if they actually serve alcohol). They also went all out with natural lighting, created ‘living walls’ filled with planters, and mashed all of their workings team in one big room called ‘the swimming pool.’
We would have to write another article to talk about their space, but we’ll just leave with you with these pictures for the time being.