Sevil Peach wants to make the world a better place – starting with workplace design. With wholehearted dedication and a fine sense of humor, the Turkish-born interior designer has dedicated herself to the creation of more human and productive office environments for nearly twenty years. She founded her London-based studio Sevil Peach Architecture+Design in 1994, and in 1997 designed a new office for Swiss furniture manufacturer Vitra at their campus in Weil am Rhein. The result was an enduring relationship that has included showrooms, trade show stands, exhibitions, and workplace concepts as testament to their fruitful collaboration. Her office has also realized numerous projects for international clients such as Sony, Mexx, Eczacibasi Holdings, Microsoft, the Tate Galleries, and the Novartis Campus in Basel.
–You have done a lot of workplace design in recent years. Have you observed any important changes in how workplaces should look, as far as what companies demand from you?For quite a while now, clients have been asking for better workplaces for their staff, which is great. Their main interest is in creating environments that enable interaction and collaboration. In business terms they obviously see the positive sides of people interacting, communicating, and sharing knowledge, and they also understand the value of creating more welcoming and human environments for their staff. In this competitive world companies want to attract and keep talent.
We started to explore new ways of working in 1994, making use of the
advantages of new technology. At the time, the concepts we came up with were considered crazy and nobody was interested in them. I’m glad to say that 15 years on, the workplace environment has finally become a topic of discussion. This does not necessarily mean that everything coming out is good. There are a lot of interpretations of what people deem to be a good office. At Orgatec, for instance, you get the feeling that the concept of creating new ways of working has become a sales tool to sell more products.
–There is a lot of furniture at the Orgatec fair. Sofas with high backs, booths, niches, and retreats in the office space – all to create privacy. Some of these ideas have been promoted and done before, by Vitra, for example, but now privacy seems to be the big trend found everywhere.
»It’s really worrying if the toilet is the only place you can go to be private in your workplace.«
to what really happens at the particular workplace – the dynamics, the psychology of people, their ups and downs within a day. It’s really worrying if the toilet is the only place you can go to be private in your workplace.
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During a panel discusson during an event at Vitra you mentioned a “human scale” for the number of workers in a given office. It seemed that everybody on the panel could agree on certain numbers, like eight, twelve, or fifteen people in a certain office space – that did not seem to be very controversial. Are there rules for preserving a human scale?
I can only speak from our own experience, since there is no formula. Our office has a footprint that we find really comfortable. The maximum number of people I can seat in the office is twelve people. Within
More and more, companies realize the advantages of an open plan, but are concerned about changing from a cellular or cubicle-based plan due to the perceived downsides of compromised privacy, disturbance, noise levels, lack of personalization, etc. – these can indeed be problems. So, while designing, you need to balance the importance of communication and collaboration with the employees’ needs to retreat and be private. While others offer solutions for privacy and noise by creating products like furniture, we do this by manipulating the architecture and spatial planning, including creating breathing space between large work groups, and finding acoustic solutions.
To us, the workplace issue is not just about choosing a cellular or open plan. The issue for us is to create environments that are human, sensitive, supportive, and inspiring. We don’t use a formula; we are attentive
that frame, we can almost be a family. More people than that and things start to feel uncomfortable. Furthermore, we break up the big spaces in our building through architectural interventions to form controlled views, so that people sitting in the open space can still feel a closeness within their group – like they belong to a “neighborhood.”
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Has there ever been a point where you thought you wanted to design a piece of furniture?
Very often, but we don’t – we always use the excuse of having too much work to do. When we are working on projects, we quite often need something that doesn’t exist in the market. There are a lot of holes to fill and there is a lot of room for designing, but whether we will ever design furniture, I do not know.
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Microsoft’s Dutch Headquarters, Amsterdam, 2005. Communal workspaces in an office complex for 1000 staff, with no dedicated desks nor offices for senior employees, in order to encourage social interaction and collaboration.
»I think a lot of the furniture lacks sensuality. I think technical solutions should be there, but not be seen.«
That is interesting to hear, because here at the fair there is such an overflow of furniture. What could be here that is missing?
When we actually specify a desk during planning, I find it difficult to find more than one option to show to the client. I think a lot of the furniture lacks sensuality, emotion: it’s too technical. I think technical solutions should be there, but not be seen. In the environments we would like to create, where we are at ease for many hours, they are usually comfortable ones – I suppose the analogy of “home” is a good one. As much as you feel secure and comfortable at home, I feel the workplace should offer this too. I would not want the kind of furniture I see around Orgatec in my home, so I do not like to see it in offices either. Therein lies my problem: how do you design a piece of furniture that gives you emotion, but at the same time fulfills
clients’ needs for cable management, adjustable seating heights, and so on?
–I don’t know if this is a cliché, but yesterday I talked to another woman who said that fairs like Orgatec are such a men’s world…I agree. The hotel where I’m staying is full of men. The buyers are men, the designers are men....
–And isn’t that how the furniture looks?I don’t think men would like me to say it, but I’m sorry – it does lack female sensibilities and emotion. And I’m saying this because I’m a woman. I see things in a different way. That is not to say that a female designer would necessarily do it better. I don’t know. Even in Milan it’s only recently that female designers have started to become successful.
–One last issue that interests me is the process of planning a project with a client. How does that actually work? Do you speak with the people working there?If I’m allowed to, yes, then it’s a good starting point. The management gives us a particular brief, but it’s also interesting to hear what the employees want. I ask them if they have a magic wish for how their workplace should be. I don’t say I can give it to them, or that the request is doable – or even that it’s the right thing to do. But it’s amazing how often I find that people haven’t even thought about it – they often find it difficult to respond to the question. Sometimes I ask them something like: ‘if we could have a swimming pool in the workplace, would you like that?’ You find that people accept their environments so readily. They never ask themselves what it is to work, what work really is, they just come from university and start. So for me, it’s really very important to talk to workers before and after our projects. You see people change, behave in different ways. We are always in contact with our clients in the following years.
Recently I received a letter from someone at Microsoft in the USA, who wrote to me that when he visits Microsoft Headquarters in Amsterdam it feels like coming home. It has exceeded his expectations. Two years after the project’s completion someone writes to me about the emotion of being there!
–You are planning workplaces in different countries. Are there big cultural differences? There are clear cultural differences, and I can imagine that this could present problems, but personally we haven’t come across many. We have to be culturally sensitive, but sometimes
Sevil Peach spent several years as Associate, Project Director and Design Director at YRM Architects, before leaving in 1994 to set up her design and architectural studio with Gary Turnbull - the idea being to run a studio which was design-driven not management-driven.
we can question a culture too. The work culture in some countries is really top-down, which I like to challenge through design.
–But do you want to change people with the environment you are planning?I can’t – that makes me sound like a prophet! No, not at all. It’s not about changing people; it’s about being a catalyst. It’s about making people question things and think, and raising awareness of their workplace.
We once did a project in Istanbul, where there is a strong social hierarchy. As a designer, you are in the position to understand and respect that but it doesn’t mean you can’t create a nice environment. You start exploring what can be done within the limitations of the particular brief. When I understand the issues at hand, I ask, within these restrictions, what can we do to create a better environment for these people? It could be for the CEO, the personal assistant, or the guy who makes the tea.
–The guy who makes tea is a very important person in Istanbul...Absolutely. You know, in that particular project in Istanbul we gave him a fantastic kitchen – that’s a good example. Our immediate idea for the project was to create a coffee point where people could gather, but actually, in this culture they are used to someone bringing the tea to them. Furthermore, Istanbul has a high rate of unemployment, so the tea boys need to keep their jobs. So we designed a kitchen instead.
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