Furniture’s Role in Creating Effective Workspaces

29th July, 2024

How furniture makes a massive difference to your workspace.

Early Engagement of the Furniture Team in Client Relationships

“The furniture team is involved very early on in the relationship with clients, working on concepts with designers, specifying finishes, and hosting workshops around choices and layouts.

An important part of the furniture selection process is taking clients on tours of the manufacturer’s showrooms. There they can test different solutions, find inspiration, and ensure they’re happy with the proposed products. After all, furniture is not just about aesthetics, it is about how things feel and whether they’re comfortable.

Once everything is chosen, we pull all the pricing together, which includes negotiating additional project-specific discounts with our suppliers. We then coordinate with the rest of the Maris team to arrange procurement in line with project management and design.”

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The Shift in Office Furniture

“There’s definitely been a change in what people want from their office space when it comes to furniture. We used to work on a lot of open plan spaces with few breakout spaces. Everyone wanted a desk. However, offices have become much more focused on offering people things they can’t get from their home environment – social spaces and collaboration as well as quiet places to escape to, like phone booths and Zoom pods.

At home, many people don’t have completely quiet workspaces, whether that’s because they have young children or because they live in a house share. In addition to making it difficult to focus, it’s not always great for mental health to live and work in the same place. Meanwhile, businesses want people to collaborate and develop a sense of community, which is hard to do when everyone is at home.

The opportunity in workplaces is to create the best of home environments (comfortable spaces), with the best of office environments (intentional areas for different types of working needs).”

Furniture Selection: Tailoring to Diverse Office Needs

“This changing mindset makes furniture selection a lot more interesting and involved because each project is different, from the look and feel to the diversity of office needs. While one company might be looking for energetic colours and lots of creative spaces, others might have a greater emphasis on wellness rooms and areas for quiet independent working.

Altogether, that means that a chair is never just a chair, but a feature that helps to define a space and each individual’s daily experience of it.”