Plants, moveable walls, meeting rooms and food-growing pods that can be built on to retrofitted buildings: the nature comes into the offices with the high-rise sky garden by Sean Cassidy e Joe Wilson, a flexible grid system that sets out a new approach towards the workplace, creating a healthier working environment which embraces technology, the new ways of working and the development of the current urban environment.
Growing our food in an office with a vegetable garden is not something new, but if we are talking about a vertical vegetable garden integrated in an already existing building, well, this is a true innovation.
Organic Grid+, winner of the Workplace of the Future 2.0 competition presented by Metropolis and Business Interiors by Staples, represents the idea of an office designed to put the employee’s well-being, happiness and needs at the forefront.
The Cassidy and Wilson’s high-rise sky garden go beyond Boeri’s vertical forest and Patrick Blank’s vegetal facade, allowing to built a new innovative space on to retrofitted buildings.
“In our minds, workers are the heart of most business and should be treated as such”, says Cassidy. “If we spend one-third of our lives at work, then we should create a greater cohesive relationship between the employee and the workspace”.
The scheme seeks to reuse existing office spaces and make them fully adaptable to any business using a flexible grid system. The walls, desks, and meeting rooms of the office are designed to be customized and adapted by their users, and garden stations throughout provide places for employees to grow and harvest their own food. The plants help the workers reduce stress, become more productive, and increase the indoor climate control, reducing the need for a hefty cooling system.
Another interesting feature is the role of new technologies in the environment: through the use of augmented reality delivered via contact lens, employees can manipulate any surface or space to be a usable working environment, forming both private and collaborative areas.
Text by Gabriele Masi.
Pictures by Sean Cassidy and Joe Wilson.
