The stunning building boom taking place in Dubai has also made it the cutting edge for office design and interior products.
Office Exhibition 2008 is taking place next month to showcase the latest trends and product lines. The exhibition is hosted by Cityspace, one of the largest interior design firms in Dubai and will showcase the latest in office design and furniture.
With such a vast addition of office space in the region, the office design and furniture market is expanding proportionately. The market for office furniture is estimated between $190 and $272 million and expected to triple as the new high-rises are built.
“The double-digit growth of Dubai’s economy has already propelled the development of the Office Exhibition,” said Paula al-Chami, exhibition organizer for DMG World Media.
Cityspace will also be offering a number of seminars on transforming your office to make a powerful statement. One such seminar is a two-day workshop entitled “Business by Design,” hosted by the Association of Professional Interior Designers and another is “Workplace Freedom” hosted by Eames Demetrios, grandson of Charles Eames, one of the most iconic designers of the 20th century.
Open, flexible spaces
“As of now we have 23 countries participating in the show. The largest groups are coming from Spain, Germany, UK, Italy, Turkey, US and UAE.”
In attendance are the major international office furniture design companies and visionaries such as Bene, Herman Miller — who created the Action Office (better known as cubicles), Steelcase, Vitra and Frezza.
According to Cityspace, office layout is going more and more toward open, flexible spaces in Dubai. With office space in short supply and organizations adding more people to their already constrained environments, the need for flexibility to change the environment is paramount.
The new modular systems coming out are multi-functional and flexible as the focus of the latest trend in office furniture. They combine storage areas with soft seating and data connections. The ability to transform the workplace to suit individual needs and then be quickly and easily grouped together for team meetings is what is needed in Dubai. Also, flexible partitioning systems that are easily movable within the workplace are becoming a key trend. As the office environment needs open areas that can easily have additions for new staffing needs and collaboration areas for large teams of people, the balance between privacy and interaction is key and maintained by the flexible partitioning systems. Acoustical materials and sound-masking systems embedded within furniture or partitioning systems further reduce office noise to allow workers to concentrate on their tasks. New materials used in these systems are manufactured from recycled materials offering a smaller environmental footprint.
However, the region lags behind in the use and incorporation of ergonomics in the office space. Comfort in the office is more than just a luxury — it is a necessity. As professionals spend longer hours in their offices, health and safety must be taken into consideration. Carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive stress injuries are on the rise and cut into production and time off work. Investment in chairs and ergonomically designed furniture is a must and will payoff in less work-related injuries and discomfort.
The emphasis on using recycled materials and more environmentally-friendly designs has been slower to catch on. “It’s going to be forced on them very soon,” said Mehdi Moazzen, managing director of Point of Design in Dubai. At the moment he estimates that environmentally-friendly projects are in the range of 5-6% of his total projects.
However, it is argued that these concepts must first be in the consciousness of the designers themselves. According to Gregory Gratserelia, head architect for Gratserelia Design, “We are trying to inform ourselves of all of the technology available. There is not a high demand in this part of the world but it will happen. You have to give it an example. Once there is a project that is the most environmentally-friendly, it could start a chain reaction.”
Outside the multinational corporations in Dubai, open horizontal office designs are less important where the regional focus is on hierarchy. The modern floor plan of open working areas with flexible work stations has yet to catch on in most of the offices in the region today. Hierarchy is still dictated by design of individual offices for management. Moazzen doesn’t see the end to hierarchical designs anytime soon. “Unfortunately, we are going more towards the cellular offices in the region. The ratio is usually one office to six people working outside the office. There was a plan in Kuwait where the ratio was one to two with one person in an office and two sitting outside.”
While Dubai offers the latest in manufacturing trends, Lebanon historically was the style capital of the Middle East. “Lebanon used to be the showcase where all of the other Arabs looked at Lebanon and tried to implement what they saw,” explained Gratserelia. “Lebanon offices are simple but they demand quality, yet the Gulf demands quality and top of the line in everything, which I respect.”
Divergence of style
But there is a divergence now between Lebanon and the GCC in terms of where they look for style, according to Dori Hitti, architect designer of Le Cercle Hitti Projects. Stylistically, Lebanon has traditionally followed European trends either classic French or sleek Italian designs. The Gulf, however, tends to have more American tastes with its larger furnishings and solid wood tables.
Several factors must be taken into consideration when designing an office because office design is more than just how the office looks. “I don’t believe in decoration — I believe in space. I don’t decorate. I know how to create volume. This is what is important. Decoration is subjective. But if the space is nice and if you feel good, — if the space is symmetrical, there is good lighting, and proportion, then whatever you put you will like it because it feels good and that reflects on productivity,” said Gratserelia.
The client-designer relationship has to be one based on trust to enable the designer to interpret the aims of the company or corporation and come up with a workable design. According to Moazzen, “It’s an architect’s job to educate the client on what he wants. Unfortunately, there are a lot of ‘yes’ architects and designers.”
What goes into an office design is more than simply arranging the office and following the latest in style and trends, the objective a designer can bring is a workable space that is organized and efficient but also to make everyone feel at ease.
For Sari el-Khazen, an architect in Beirut, the client-architect relation is “an intelligent combination of the needs of the client and the designer’s expertise. The office environment should reflect the corporate identity of the business, the nature of the business within the office environment.”
For Moazzen, “The problem with trends is that they creep in from Europe and then everything has to be glass and stone for example — especially in the banking sector. Sometimes their corporate identity and the interior are designed by a graphic designer rather than an interior designer and it feels more like a McDonald’s than a bank. You want, esthetically, to feel the strength and the stability of the environment but what you get is a fast food shop.”
However, not every designer’s approach or way of working is the same. “We are sort of arrogant in our approach. Seventy percent of the time, we don’t show the client what they are going to get, we just finish the office and then give them the key,” said Moazzen. This can lead to some pleasantly surprising results such as the Dubai Islamic Bank’s interior style with its Zen appearance with the incorporation of bamboo, river rocks and sleek designs. “It’s very un-Islamic. The reason for it is that the Dubai Islamic Bank is the partner of Millennium Capital. There are two areas so that when you begin at the door it’s very traditional and then you enter a catwalk that is a modern area of glass and metal so as you walk through the door you are walking through the centuries.”
It’s all about space design
For Dori Hitti, architect designer of Le Cercle Hitti Projects, the main concerns in designing interiors are space design and management with lighting making up to 50% of the decor. He describes his style as more European in flavor with a focus on contemporary, with clean lines and geometric shapes combined with luxurious furnishings to lend a comfortable and up-to-date professional state of mind to the organization. He designed the offices for Investcom (now MTN) in Lebanon in which there was a clear distribution of spaces and offices separated by wood paneled walls and an array of lighting “to explicitly engage the visitor to feel as if already attending an event, something grandiose, something memorable.”
Most organizations opt for contemporary styles that give a feeling of progression and organization. While some offices still use traditional styles and oriental designs to reflect the region, these offices are few. According to el-Khazen, those that are trying to create neo-Lebanese or Oriental styles are constrained by the histories they are trying to incorporate.
However, for organizations on a tight budget or new entrepreneurs, industrial is the way to go, according to el-Khazen. Lightweight concrete on the floors, exposed duct work and innovative ways of using industrial substances keep the cost down though still making a statement of innovation and resourcefulness. Industrial doesn’t have to be cold, corkboard on the walls is an inexpensive way to cover surface area and the natural color of the materials make the room lighter.
In the end, it’s all about organization and comfort with style and trends coming secondary. As Gratserelia explained, “You are no longer subject to a style like we used to have that lasted 10 years like the 50s, 60s, and 70s and so on. Now, you can incorporate styles that reflect your taste.”
