We're Not "Just The Office People"

Written by Jane Roulston, Director at Unison Workspaces

People assume we're an office company. Say "Unison" in this industry and most minds historically jump straight to workstations and ergonomic seating mostly because of our long standing relationship with our respected brand Herman Miller.

It's an understandable assumption, but we have been working hard to expand the vision.

For most of my career, this industry drew a hard line down the middle - commercial on one side, residential on the other, different suppliers, different showrooms, different rules. Back then, the line was easy to defend, Commercial spaces were practical and built for function. Residential spaces were built for feeling, and more complicated to specify due to personal attachment of the individuals involved, so you picked a side. I was always Contract.

Then the way people worked changed for good. Years of experiencing the comfort and flexibility of working from home taught people exactly what a lifeless office feels like by 3pm on a Tuesday, and once they had a choice again, they wanted what they'd gotten used to: warmth, comfort, somewhere that didn't feel like a waiting room. The industry's been chasing that convergence ever since - office and home borrowing from each other until the line between them barely holds. It's not just something we're seeing on the ground, either - design publications like Wallpaper* have been documenting workspace projects deliberately built to feel contemporary and homely rather than corporate and the latest workplace winners at this year’s interior awards were anything but heavily corporate environments with clever fun fitouts that articulate a brand in a completely different way like BECA.

So what has ended up happening is we have had to transition with that shift ourselves. Not long ago, our range was almost entirely contract focused; today the products specified are very different. More residential selections from our long standing partners such as Muuto, as well as the offering from our new brands like Wendelbo and DESIGN BY THEM, plus a move to more custom designs has seen our range significantly shift into offering solutions with a much softer sophisticated residential vibe which the industry demands.

Don’t get me wrong, over the last few years we have still completed some amazing fitouts with workstations and ergonomic seating such as One NZ but what we have found on most projects is we are finding ourselves strongly delivering collaboration and hospitality solutions such as Panorama Dine from Wendelbo, Cover chairs from Muuto and multiple projects with Design by Them. Custom is significant and we now get drawn into loving working on projects that we can provide custom solutions that really meet the brief for the designer.

Here's what I've learned that doesn't change,

Good materials are an act of respect, not a luxury. Commercial projects get specified for a five-to-ten-year life, because nobody has the budget to redo a fit-out every two years. That same discipline - choosing something for how it ages, not how it photographs on day one, should be central to any  selections.

A space that can't flex is already failing. The best commercial fit-outs are built to move with a business as it grows. Homes do the same, whether we design for it or not - a nursery becomes a study becomes a guest room becomes something else again. Designing for what a room might need to become, not just what it needs right now needs to be at the forefront of all design.

It’s all about the ergonomics. Agile working has created an acceptance of cheap task chairs as we all move around and apparently now don’t need good ergonomic chairs. A farce, just a cost saving exercise and nothing still is more important than a high performing chair.

Acoustics don't care what building you're in. A boardroom lined with hard surfaces and zero sound absorption will grind you down by mid-afternoon. Give a dining room the same problem and it does exactly the same thing at a dinner party - we just blame the wine instead of the walls.

So the point is…

I have always been contract focused. At the heart of this we set out to deliver spaces that genuinely work for the people standing in them - what is nice now is we can make them feel so much better with so many more softer solutions and not be focused just on work points. There is humanity to space and we are providing solutions that foster relationships and community. Over twenty years of solving that at commercial scale, with the supplier relationships and process to back it up, is what we bring to every project we take on.

Good design is not exclusive to a client having deep pockets or being the largest project in the building. It's about understanding, properly, what a space needs to do for the people in it - and having the rigour and determination to fight to actually deliver that.

That's the job. We just do it in a very different way now and need to fight for quality when there is always a flight to cost focused solutions.

At the end of the day we love the challenge to meet the brief and budget and deliver the best.