Customisable cubicles transform the office space

Students from ECAL University hope to revolutionise productivity in offices and move away from traditional work cubicles.

Long gone are the days when an office was simply a mass of chairs and old wooden desks. With the 21^st century has come Google-inspired bouncy balls as chairs, standing desks and even desks with treadmills. Students from Switzerland’s ECAL University have taken the revolution one step further with their specialised hubs for the office, which offer anything from a space to nap to a place for workers to exercise their green fingers by tending to plants. The work bays are currently being showcased as Festival Parade Toulon until September 24.

Each workstation is created using Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s Workbays system, which are designed to let offices be curated as needed. The Bouroullec brothers came up with the dividing system in 2013 in an attempt to create private areas within open-plan offices. Other examples of ECAL-designed office ideas include Christian Holwek’s Standing Help stool, which has a high seat for the health-conscious or those with back problems, and a bay by Sara de Campos that caters for cocktail making around a desk by utilising a sushi restaurant-style design.

Revolutionising the workspace is popular with millennial culture, with a zero emissions, electric mobile office and a French co-working space costing just EUR 1 per hour both being covered by Springwise. How could a new approach to the working day change your office?