Step into any incubator, co-working space or even modern office facility today and you will almost certainly encounter a range of working environments that are designed to cater for the various kinds of work we engage in. Whereas the open plan office environments that have dominated the working world for a generation have foisted so called collaborative environments upon us all (all of the time), these modern workplaces attempt to mix and match.
If you want to be open and social, you can be, but they also provide quite and contemplative areas for focused work. Many of these workplaces provide soundproof pods for people to reside in should they wish to function free from distractions.
Peace and quiet
One of the more interesting providers of this kind of facility are startup workplace company ROOM, who offer an IKEA style flatpack booth that can be easily installed in any workplace. The pods, which retail for $3,495, provide a sound-proof, ventilated and powered booth that can be easily built into both new and existing office spaces to give employees a quite space to work.
The company has clearly struck on something, as they’ve already hit $10 million in revenue within a year, with an impressive client list ranging from Salesforce to JP Morgan.
Their core product, ROOM One, is a 10sqft booth that the team believe can be assembled in roughly half an hour by a couple of people. All it needs to function is a power outlet and a ventilation fan. Each booth is constructed using 1088 recycled plastic bottles which cancel out noise from outside, with the sustainable credentials of the box continued with them being fully recyclable. They’re also designed to be able to be taken apart and rebuilt if required for an office move.
The booths come with a bar-height desk with a number of power outlets, and a magnetic bulletin board behind it. The idea is for it to provide a refuge from noise without being sufficiently comfortable that you would want to make it a permanent home.
Such features are increasingly common in the modern office environment, so it’s likely that ROOM will face hot competition in the coming years. It’s an interesting example of the direction workplace design is going in however, and it will be interesting to see if ROOM’s become a feature in every office in the coming years.
