The colourful workplace for Relaxound offers employees a real choice of the spaces where they want to do their work. It offers different atmospheres for work through tactile materials, acoustic and lighting options, as well as colour psychology - creating a social workplace that accommodates a variety of neurological needs. The design is based on social contact – collaborating in real time and space - but also refuge from social contact – for concentrating or withdrawing to do focused work. Relaxound makes products that introduce relaxing natural sounds to environments - so its offices make a strong argument for the importance of physical office space to a company’s collective culture.

Innovation: Socially, the project attempts to offer real choices for togetherness as well as focus based on cooperation and trust: a strong sense of group identity while creating places to hide and to do individual work. Formally, colour and material and light are used to create cohesion as well as difference. Materials are brought together to integrate acoustical separation and sound clarity without using conventional “walls” - sound blocking between rooms is handled by stacking MDF panels; echo is addressed through air cavities in foamed aluminium and felt.

Functionality: In addition to the social interaction and collaboration, there are spaces for retreat and withdrawal – an attempt to address the full psychological and functional needs of an employee. A new mezzanine works with an existing one to define a double-height studio. In the areas with lower ceilings, very small rooms with sliding doors create spaces for employees to work alone or in small groups with acoustical privacy. A variety of other spaces offer employees a sense of shared openness while providing opportunity for refuge.

Creativity: Color, light, and material are used to create spaces of different qualities: small spaces are darker and cozier and the large space is brighter and louder. In the social areas where people come together, bright color is used - but in the general studio space the palette is simple and reduced, and not filled with visual noise. The small spaces are dark and atmospheric and might invite you to work in a different way. The design intends to be coherent but varied: the idea is to have real atmospheric choices.

Sustainability: In addition to the reuse of an old factory space and strictly limiting material usage, the design is socially sustainable - based on a community sharing spaces – but offering real choices for individual employees. Since Relaxound makes products to introduce calming sounds its physical office space fulfills a collective and symbolic purpose that a virtual office cannot do by itself. To work in a relaxed way is part of the brand: so integrating choices of formal and informal spaces to do work, to socialize, to chill, to work in a cheerful and colourful place, to eat together, to trust each other - are all part of how the office works.