With the lines between home, work and hospitality becoming increasingly blurred, we caught up with three companies supplying both the hospitality and workplace sectors to find out more about these changes and how they are affecting the products they offer…
Working in cafes with your morning cappucino has always been popular, but this trend has transcended into restaurants where people no longer just come to eat, but also work, meet and connect. Restaurants have responded by creating co-working opportunities during quieter times, for example between lunch and dinner. This evolution of workplaces has had a direct impact on products. Commercial furniture designers Table Place Chairs, report that banquette seating, originally made for the hospitality sector, is now designed with charging points as the cafe becomes the boardroom. Similarly, the Table Place Chairs WigWam table, originally a workspace product due to its collaborative nature and charging points, can now also be found in cafes and hotel lounges.
Hospitality public spaces have long been used by people to catch up on emails, but Table Place Chairs now believe they actively serving as co-working areas where, in some cases you can even find presentation zones to host a meeting. Hotel Brooklyn, Manchester with its clever use of screen and bleachers is a great example.
Image credit: Table Place Chairs
At the same time as hospitality spaces are adapting for work, we can see workplaces such as Co-Space, providing employees with places to relax and collaborate, as employees no longer look for lines of desks, but instead softer spaces like their own homes.
Wallcoverings are ideal for wayfinding and creating continuity between different areas of public spaces. Often these spaces also lend themselves to more dramatic designs and large-scale digitally printed designs to add drama and focal points. Newmor digital wallcoverings can be found in My Lounge, a laidback oasis located in London Gatwick Airport. The clever use of design scale, colours and effects, create a welcoming space contrasting with the sterile airport environment. Different designs and colour palettes separate formal and informal dining and seating options to ensure visitors feel at home. Zoned spaces allow travellers to relax or catch up with work.
Image credit: Newmor
With workplaces going through a huge transition with the growing focus on wellbeing, sanitation, and creating more of a home-from-home environment, Newmor have seen this mirrored in the design process. Wallcoverings can have a huge impact on the atmosphere of different spaces, creating calming break-out areas with biophilic surfaces, reception areas with feature designs and core branding, or inspiring meeting rooms with energising, colourful prints. All the time withstanding high traffic and the daily cleaning and maintenance expected in today’s climate. The social and study amenity space within The Toybox, a new-build, 15-storey student accommodation block in Birmingham is an ideal example of wallcoverings being used to differentiate spaces and zones within a multi-functional space.
Image credit: Newmor
Textile company ILIV has also felt the impact of the remote working model that has taken root, as people spend more time balancing their work and home life, only visiting their office spaces for group meetings, creative sessions and networking events. With this, there has been a shift in the dynamic from a focus on desk seating to the more informal break out and meeting areas. This in turn, has resulted in the interior design and architecture of these spaces adapting to modular seating solutions and brighter colour palettes to inspire and invite create conversations.
Image credit: ILIV
Interestingly this has impacted on fabric choices and trends and ILIV has seen a re-emergence of velvets in the workplace with designers often opting for a more plush and less overtly practical interior aesthetic. The Hampton Collection has recently been extended to a palette of fifty colours spanning architectural tones to brighter more saturated colour. The dual purpose velvet fabric has a brilliantly soft touch with a silken pile making it ideal for breakout areas and office seating in workplace environments.
Voiles are also seen to have more of a presence in workspaces as they have amazing acoustic qualities allowing sound to pass through them whilst being able to break up spaces without having the need to build walls. Sheers and voile weighted fabrics are also brilliant for softening interior concepts whilst allowing ample light into the space, promoting productivity.
As public spaces become increasingly multifunctional, with people choosing different places, from cafes to lobbies and libraries to restaurants, to click on their laptops and connect, design has had to follow suit. The freedom from stereotypical design formats is giving designers greater flexibility to experiment with different designs, patterns, colours and surfaces to create multi-functional spaces with interest and diversity.
Table Place Chairs and Newmor are Recommended Suppliers and regularly features in our Supplier News section of the website. If you are interested in becoming one of our Recommended Suppliers, please email Katy Phillips.
Main image credit: Table Place Chairs
