office interior design trends 2017
as the projectmanager, my job is make sure our clients have everything theyneed when our greenroom is finally complete. contraryto what you might think about the fast-paced world of showbiz,there's a lot of sitting around. whichis why i've been looking for seating that allows clientsprivacy and comfort while they're waiting. i found exactlywhat i needed in these
workstation pods. today i'mmeeting with joe agati, jr to talk more about this populartrend in furniture design. welcome to our studios joe, it'sso nice to have you here. we're just two peas in a pod.make that two pods. tell me alittle bit more about your company. so about ourcompany, agati furniture was started by my dad in the early80s, it's a family owned
business, his background is insculpture and furniture, he started off by making one offpieces in residential markets and things like that and thenfell into the public library market. then from there thebusiness has grown into college university, aviation, healthcareand things like that and we've always stayed focused on what wecall the public space. sowhere we're seated right now, what are these called?
these are called the pod. that makes it very obvious. okay. simple. so joe,tell me, how did the team at agati come up with this design? so the team at agati cameup with the pod design by observing human behavior. wehave a product called the
hampton banquets and it's itcomes in what we call like rectilinear forms or circularforms and we noticed is that people would sit in the circularforms 1% of the time and it's designed for 3 to 4 people soit's a loss of space and it's not a very effective use thesame respect we noticed people would sit in carrols, so that'smore than individual space and when we have a two in the sameenvironment there is a greater seating population going towardsthe banquettes. so we noticedthere is a gap we're seeing
single individual users and whyis that gap happening and so what the banquettes because itcovers the back of you and even front of you. we determined thatthis is really speaking to someone's kind of naturalinstinct to want to feel safe and protected want to be able tofocus. the pod gives you thatfeeling because your back is covered and the front of you iscovered as well so this way you can feel comfortable and securethat's part of the back part and
then you can focus becauseyou're not distracted by people walking by so there's a lot ofthought that goes into how you create these. yes,absolutely. what othertypes of furnishings do you have the pod was the first stepand then we evolved from there we get we should do two-personpod so we have a one, 2 and then 3 plus. what we're sittingin right now is definitely like
a creative collective area somuch happening here is the intent of putting these pieceshere. what we find worksbest is find a good balance for the culture of the environmentso in a creative type space yes you want to have a level ofcollaboration and communication but people sometimes need tohunker down. i need to sit downi need to focus i need to make a phone call i need to punch outmy email, so it's really trying to balance that space open isgreat but not open all the time.
so we've made a lot ofchanges here at the studio to be green and eco-friendly. how doesagati determine that they're going to be eco friendly? we look at everything frommaterials we select our transporting of the product, allour products are transported all without using back materials weuse reusable blankets to transport stuff all over thecountry, we look at the way we source stuff so that everythingis made in the us currently we
also look at the materials andeven the construction of the furniture so longevity isimportant to us everything agati does has a 10 year warranty andthat's what we like to look at the minimum of how long stuffshould last, so just making product that will last a longtime helps it to be sustainable and the materials we use thingslike felt here like on the screen which is a greatmaterial. felt is all naturalbecause its made from wool. it'sa great material because its
very durable, it'll last a longtime. what is your designphilosophy at agati? agati's design philosophy isreally focused on solving problems there's a differencebetween someone's like desk that they sit at all day versus alounge area, the desk implies personal ownership they're gonnatake better care of it and it's not that people are choosing tobe in a rude or disruptive or destroy things it just more ofwhen it's not yours you take less personal ownership so whenwe design things like the pod
for example we designed them tobe with that intent that someone cannot personally take ownershipof this so this has to be designed to a different level ofdurability and functionality. i noticed that there'sactually outlets. yeah sowe include outlets in the pods and with all of our furniture wetry to figure how we're going to integrate electrical into it soin this particular we try to bring the electrical outlets upto the work surface so you can plug three devices in and you'vegot two usbs and then a three
prong outlet there and the podsare designed to be butted together and you can actuallyrun electrical to the whole system so you only have to beover one electrical outlet at time. it's very importantbecause a lot of buildings even built 10 years ago are severelyunderpowered for today's needs. since you have the differenttypes of pods that means you can customize right? how does agatiwork with each individual
business and their needs? we like to work with each personand dissect kind of their needs and their space so everybodykinda falls into a core set of needs or principles that theyhave to satisfy but depending on the individual institution oroffice culture you need to kind of tailor that the fit that soagati prides itself on being able to have this core line ofproducts but then also take and customize and modify things tokinda really speak to that individuals need.
wow, soyou observed human behavior and then figured out a way to handlethe problem. yesthat's design.