What a modern-day office should like

Drab offices are being transformed by modern interior décor as enterprise managers realize that the efficiency of staff depends greatly on workplace furnishing style. What a modern-day office should look like is open to debate.

There is difference between a Western manager and a Russian boss concerning their attitude to office designers. As for the Western managers, he trusts his office designers. A typical Russian boss looks at the designer’s task from totally different viewpoint. This is due primarily to our Russian traditions and mentality which the designer has to take into account.

Now let us look at a few more problems stemming from the so-called “Russian mentality”.

It/s traditional in Russia to discuss global problems in the kitchen and to have brain storms in the smoking room. In terms of office design, this means office premises must have a lot of “free space” for informal debate. A lack of such space can lead to a sharp fall in performance rating. In the science-intensive sectors, the inadequacy of “free space” will inevitably cause disaster, ending up not just in the death of a major project, but also in the breakup of the team or the firm concerned.

One more factor of major importance: Russians are more particular about their workplaces than people in other countries are. Unless the designer has created such a space, members of the staff will create it for themselves with anything handy - cardboard boxes or stacks of paper rising up on their tables. If they don’t do that they will find it hard to concentrate.

This character trait of Russians has created a formidable but interesting task for designers. On the one hand, the office must have as much open space as possible; on the other, it must create an illusion of privacy.

A great many methods have been devised to achieve these effects through selection of colors, arrangement of light and adeptly adjusted transparency of the partitions.

Вопросы к тексту

1. Why are drab offices being transformed?

2. What does the designer have to take into account working in Russian office?

3. What does “Russian mentality” mean?

4. What is Russians’ attitude to their workplaces?

5. What methods have been devised to achieve the effects of open space and privacy?

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20