Future of Workplace Hits Salone del Mobile

Where is workplace design taking us and what will work look like when we get there? That’s the question O+A and three other international design firms will address at this year’s Salone del Mobile Exhibition in Milan, opening April 4th.

“A Joyful Sense at Work” is the upbeat theme conceived by curator Cristiana Cutrona for the furniture fair’s biennial look at work environments—Workplace 3.0. Cutrona, from ReValue Design Studio, sees the future of workplace as increasingly responsive to the happiness and well-being of the worker, a message of hope in a world that seems, in many respects, to be moving the other way. Can workplace have a positive impact?

O+A’s contribution is called “The Water Cooler,” a meditation on the fluidity of space and form that will keep an imagined workplace of the future in constant states of evolution. Taking the polymorphous nature of water as a metaphor, “The Water Cooler” combines wearable work prostheses, virtual reality and adaptable space design to create environments that conform to every posture, every change of mood or motive, every season and time of day.

Primo Orpilla, Verda Alexander, Jon Schramm, Courtney DeWalt and Olivia Ward were the thinkers and designers behind O+A’s exhibit, which will share a corner of the Milan Fairgrounds with Ahmadi Studio from Iran, UNStudio from the Netherlands and Studio 5+1AA from Italy, all tasked with envisioning what “workplace” will mean in years to come.

Watch Facebook and Instagram for O+A’s reports from Milan!