Set up for changes
The pandemic has changed the way we work. Even if some companies now want to see their employees back in the office more often: The home office is here to stay. We at KFF and ASCO offer solutions that reconcile home and office.
Text: Silke Bender
First a stopgap, then a cherished new normal: the home office. At first, everyone seemed happy: The employees, because they could not only schedule their working hours more independently, but could also do without time-consuming trips to the office. The employers, because they could maintain their business - and the customers? They didn't really notice, because everything continued as normal for them.
Since the abolition of the home office obligation on July 1, many companies want to tighten the long leash and order their employees back to the office desk. Now the tug-of-war over a right to home office begins. The German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs is working on a law that would permanently allow employees to work from home for at least part of the week, if the job allows it. In their »Home Report 2021«, trend researchers from the renowned Zukunftsinstitut in Frankfurt see the home office as a new megatrend that will lead to new impulses in architecture as well as in furniture design. With us, you are well equipped for this.
The workplace, the place where we will continue to spend most of our lives in the future, is changing and placing new demands on our furniture and living environments. In the new world of work, where the boundaries between living and working are becoming more hybrid, furniture should meet both: Our need for well-being - and for functionality.
Anyone who has ever converted an ironing board into a makeshift desk, answered their emails from the sofa or spent their working day squatting at a drafty cat table in the basement understands how important ergonomic solutions are at home. Just as the evolutionary researcher Charles Darwin invented the office chair in the 1840s by screwing the castors of a bed under his chair so that he could roll around his study, we have now equipped our classics ARVA, GAIA or YOUMA CASUAL, for example, with a swivel base. This way, you always remain nicely mobile, even when sitting, should the dining table at home once again become a workplace.
And in the office? Now we want to live more beautifully there, too. In the course of the New Work philosophy, the IT giants from Silicon Valley have shown us how important an aesthetically pleasing working environment is for the creativity, team spirit and performance of employees. In almost every start-up and every co-working space in Europe, homely lounge chairs or a playful table soccer have long been part of the good tone, as have new, warmer colors and materials than always just the square-practical-white-veneered MDF desk.
Ergonomically designed, they offer seating comfort at all levels - lounging, dining or working - and are always at the cutting edge of design. We rhyme coziness with elegance, informality with formality. For us, form does not slavishly follow function, but rather the intuition of its users. You can use our chairs and tables in open-plan kitchens, in offices, in hotels, bars or restaurants - and decide for yourself from situation to situation how casual or formal you want to use them. A wide selection of colors and surface materials - from leather to textile - supports this enormous range of possible uses.
Versatile, they are able to fit into a wide variety of contexts and set accents in any room that are as full of character as they are homely: We make chairs, armchairs and tables that invite you to stay.
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