Evolution Design · CLIENT: Evolution Design
The German engineering company Puls moved to new premises and used this opportunity for visualizing and stimulating a new collaboration culture within the company. The new office design is driving a cultural change, with teams reporting a significant increase in internal communication, particularly between research and development and other departments. The company has also seen a rise in spontaneous informal meetings, known to be one of the key indicators of success in research and development innovation.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Puls is a German high tech engineering company, which invests significant resources in research and development. The company considers their employees to be key to its ongoing success. Therefore, the HR department commissioned a new staff-centered workplace design to move the company culture away from islands of lonely workers towards a networked community. The design of the new workplace creates the optimal environment for this cultural change.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- 3300 m2 over two floors. 130 workstations.
- Tags
- office, interior, workplace, evolution design, engineering, Munich
- Production Technology
- Important part of the design was graphic concept for the walls. Based on the electrical components and the products that Puls produces, Evolution Design developed individual and unique graphic for each space. A special graphic was made for the Trust wall, which is built of individual words of what trust means to each employee. Additionally, an artist was commissioned to create one wall with a comic story of the past events of the company and great stories that everybody remembers.
- Design Challenge
- One of the main aims of the project was to increase communication and collaboration: unfortunately the existing building had only very unattractive fire escape staircase connecting the two floors. It took a lot of special structural and fire safety engineering as well as a lot of persuasion to get the building owner to agree to our new open internal staircase. Without it the project aims would have not been achievable.
- Project Duration
- The project started in April 2016 in Munich and was complete in March 2017.
- Operation Flow
- The work environment is developed around the concept of a small village. Each team is located in a distinct neighborhood, with individual colors and a bold graphic concept defining and demarcating the space and helping to navigate and orientate within the office. Each team uses their neighborhood for fast and easy interaction between them. For a wider collaboration everybody meets in the village marketplace.
- Research
- The move into a new office space was seen by Puls as a great opportunity to visualize and stimulate a new collaboration culture within the company. Many interactive and creative workshops were held with the staff to find out what would improve creativity, collaboration and innovation. These findings were the basis for the workplace design and many further organizational changes within the company. At a later stage, the staff tested all furniture items in a special prototyping room.
- Inspiration
- Puls seems themselves as a family living together in a small village: a tightly connected community where everyone knows each other, every team member has their own home, but there are also common areas for everyone to get together. The workplace design reflects this culture and focuses on connecting different departments to foster better teamwork and more direct communication: research and development, engineering and manufacturing teams are now closely connected with sales and marketing.
- Image Credits
- Image #1: Photographer Peter Wuermli, 2017. Image #2: Photographer Peter Wuermli, 2017. Image #3: Photographer Peter Wuermli, 2017. Image #4: Photographer Peter Wuermli, 2017. Image #5: Photographer Peter Wuermli, 2017.
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to Evolution Design, 2017
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