Vitra Launches Two Flexible Workplace Collections with Konstantin Grcic and Stephan Hürlemann

Post-pandemic, design discourse has wrestled with the concept of the workplace. What should it look like? How should it function? How often should it be used? As return-to-office orders flowed in, both slapdash and more thoughtful interior schemes followed, each attempting to answer these questions in a new work world. “In the past, office planning was strictly dictated by the cellular grid; parameters such as window axes, building depths, and predefined corridor widths formed a rigid framework,” explains Swiss architect Stephan Hürlemann. “Today, the ideal floor plan no longer prescribes usage but adapts to it.” Enter Scout and Reset, two new office furnishing collections for Vitra that center these flexible ideals.

Hürlemann designed Reset to tap the potential of the contemporary office, by allowing employees themselves to dictate the seating arrangements. The modular platform system can stack like building blocks and be set with cushions to create an endlessly customizable stepped communal space for sitting, lounging, or working. With just three components, it is easily assembled and disassembled and able to make any empty “dead zones” within a workplace’s floor plan usable. “Spaces influence how we work, interact, and concentrate,” says the architect. “Good architecture also creates identity and promotes community.” Designed to bring people together, perhaps Scout will encourage the venerated office culture CEOs love to rave about.

If Reset has a macro lens on gathering, Scout takes the individual approach. The new series of workstations and meeting tables by German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic allows the reconfiguration of one’s own desk. With tubular steel structures, workstations and tables are strong but light for easy personalization, from the work surface’s height to the addition of a privacy partition, depending on the model. All can stand alone and some can be attached to form a pod, ring, or snake. Optional casters make mobility a breeze.

Scout’s variety helps assure an office design’s longevity, no matter what work looks like in the future. “A modern workstation must be both mobile and adaptable,” says Grcic. Scout’s “open-ended system can be customized, modified, or ‘hacked’” to evolve an office “without replacing the furniture.” The average office turns over every five to ten years, a hardly sustainable habit. Vitra’s new office collections argue for workplace design that not only anticipates change but empowers employees to shape it.