A DYNAMIC FLOORPLATE

Ifj examines the pros and cons of agile workspaces and the way ahead

- Alpana lath Sawai and Aadrita chatterji

Traditionally, agile working has been an employee-centric intervention with spaces designed to help workers collaborate, work across different types of seating, and so on. Increasingly, however, organizations are understanding the advantages of flexible infrastructure that allows them to use capital optimally instead of in a ‘rinse and repeat’ pattern that is no longer of service to future-ready companies.

Ar. Vistasp Bhagwagar, Founder & Principal Architect, Architect Vistasp & Associates, New Delhi, says, “Every day is not the same, it does not have the same activities necessarily, so why must one be chained to one type of work station or assigned desk? It is this thinking that has led to the need for need-based or activity-based workspaces where you could be collaborating in the morning, having a formal training midway and then a quiet session in the afternoon, followed by a formal presentation in the conference room in the evening. All these require freedom to move and the choice to select appropriate workplace settings. That is the heart of an agile work environment.”

A dynamic space, the agile office offers more with less. Ar. Bhagwagar says, “An agile office will have 20 per cent fewer workstations than a normal office; it will also have almost twice the number of typologies of workspace than a normal office. Agile offices need to cater to a varying demand of work types and thus need to offer a plethora of options such as: quiet work booths, sit-stand workstations, linear benching, and L-shaped stations for dual monitors. It is when the variety of options are available, that choice is available and true agility comes to the fore.”

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