An All-White Office That Makes Work Feel Like High-Stakes Surgery
The Seoul-based designers say that they “fix space like doctors cure people.”
Designers love their metaphors, and the Khan Project is no exception: The Seoul-based designers say that they “fix space like doctors cure people.” So to really hammer that home, they fashioned their office after a pristine medical lab. Employees wear doctors’ coats and putter around barefoot (okay, maybe it’s one of those “alternative” labs). As for the space itself, it’s an orgy of white: white floors, white walls, white ceilings, white chairs, white shelves, white curtains, white file cabinets, white magazine racks, a white stereo, and even a white teddy bear perched alongside a white copy of Steve Jobs.
Creepy? Oh, definitely. If I were a client, I’d worry they’d throw me on a table and take a scalpel to my brainpan, as the teddy bear presides smugly. But there’s a practical reason the place looks the way it does: A recent study suggests that an organized workplace can bump up productivity 30%. And this place is nothing if not tidy.
Of course, you have to wonder if all that’s offset by the time it takes to dust in there. A spokesperson for the Khan Project assures us that keeping the office spic and span isn’t nearly as hard as it seems: “We don’t have any special cleaning method. Because of [the] white space, it’s easy to find dust.”
[Images courtesy of the Khan Project; h/t Dezeen]
