Workspace Design Show
26 – 27 February 2025 at the Business Design Centre in London.
Kael Gillam,
Senior Associate,
Hoare Lea
POSSIBILITIES
Choose your adventure
For this year’s Workspace Design Show, the Society of Light and Lighting asked us to create an installation to ‘activate the senses’. Rather than go down the traditional lighting installation route, we wanted to create a multi-sensory experience showcasing more than just our lighting expertise. After visiting the space with lighting designer Juan Ferrari, I had a non-lighting-related idea on the way back to the office...
“What if we made a game? What if we made a game about choice?” I asked, and to my surprise, Juan and I fleshed out most of the idea on our brisk November walk. Building on the success of our London Festival of Architecture installation, we enlisted the help of our immersive and engineering visualisation teams, namely Matthew Partridge. Lighting graduate Beth Wilson led the physical design of the installation, drawing on her interior design expertise to choose and arrange furniture and screens and to create the best user experience.
Along the way, we picked up some assistance from Tom Potter on background audio and sound bites, as well as James Buck and Josh Welch on the game design.
The installation grew legs immediately; we would make a retro VR game, from scratch, about the thousands of micro-decisions that people have to make in the course of a day. It would be interactive, with users starting in their bedroom, then moving on to their commute, and finally their workplace – making choices in each environment and learning more about how our bodies respond to those stimuli.
In our game, which we called Sense of Place, you are asked to make those everyday decisions, and learn about what effect sensory experiences and environments have on our minds and bodies. Cup of coffee first thing? Err, sorry, that’s actually messing with your cortisol levels if you have it too soon after waking up. Taking the tube? Yeah, you might want to take ear protection for your next journey. Sitting in your cubicle because you work better? No way, ditch it for daylight access and some greenery. Many of those choices may not even feel like choices, but there is much to be learned about what we consider a ‘healthy’ morning routine and ‘productive’ work environment.
The aim of the educational content in the game was to make people think, and we were really glad to receive a wide range of responses to it. Most people admitted that they wished they had more choice over their commuting and workplace, but were also relieved to know that they had some power to put their wellbeing first. Although when it came to looking at their phone first thing in the morning... everyone felt quite powerless in this scenario.
If they were feeling defeated by a bad score after the game, there was a secondary installation that we created to help people ‘reset’ and go back about their day. No choices, just colour, pattern and soft ambient noise. We may have had to ask people to get up after lingering too long, but at least they got their zen in for the afternoon.
With thanks:
To www.cecoceco.com for their generosity with LED screen kit, brunner-uk.com for the seating and tables on the booth, and Humaira Pilkinton and Esha Jones at Workspace Design Show for coordinating with us.
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