An in-depth look at a revolutionary office design for Norway's leading online payment service.
“Payment made easy”
That is the mission for Vipps, an exciting brand at the forefront of the digital payment industry in Norway’. Launching in May 2015, the firm reached over 1 million users in just 6 months, and after a 2018 merger with national competitors Vipps is now Norway’s most popular service. Bringing three teams together under one roof meant Vipps needed a bigger office, and the brand took this opportunity to develop a new way of working – designing a workspace that promoted integration, communication and collaboration between the new and existing workers, whilst also creating an efficient place to work, offering a variety of working environments suited to the different needs of a creative and forward thinking brand. What they created was the “anti-office” - a place where people feel at home, relaxed, and ultimately more inspired to work. This is the story of how they made it happen.
The Designer's Perspective
“Your office space needs to inspire you in different ways and the forward thinking and the willingness to do something totally different made it exciting to work with Vipps."
Inspiring design
Architects Radius Design were the team behind the new office design, and from the outset they had a clear idea about what they wanted to create, as explained by Einar Erdahl, Interior Architect & Project Manager at Radius Design; “The overall idea was to make an anti-office… an office that was something out of the ordinary, without the reception desk, with a good combination between workspaces, drop out zones, focus rooms, meeting rooms, bar and multi-functional workspaces…. Your office space needs to inspire you in different ways. You need the calm relaxing rooms, you need these colourful playful rooms, and you need just hard core, straight to business, minimalistic rooms as well.”
The entire design revolves around a central social area (known as the heart), with a host of colourful and inspiring workspaces, from the florescent Hubba Bubba Room, to the naturalistic Jungle Room, and the disguised Secret Room (accessed via a revolving wall). The flow between each area is handled well, and the mix of rooms allows workers to seamlessly transition from activity to activity, without hindering productivity.
The Client's Perspective
"The vision was just to find the right type of environment for the new employees that different cultures merge together, get to know each other, and actually get inspired to go to work.”
There was, however, still a need for traditional desk space, and Vipps chose the HÅG SoFi mesh to complement every workstation, selected for its human centred design, sleek aesthetics and great versatility.
“We tried a lot of different chairs… the HÅG SoFi is a good chair because it’s very easy to use, and flexibility for us is very important. We have a lot of people that sit a lot during the day, they need a good chair, and after looking at the market we found out that this was the perfect chair for our company.”- Narve Hansen, Chief Innovation Officer, International Department Vipps
Watch the videos on this page to hear more about the design, or read our article, which includes a variety of imagery, linked at the bottom of the page.
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