Indovickers: Designing the Office of the Future

Stanislaus Joshua , 07 Dec 2023

Even though they both belong to furniture, furnishings for public and residential spaces have different designs. Furniture used in commercial installations – including offices, schools, hotels, and public facilities – is called contract furniture.

Indovickers Furnitama (@indovickersfurnitama) has been a contract furniture manufacturer since 1989 in Indonesia. How has office design changed in the past 40 years?

“At first, [offices] use panel systems as a standard in the 80s. Now, they’re more spacious: open offices with no partitions, no sections,” told Timothy Santoso, the Head of Marketing who spoke at Maranatha Creative Industry Showcase Day (MCISD) 2023.

“Nowadays, the concept behind the modern, open office layout is collaboration to support better and faster communication and build trust among employees.”

Reducing the interior elements of an office doesn’t necessarily mean simpler design. Open office spaces also need to keep several important things in mind: privacy, health (such as natural lighting), employee performance, et cetera.

“[We have to] design an office as an active workspace; don’t let the contemporary office design make people slack off.”

To bring the modern office into reality, Indovickers have to design properly, from the points of view of both manufacturing and users’ ergonomy. Indovickers’ designers have to plan out furniture with an attractive appearance, proper functionality, sales value, and decent quality.

In order to accomplish these design goals, Indovickers have to adhere to a rigorous production process. The process starts with discussing (creating plans and brainstorming), which is then continued by defining (identifying customers’ needs and their solutions), developing (development of product design), splitting (implementing designs to a finished product), and testing (modifying solutions which were created based on usage).

“The point is, to make a product, there are sophisticated steps to follow.”