Before the Walls, the Uses

Today, it is becoming something more fluid—a place to work, meet, host, pause and connect. Through placemaking, purposeful colour and adaptable layouts, Elsa Audoin, Interior Architect at YKRA, reflects on how workplace design is responding to this shift.

The formula was familiar: open-plan floors, partitions and corridors; rows of desks under even lighting; a meeting room, a canteen and perhaps a few plants to soften the atmosphere. Interior design brought order, fitted furniture, selected durable finishes and created environments intended to remain largely unchanged.

Working life, meanwhile, has moved faster than the spaces designed to contain it. Work now happens in the office, on the train, in a café, at the kitchen table or out on a terrace. Meetings shift location. Teams overlap. Events take over spaces never originally designed for them. Offices increasingly borrow from homes, members’ clubs and hotel lobbies. They welcome people who may stay for an hour rather than a day, and communities that are constantly changing shape.

In this context, interior architecture is no longer simply about organising functions. It is about shaping experiences.

This evolution has deeper roots. In his writing on atmospheres, Peter Zumthor argues that buildings affect us first through sensation: light, temperature, sound, materiality and proportion. Architecture, he suggests, should allow people not merely to pass through a place, but to inhabit it.

That idea resonates with the growing focus on placemaking in workplace design. As Knight Frank notes, the workplace can no longer be defined by functionality alone. It must offer an experience that brings together comfort, community and engagement.

The rise of hotel-inspired workspaces, often described as workspitality, reflects the same ambition. Reception spaces feel more like lounges; cafés become part of the daily rhythm of the workplace; quiet areas and informal meeting points are given greater importance; and the user journey is considered as carefully as the workstation itself. The office becomes both a practical setting and a destination in its own right.

This is the landscape in which YKRA works. Its starting point is straightforward: before drawing walls, understand the people, routines and encounters the space needs to support.

Every project begins with a story. Archives, historic photographs, old drawings and the memories of those who use a building can reveal what a place has been—and what it may still hold. An office, conference venue or event space develops its own unwritten habits: a staircase where conversations naturally begin, a route people instinctively take, a corner that gradually becomes an unofficial meeting point.

Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger understood this well. His Centraal Beheer offices were conceived as a “city within a building”: terraced work areas, internal streets, small squares and generous staircases created opportunities to settle in, cross paths and exchange ideas. The architecture did not prescribe every interaction; it created the conditions for them to happen.

Designing a new interior therefore begins with recognising the traces, habits and social patterns already embedded in a place.

Rather than starting with a grid of desks, some practices begin by mapping a typical day. Who arrives early? Who comes in briefly between appointments? Who remains on site for hours? Who welcomes guests? Who sets up an event? When does the space need focus, energy, privacy or release?

“We design an office much as we would design a home,” says Elsa Audoin. Like a home, a workplace needs different degrees of privacy and activity: rooms that offer seclusion, spaces that invite longer stays, routes that allow people to move freely and thresholds that create moments of transition.

This approach echoes activity-based working and the idea of the workplace as a host. Rather than locating work at a single assigned desk, it considers the day as a succession of situations—concentration, informal exchange, a video call, a shared lunch, a workshop, a pause.

In this model, the spaces in between become essential. Lobbies, staircases, cafés and buffer zones form the connective tissue of collective life. YKRA gives them the same attention as major meeting rooms: enough space to pause without disrupting circulation, light that encourages people to linger, and seating that enables conversation without creating congestion.

Then comes colour. In recent years, neutral workplace palettes—grey, off-white, beige and greige—have often been presented as the safe option: calm, timeless and easy to agree on. Yet this apparent neutrality can also erase character.

“Do we really remember the important moments of our lives in greige spaces?” asks Audoin.

Memorable places convey an identity, a mood and a point of view. In YKRA’s work, colour can be bold or muted, but it is always intentional and connected to use. It may identify a gathering space, bring calm to an area designed for focused work or signal a transition from one atmosphere to another.

Colour becomes both a sensory tool and a narrative device: it helps people read, remember and inhabit a place.

The meaning of luxury in professional interiors is also evolving. Quality is increasingly found in the choices behind a project rather than in its most visible signs.

“Real luxury is working with local craftspeople, responsibly sourced materials and a coherent vision across the whole project,” says Elsa Audoin.

Some of the strongest forms of comfort are barely noticed: acoustics that make conversation effortless, lighting that responds to the passing hours, materials that age well, and proportions that make people feel at ease.

This attention to detail also reflects broader priorities in contemporary workplace design: air quality, ergonomics, wellbeing, a meaningful relationship with the surrounding neighbourhood and a sense of connection with the wider community.

In Geneva, BIRD’s Playground brings these principles together in a highly adaptable venue. With generous proportions and a distinctive design language, it can host conferences, training sessions, intimate concerts, hackathons, showrooms and cocktail receptions. It is a space designed to transform regularly while retaining a clear identity.

Rather than creating a neutral white box, YKRA developed a strong visual environment around an exceptionally flexible system. The design process starts with real-life scenarios: a ten-person workshop; a standing concert for 300 guests; a seated conference for 150; or several groups working simultaneously. Each configuration is tested for movement, sightlines, acoustics and set-up time.

At the heart of the system are lightweight textile partitions: acoustic, fire-rated, movable, foldable and easy to open. Within minutes, they can reshape the venue, expand or reduce an area, or separate a stage from the rest of the room without compromising the sense of volume. The layout changes, while the character of the place remains intact.

The new Playground, scheduled to open on the ground floor in December 2026, will be visible from the street, connected to a café and kitchen, and equipped with a soundproofed conference room. Its new configuration will strengthen the connection between the venue, the building and its surroundings, creating a destination for work, conversation and programming.

“A project succeeds when people make it their own, and when new ways of using it emerge without having been prescribed by the plan,” Elsa Audoin concludes.

That may be one of the clearest measures of a successful workplace: its ability to absorb new habits, changing communities and unexpected encounters while retaining its coherence.

Walls, colours and materials may remain in place for years. The ways in which people use them will continue to evolve. The role of interior architecture lies in holding that tension: creating environments stable enough to endure, yet open enough to be continually reshaped by the people within them.

Before the walls come the uses. And it is from those uses that the places where we work, meet and want to return are made.