Step inside the ThinkGarden offices designed for Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, and you may feel slightly disorientated. Is this an office in an outdoor garden, or has someone dragged the garden inside? This award winning business lounge offers a primordial space that is Eden meets Google, in terms of creative workspace, cool simplistic furniture and plenty of relax-and-play areas.
Featured on Inc. magazine's list of "World's Coolest Offices 2011", this light, bright interior garden literally encourages workers to stop and smell the roses. The floor to ceiling mesh walls are lined with creepers and climbers rooted in mossy beds. Flowering trees and bushy shrubs are complemented with vases of flowering bulbs in primary colours. The pristine white workstations are divided by low white storage cupboards -- or are they whitewashed garden walls?
ThinkGarden Milan's cool workspace is the first ever creative business lounge and no doubt inspired the company's philosophy of "doing business naturally". The contrast of natural slate-coloured flooring, white desks and chairs and fresh green foliage makes a harmonious yet stimulating effect on mood and creative energy.
Although the ThinkGarden appears to be a series of meandering spaces, each area of this creative business lounge is designated to a specific purpose. There's a press area, with circular table and seating, and a separate business area. At the centre of this green office is a relax area, reminiscent of a peaceful river valley where huge washed stones serve as lounge seating. There's even an onsite bar for socializing and teambuilding.
Workers needing time to stretch out and think can head for the hammocks to contemplate and develop a new idea, or brainstorm with colleagues. The goal is to keep workers relaxed and inspired so they can produce ideas that literally bounce off the walls. Overhead, the bright lights are diffused by giant white filters to lessen the harshness of artificial light.
Those who think best on the golf course will find the putting green handily located next to the barefoot area, where green grass beckons and refreshes weary aching feet. Quite simply, ThinkGarden challenges the traditional approach to office space, instead offering a beautiful nature-inspired environment to stimulate thoughts and ideas.
Although the business lounge is one huge open space, the greenery, gardens and trees serve as natural dividers, creating quiet corners when privacy is needed as well as larger gathering places for pow-wows and discussion. The state-of-the-art furnishings and technology complement the beauty of nature, enabling new concepts to come to fruition. ThinkGarden is multisensory, stimulating the senses of vision, smell, touch and hearing, as workers are surrounded by the sounds of nature.
Not only did the design team, Sara Carlini and Radim Tkadlec, create a beautifully nomadic natural environment, they also fitted it out with recyclable, reusable materials which work in harmony with the environment.
It should come as no surprise to find that ThinkGarden is located in Milan. This stylish city is known for its leading design concepts in head-turning fashion, fast cars, and now in office space too.