Schaeffler Digital Transformation Centre by Evolution Design

Like many companies today, Schaeffler is seeking to break down the traditional vertical hierarchy in favour of a more flexible network of teams to create an agile organisation that can deliver faster results. This approach to the working environment obviously requires adequate workplaces and here they were designed with this in mind. So, the German automotive and industrial supplier approached the Swiss architecture firm Evolution Design, acknowledged as pioneers in innovative workplace design (link) to design its new Schaeffler Digital Transformation Centre.
At the Schaeffler Digital Transformation Centre, every project starts with a design thinking workshop. Therefore, the workspace design has been specifically considered to enable the flow of work processes within the team. The office is divided into three main areas that move from loud to quiet zones, enabling collaborative teamwork without interrupting more concentrated thinking. 
The new office designed by Evolution Design does not have a traditional reception desk. Instead, the first thing that guests experience when they enter the Digital Transformation Centre is an interactive showroom that offers a high-tech welcome to guests, customers and staff and generates a real sense of leading-edge innovation from the first contact point. This is connected with the large, irregularly-shaped communication core that contains focus booths, meeting rooms and prototyping spaces and creates curvilinear connecting spaces.
The first area of the office is the communication/collaboration hub, which houses a large workshop and events area, and a coffee point. This buzzing, colourful space is used for large group brainstorming, presentations and internal events. The glass partition walls enclose three small meeting rooms or they can be opened up to create one large room. The blue central area is designed for flexible teamwork and for collaboration, manifested by the shared sit or stand workstations. The rear of the office, the green area, is designed for individual work and also hosts a very quiet space for quiet work, where talking is not permitted.
The Schaeffler Digital Transformation Centre has a youthful, semi-industrial aesthetic that reflects the company’s digital and industrial background. For example, details like the exposed systems in the ceiling and the polished concrete floor with the industrial feel are softened by colourful chairs and brightly coloured walls. Colour and materials are also used to mark the areas, with bright blue tones and the use of glass in the animated team space contrasting with pale green forest motifs and the use of tree trunk dividers that create a feeling of calm in the quiet working space. 
With the Schaeffler Digital Transformation Centre, the architecture firm Evolution Design has designed a friendly, functional workplace, one that inspires creativity and really supports the production process.

Christiane Bürklein

Project: Evolution Design - http://www.evolution-design.info/
Location: Herzogenaurach, Germany
Year: 2019
Images: Peter Wuermli