Tengbom’s Malmö Office

Smaller offices are increasingly common. But how do you scale back without sacrificing comfort? At Tengbom’s Malmö Office, space is the only thing that shrunk.
“We’ve really focused on working creatively with our use of space. It’s important that the place doesn’t feel static; it should be able to change over time. We wanted variation and to be able to adapt the space as needed,” says Josefin Klein, Practice Director.

The office isn’t what it used to be. It’s a change that began long before March 2020, but the pandemic has accelerated it and made the adjustment more urgent for property owners and tenants alike. We need to reconsider. Scale down. Think new. For Tengbom in Malmö, that meant finding a brand-new way to use the office.

Our solution: reuse and efficient use of space

Less space and also more functionality – can this equation really add up? At Tengbom’s Malmö office in the historic building at Stadt Hamburg 13 on Gustaf Adolfs square, the answer is yes. Here, several buildings from different eras have been joined into a single but charming whole. For our furnishings, we emphasized upcycling and reused almost everything from our old space.

The new office – which is 120 square meters smaller than the old one – required several creative solutions in order to fit the bill. Touchdown spaces are interwoven with a mixture of high and low seating arrangements. There are separate rooms, some of which are dedicated entirely to virtual meetings. At the same time, thanks to the central location, more meetings and functions can be carried out in shared spaces.

“It might seem like such a distinctive and varied space would conflict with the classic office landscape. But when the office is activity-based and primarily a meeting place, it’s the perfect venue for creative gatherings,” says Josefin Klein.

From classic office to creative hub

So how do you achieve the creative environment that is so essential to the modern office? Practice Director Emma Nilsby believes it is important to come to a place where you can have fun, and where exchange takes place. The new Malmö office has great conditions for these factors through its numerous and varied spaces. The room that serves as a lounge or break room has softer seating for coffee breaks. It has a big table where meetings can be held at one end and employees can eat lunch at the other – while at the same time, the room facilitates flow and you can see people coming and going.
“The office has become a meeting place. You choose to work from home when you want to focus. When you want to meet up, socialize and be creative, you meet at the office or at a café. It’s a different mindset,” says Emma Nilsby.

A space for experimentation and prototypes

Why not take synergy a step further and make space for innovations and product development? To take that step in its entirety, one of the rooms at Tengbom’s Malmö Office is a dedicated showroom and testbed space, where employees and suppliers can “test-run” furniture, find new solutions, and increase their knowledge of different work environments.

“Working together in our showroom has been an experiment for our suppliers, too. This has involved everything from reupholstering furniture to coming up with brand-new products. They’ve found it really exciting to work this way, and it lets them sell it for the next project and use our office as a kind of reference project,” says Josefin Klein.