What makes the Johnson Corner look?

May 11, 2024

Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of Johnson Corner shares the ideas, reasons, and inspiration behind the Johnson Corner look.

If you are anything like me, sensitive to the energy and space that surrounds you, then your work environment will deeply affect your feelings and emotions. Gone are the days when corporate offices were based only on functionality, tight, dreary and dull looking cubicles, harsh light and lots of walls separating connection

Today we are seeing a big shift in how we design our spaces, first, we think about designing a space that is crucial to our human desire; to feel good.

The design process begins early, even before the lease of a building is signed. It covers every corner of the building; starting with glass walls, ceilings, meeting rooms, kitchen, offices, then it moves to soft furniture, and then, to the flow of the space ensuring delightful experiences.

At the core of a Johnson Corner space, we have our members in mind. We want to evoke a sense of warmth and connection, it’s about creating an ambience adding character and atmosphere to our space which in turn lifts morale, productivity and makes one feel part of a community with deep connections and lifelong relationships where meaningful work takes place. This is achieved by involving our community in the design process.

When working with the design team, it is essential to look not just at the interior fit-out, but also the experience we want to provide. From welcoming the members, to how the space flows and interacts with each other. It must encourage a real sense of connection and community.

Ultimately, it is about creating a Community-Led, Experience-Driven Environment.

Living environments enable businesses to elevate their people and unlock growth.

The physical space is designed to uplift and inspire. We prioritise natural materials that bring a sense of calm and creativity, with pops of colour, designer furniture, local art and plenty of engaging breakout areas to drive productivity and collaboration.

Plants are mandatory in every space, and floor to ceiling windows provide natural light, increasing overall wellbeing. Interactive spaces and electric sit to stand desks promote health and our online platform provides ease to book out rooms and connect with fellow members.

It is paramount to transform a building into the ‘smart age’, by integrating it with technology that increases productivity, collaboration and innovation for our members. We are big on simple, minimal, mobile-only operated environments.

johnsonOS, our mobile platform is used by members to operate our environment and virtually connect with our ecosystem

Wellbeing in the workspace is a huge focus, driving our community programming strategy. We regularly host events to bring everyone together, our community managers are hands-on — uplifting the space, creating deep connections with members, and are constantly innovating for the needs of the community.

From a branding perspective, it is crucial that we don’t impose our brand and culture too much through our interior design work. This allows other companies to build their own company culture within our space. For instance; we have consciously decided not to plaster walls with our values or cheesy punch lines — these can have a negative effect on our member companies.

Although Johnson Corner has a beautifully designed look drawing inspiration from the mid-century era and Madmen sets, we believe the overall ambience is created by how we interact with the community, how the space interacts with each other and how it makes people feel.

As we plan to grow in partnership with Landlords, Johnson Corner designs for the future are exciting. We are constantly evaluating each space, led by data-driven decision making, we constantly look for anything that doesn’t add value to our community, and then innovate to come up with new ideas that we can experiment, in collaboration with our community.

Our hotdesk workspace enables freelancers and remote workers to access our space on-demand.

We are currently redesigning our hotdesk workspace concepts, and working on new interior concepts. You will see a big focus in our future designs on technology and wellness. Making our spaces user-friendly, incorporating wellness studios, yoga, holistic health, gyms, childcare and breast friendly areas are all ideas we would love to incorporate into our designs.

To feel connected, uplifted and inspired, we need to build a whole ecosystem where people are working together in a collaborative sense, sharing resources and knowledge.

Design can differ from building to building but a Johnson Corner is immediately recognisable and it is what sets Johnson Corner apart from other work environments.