Inspired by the built-in, unspoken protocols of the beloved British campground, Campers&Dens take office pods way beyond the “next level”.
Mark Partridge and the design team at Orangebox have set their sights on intuitive spaces, where the physical space itself intuitively dictates your expected behaviour. It is design thinking at work! And at Furnify, we LOVE design thinking.
Campers&Dens is an interior architecture solution that encourages employees to minimise interruptions, collaborate efficiently, and respect each other’s different working styles.
Designer Mark Partridge says, “Campers&Dens is a complete reinvention of the built-environment interior architecture. And that architecture must extend beyond the pods, from fully enclosed to semi-open to fully open, to capture those layers of privacy.”
Mimicking a campsite, he says, “When you’re inside your campervan and the doors are closed, it’s do not disturb. When you’re outside in your awning with your cup of tea or your coffee, you’re still in your own space, in your own domain, and it’s kind of an invitation only. You’re still in a private space. And then when you’re outside in the open field, then it becomes a sort of free-for-all where people can come up and talk to you.”
To achieve these layers of privacy in the office environment, the Campers&Dens product suite consists of 83 variants, including Campers Meeting Pods, kinks, cabins, awnings, hacking frames, slats, and designer fabrics.
It’s Time to Hack your Office with Campers and Dens
“The fact is, it’s arrogant of us to want our office pods to look like ours in every client space... We want clients to make them look like theirs... to make them unique every time,” says Mark.
The designers of Campers&Dens Pods have a vision far bigger than mere office pods and phone booths. Everything can be adapted. Finishes, hacks, fabrics and entire sections can be swapped out, moved, and removed easily. You can even demount and move the modular system to another part of your building.
Flexibility is key.
The main building blocks of Campers&Dens are Campers meeting pods, awnings, cabins and kinks.
Campers&Dens Pods
Pods are fully enclosed room-in-room private spaces where employees can go about their focused work and confidential meetings in peace.
Campers&Dens Cabins
Cabins are extensions of the pod’s exterior where integrated seats, benches, and tables, can create an in-between nook to huddle into.
Campers & Dens Awnings
Awnings are semi-open arches attached to the side of the pod to create small collaborative meeting places or more informal work areas that still indicate you might need to ask permission to join.
Campers & Dens Kinks
Kinks are an architectural flourish that gives your pod the feel of “an outdoor cabin or cabana,” according to the designers.
Mix, Match, Customise
Each of these main building blocks are incredibly customisable. Pod walls come in glass, acoustic panels with fabric covering, whiteboards, and an assortment of laminates.
Awnings have stretched fabric options in a variety of colours and patterns, or you can opt for coloured paracord for a simple statement. Alternatively, birch plywood slats or polyester felt slats can create a more substantial division.
Evenly distributed wooden slats “hacking frames”, that hook on to the outside of the pod, can create and endless array of textures while also minimising visual distractions, and by stretching fabrics over the ribs, you can access even more intricate and unique visual variations.
“It’s our task to deliver solutions to help you encourage everyone back to the ‘new’ workplace which will, we believe, be much more focused on collaboration and social connection... creating destinations... places you want to be in rather than places you have to be in,” the Orangebox team revealed during their product launch.
Ventilation for That Outdoors Feeling When Indoors
If there is one thing we have learnt from that-thing-no-one-talks-about, it is that stale air and poor ventilation are how people get sick. That goes for many airborne respiratory viruses.
Great ventilation comes standard with Campers&Dens. An integrated refresh button on the pod control panel, pops the roof open 20 degrees and boosts the ventilation up to full for 1 minute.
It’s a great solution to expel stale air between meetings or even right in the middle of a meeting that is getting a bit stuffy. With Campers&Dens the air is so fresh it’s almost like you’re camping in the great outdoors.