You are part of a taskforce. Your mission: To turn a regular company into market-leading innovators. How do you go about infusing a workforce with innovative spirit? A good starting point: Stop. Take a look around you. Ask yourself: Does this LOOK like a business that can boldly where none has gone before? Step into the lobby of an Apple, Google or Facebook and you’ll get the message. You enter a space that announces “progress is happening here”. Investment in interior design is part of what makes these companies, and their people, tick.
Work in a bright, creative-looking environment and you are likely to feel, well… brighter and more creative. All very well, but what if you’re expected to make do with the workspace you’ve got? What then? All is not lost. When a space needs a lift without recourse to any new painting, flooring, lighting or furnishing there is one interior design veteran you can still call on: the office plant.
Revamp one floor/ceiling tile, lighting fixture or desk and you need to change them all. Buying a plant or two? Much easier. And we’re not just talking a Yucca in a plastic pot. Remember, we’re aiming to make your business radiate innovativeness. Here are just some of the imaginative ways that plants are now being used to alter perceptions:
Organic Furniture
Office plants have gone from being afterthoughts to interior design A-listers. Give plant specialists a chance to think big and exciting things happen. Why confine a plant to sitting on a desk – Why not have a desk with a plant IN it? Design collaborations between office furniture and plant people are producing desks like the one pictured (by Emily Wettstein). With a bit of imagination, plants can be incorporated anywhere to make you look seriously innovative.
Summer Screening
When it comes to stress-busting environments parks and sand-dunes have to be up there with the best of them. Which explains the current appetite for indoor grass and hedge features. Green screening gives you an effect that no anonymous office partition can come close to. Plus it puts a spring in people’s step and a smile in the mind. A novelty that doesn’t wear off.
Plant Paint
Why paint walls when you can plant them?! Green walls – walls that are partially or completely covered with mosses and climbing vegetation – are another in vogue interior landscaping statement. No longer confined to the outsides of stately buildings, green walls can be made to animate any vertical surface. And you’re not restricted to ivy – you can stitch in a wide range of plants. It’s not quite as simple as rolling on paint but the dramatic effect makes it worth going the extra mile.
Poetic Pottery
Another beauty of plants – they give you a double opportunity to look innovative. The planter is a design element in itself and can be used to fabulous effect. Forget the mass-produced rust-coloured plastic pots of old – it is now affordable to produce custom pots of all shapes, sizes and materials. Coconut, sea shells, driftwood… You name it, plant containers can be made of it. Whatever it takes to create a memorable impression.
So, if your company is keen to invoke the Spirit of Innovation… look outside. Look at bringing the outside in. Think Plants & Landscaping and think big!
