The place in the city, the building, design, and equipment: what must be taken into account when setting up your own office or studio.
The workplace, where we spend so many hours of our days, must be not only functional but comfortable. When receiving clients, it will also be necessary to think about an aesthetic that transmits the values that we want to highlight from the way of working.
At some point in their professional career, doctors, architects, lawyers, accountants, and many other professionals (the etcetera is vast), will probably face the challenge of establishing themselves independently. And to the professional risk of such a move, it will be necessary to add, at minute zero, the also mobilizing challenge of putting together a functional, comfortable, and even attractive office.
An endless number of real estate, furniture, and technological issues, in relation to the inputs that each practice requires, will arise to overwhelm the unsuspecting.
And everything must be resolved quickly and efficiently: location of the property in the city, choice of suitable space according to the activity that is carried out, design or remodeling of the workspace, electrical wiring, furniture, lighting, and air conditioning appear first a list. the extensive list that will also include the equipment that each profession requires, stationery, or courier services, among other things.
Choose The Place: Location, Location, Location
In principle, it will be necessary to find the location in the city taking into account the current planning code, which allows certain activities only in some areas.
Offices and consulting rooms, for example, can be installed on avenues but not inwards, where residential areas are constituted; and there are entire neighborhoods where offices are not allowed.
At the same time, it will be necessary to think about the location according to the activity that is carried out. A lawyer, for example, will seek to be close to the Courts, while service companies (plumbing repair or an English academy, for example) must establish themselves in residential neighborhoods with a high population density so that they can attract clients.
Many times, activities of similar or complementary nature are installed in an area of the city, generating concentration and becoming a reference center for the activity that generates a continuous establishment of professionals in the field. A careful observation of the city is important because these types of areas may arise not thought of at first.
For example, according to the architects dedicated to real estate research Liliana Aslan and Alicia Santaló, in Buenos Aires, the area of lofts near Dorrego Avenue attracts television producers, design and advertising studios, and designers also settle in lower Belgrano.
Aslan and Santaló point out that this concentration of the same activity in a residential area generates an essential commercial movement and that it does not always exist in areas with low houses: kiosks with photocopiers are also established, for example, or bars where you can have a coffee.
The Choice Of The Building
The choice of the building or apartment will then depend (and again) on the activity that is carried out (for a medical office, natural light is not so important, but if possible you do not have to use an elevator, that it is easily accessible), on the way in which work is done internally (which will determine whether to choose open spaces, free floors, or very compartmentalized, with closed offices), the number of people who will work in the place, together with the growth projections that are made, and the relationship that arises with the client.
Aslan and Santaló observe that there is a growing tendency to attach great importance to the place where one works, regardless of whether they receive clients or not. We see many advertisers and design people who tend to look for more than pleasant spaces: with lots of light, patio, garden, a barbecue, and a place for several people to eat, things that contribute to the quality of the workplace, they explain.
The architect Hernán Kravitz also talks about the need for the workspace to be comfortable, functional, and orderly, whether it is a large office or an improvised one in a room in the house. The human being gets used to being in a place and does not realize when he is doing wrong. Living or working in bad places affects one’s life, Kravitz notes.
Finally, and still choosing the appropriate building, it will be necessary to take into account the image that you want to print on the work. Not only advertisers and designers, professionals closely linked to image, take this principle into account today. As the architects explain, the trend is growing among professionals of all types and ages.
Many are clear that they want something old with a very modern intervention, or just classic, or something modern, they point out. And it is taken into account that entire neighborhoods and buildings in themselves communicate prestige, modernity, seriousness, and creativity: each one will choose according to the values that he wants to transmit from the work he does or from the company.
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