ROOM Brings a Modern Twist to the Classic Phone Booth

The following post is brought to you by ROOM. Our partners are hand-picked by the Design Milk team because they represent the best in design.

Need a breath of fresh air in your office to start off the year? New York-based ROOM is planting seeds for creativity and productivity with a new line of custom-designed phone booths for the workplace with ‘Creativity at Work’, a collaborative design program that aims to promote creative expression at work.

In May 2018, ROOM began with the goal of reimagining today’s busy office by taking an outdated idea – phone booths – and adding a modern twist to create a private, quiet space in an open-office work environment. Easily assembled in 30 minutes, the phone booths are mobile, ventilated, and soundproof, and use a sustainable material from 1,088 recycled plastic bottles. Since its launch, ROOM has delivered these quiet spaces to more than 600 clients, including Nike, NASA, Google, Hulu, and Salesforce.

Now they’re taking their concept one step further and partnering with artists to create a series of limited-edition phone booth collections.

The Botanical collection at A/D/O

“Design is essential to ROOM,” says Alejandra Albarrán, ROOM’s Director of Design & Innovation and chief architect of its flagship phone booth. “With Creativity at Work, we’re encouraging creative expression and hopefully inspiring a better place to work.”

The first collection, Botanical, includes a set of three unique phone booths designed for A/D/O, a Brooklyn-based creative lab and co-working space. With botanical prints reminiscent of a tropical getaway, the collection makes room for relaxation, focus, and creative thinking.

The Botanical Collection: Bamboo (left), Banana (center), and Palm (right)

The booth adds extra room to any workspace without the need for a buildout.

A private space for phone calls and virtual meetings

The booths were installed on wheels to make them easy to move around.

To create the Botanical collection, ROOM tapped designers Alicia Perry and Rebecca Intavarant, who founded Tuppence Collective, a surface design studio in London. The two found inspiration from the Arts and Crafts Movement, which is known for embracing images of nature and forms of medieval art. Intavarant and Perry were also inspired by the works of William Morris, a celebrated artist from the movement known for elegant swirls of vines, flowers, and leaves in perfect symmetry, as well as filmmaker Wes Anderson.

New research actually suggests that simply being exposed to art in the office can inspire creative thinking. Plants and images of nature, in particular, have also been known to boost productivity. The Botanical collection combines both of these ideas, and the phone booths will be available for use at A/D/O through the end of January.

Botanical Collection designers Alicia Perry & Rebecca Intavarant, founders of Tuppence Collective

Perry and Intavarant say they look for beauty in old trends, and after seeing the ROOM phone booth, inspiration struck to create a new perspective for the classic. They infused both old and new in their work with hand-painted botanical patterns. Says Perry, “Our pattern design is meant to truly transport employees once they step into the booth – allowing creativity to flourish by providing privacy and inspiration to the modern worker.”

Initial sketches by Tuppence Collective

Hand painting each piece with acrylics created a traditional, illustrative look.

Perry and Intavarant examined the pattern and checked for proper scale by putting the pieces up on the wall.

Selecting the background is the last step in the design process.

The final design for Banana, inspired by banana leaves and palm

They modeled their plant designs on ones seen on a trip to Ibiza, and began by sketching on square pieces of paper, making it easier to create a tile pattern later on. After a lengthy creative process, the designs were transferred to the individual phone booths.

Later this year, ROOM will introduce its second limited edition collection with Daniel Reynolds, a pattern designer whose previous clients include Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Kate Spade.

Their ongoing collaboration with artists illustrates ROOM’s focus on innovative design and puts an emphasis on the company’s commitment to inspire better, happier, more creative workplaces.

Learn more about ROOM at getroom.com.

from Design MilkDesign Milk https://design-milk.com/room-brings-a-modern-twist-to-the-classic-phone-booth/