Garrick (00:01.935) Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. Now we're introducing a new format that we will use every now and then when we want to do a deep dive on a particular topic with some experts in the studio. And these we are going to call the Curious About formats. And the first one is called something like Curious About, the future of work and environments. Now we'll probably change the title because we've been having that discussion. We want to make it something that really gets into

we're talking about today which really is about people and environments and so on and we're delighted to be joined today by Key Portilla Kawamura and Ali Ganjavian, architects and design geniuses behind the award -winning architectural practice and the incredible studio Banana Design Studio. Hi guys!

Ali Ganjavian (00:50.808) Hey, Garrick, nice to be here. Thanks for having us.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (00:52.125) Hi Garrick.

Garrick (00:54.396) My name is Garrick Jones, one of the co -hosts of the Curious Advantage podcast. And today I'm here with Simon Brown, one of my co -authors of Curious Advantage.

Simon Brown (01:03.086) Hi everyone.

Garrick (01:05.625) Kay and Ali, welcome to the Curious About podcast. We're delighted to have you with us. In this idea, we're exploring the idea of the future of work and environments, which you guys are, I would say, at the center of these incredible projects, which I'd love you to tell us about. And give us some of the ideas that you've been, and give us some the, and give us an idea of some of the projects that you've been doing.

that really gets to the heart of what work and the future work and the environments that support that are all about for you. Can you tell us about some of your projects?

Ali Ganjavian (01:49.55) Sure, Garik. First of all, thanks a lot for having us on the show. It's a pleasure to be here and to talk about some of our passions and our curiosities that we've been exploring over the years. If I just go back a little bit, the foundation of where Kay and I came together is at the epicenter of impacting people's lives. And we spend most of our lives at work, and we spend more time with colleagues than we do with partners. And the tendency is growing.

We spend more and more time working. And the question we asked ourselves many years ago is how can we drive impact and value for both people and organizations to make the most of that experience and opportunity? May it be an opportunity to learn, to connect, to collaborate, to connect to communities. And that's really what got us started in this space. Our greater purpose, as we always say, is

I'll do that again. Our greater purpose, as we always say, is enabling people to progress. And we've decided to focus amongst a series of disciplines, amongst them the focus on place. How can place enable people to progress? And I'll hand to Kay to give us a little bit of a more of a landscape of some of work that we have been doing to drive that vision forward.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (03:15.873) Hi Garry, hi Simon, thanks for having us. Indeed, as Ali mentioned, for us that notion, the importance of place is at the epicenter of what we do. It's also something that's being eroded a lot in recent years through digitalization and there's this understanding that we don't need to meet physically.

Simon Brown (03:17.828) Thank

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (03:43.623) that we can do everything in a virtual, distant, remote sphere. Whereas we believe a lot of things can be accelerated, can happen in a digital sphere. Agreed. Physical environments still matter a lot. Something deeply embedded in our human nature as social animals. We like talking a lot about tribes. Humans are social animals. We thrive.

in tribes. know, tribe maybe, if you remove the very primitive association that it might have this word, think of tribes also as guilds. Think of tribes as a bunch of people who share a cause, who share a purpose, and in the best of cases, work environments are that. Group of people who share values, principles, who share

I believe a higher purpose here together or they are somewhere together in order to collaborate, to join forces for a common cause. So we like that association with something very primitive to human nature, this tribal aspect. So all these years we've developed projects where we have tried to...

demystify this notion that the work environment is all about efficiency, productivity. Of course, it is a professional environment. People need to be efficient and productive. But that's a very, if you want, Tayloristic approach to thinking of the work environment. We believe that there's that is even more important, that sense of community, how placemaking helps community building.

And once again, as humans, we thrive when we feel part of a community, we feel that sense of belonging, we feel we do our contribution adds value to what we're doing together. So over the years, we have worked with some of the most amazing organizations in the world, private companies from consulting management, sorry, from management consulting through technology.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (06:08.763) As well as NGOs and even public administration. We find NGOs and public administration, people who work there, they're really purpose driven. They know why they're working there. It's not just a job for them. So it's also very rewarding to work with this type of groups of guilds, if you want. They have the right conditions that enable us to very easily

create environments, tools for that community to crystallize, to shine. So to mention a few, we've worked with Ernst & Young. We've created their first digital innovation, next generation in digital innovation environment. That was very much about bringing together brains with different disciplines, different capabilities.

allowing them to do their magic by creating a white canvas with the right tooling. We've also worked with Nestle, creating the largest food and beverage accelerator in the world. Again, an environment where there's lots of talent condensed and you just need to give them the right conditions for that talent to flourish. So in a way, half of the success of our projects depends on

the actual the human factor on who comes and uses them.

Simon Brown (07:43.14) So much there to dive into, lots of questions that conjure up in my mind. But maybe starting with one you mentioned around sort of digitization. And so there's one school of thought that says, now, and particularly after COVID, we've converted everything into digital. We've demonstrated that we can collaborate, we can work together, we can learn through digital. And then there's another school of thought that is, we need to get everyone back into our offices.

Garrick (07:44.671) Mm -hmm.

Ali Ganjavian (08:11.758) Thank you.

Simon Brown (08:12.088) that time to socialize, to build community, share ideas. So from your experiences and your research, what's the power of those physical spaces versus just trying to do everything through the digital medium?

Ali Ganjavian (08:29.846) You know, we talk about purpose -driven place and every place has a purpose. And if I just humanize this, you know, if we look at our domestic environment, you know, where we come together at home is not the same place as we spend time alone at home, where we communicate and engage or cook at home is not the same place where we dine at home.

Where we sleep at home is not the same place where we cleanse at home. So if we look at a domestic environment, there are multiple layers of purpose and place and tool that support that, which ultimately leads us to what we do as humans really well, which are rituals and habits. So when someone says, everything can happen in my kitchen, well, I would question that. Everything can't happen in my kitchen. And this is the same with digitalization. Everything can happen online.

No, not everything can happen online. Today we happen to be in a studio together online and this, have the privilege of being able to do this in a very agile and fluid way together. However, there are things that can't happen online. And I think if we just apply that philosophy of as humans connecting to what Kay was saying, you know, as tribes we would do certain things in certain ways. As humans today in our dwellings, we do certain things in certain ways. So if we focus on purpose driven place,

that allows us to really curate the place at the service of the purpose rather than the other way around. It's like, well, we're all going to do exactly the same thing in the same place consistently. So as leaders, we have the responsibility to really understand, like, what is the purpose that we're trying to achieve and what place do we need to support?

Garrick (10:14.155) I have a few of your projects in mind. just to describe a little bit for people who listening, so they get a sense of how different your place is. You've talked about the EY momentum space, which I think then became the model for the wave spaces they put around the world. And the other one is the Rolex center that you built in Lausanne, and specifically its library.

And then there was a fantastic workplace that you received an award for in Madrid. Can you describe a little bit about what makes these spaces different? Perhaps start with the Rolex one, which is just why is the Rolex Center so unique and what was your approach for

Garrick (11:46.403) of your projects come to mind, it'd be great if you could describe those a little bit for the people who listening, just to give them a sense of how different and what's special about these places that you design. For example, the things that come to my mind are the EY Momentum Center that you created, which then became the model for the wave spaces around the world. And then the Rolex Center in Lausanne, specifically the library, the approach you took there, which is...

astonishing and unique and very successful. And then there's another one I have in mind, which is the award winning office spaces that you created for an advertising group in Madrid. But if you could perhaps start with the Rolex, just tell us a little bit about what's behind that and how that worked just to bring some of these products to life.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (12:34.941) Sure, Garrick. Maybe before we tell you about that, something that connects to what Simon was asking earlier, something that we still have not managed and is very difficult to recreate in a digital environment where everything is so prescriptive. You join a call, you know exactly for what, you know, who is there, for what length and what's the purpose of that call. Something that we cannot recreate still in a digital environment is serendipity. Accidents.

Things that happen by chance. That's very easy to recreate or to trigger that in a physical environment. So when we talk about serendipity, we talk about chance, we talk about surprise, we talk about feeding curiosity, curating, as Ali was mentioning earlier, curating experiences that trigger, yes, I guess, the right side of the brain. So an alternative train of thought that comes.

disrupts your very linear, very prescribed daily agenda. So that's something that we really strive for, to create environments that trigger that sense of chance, serendipity, curiosity. And before we tell you about some of the examples that you mentioned, we're not forgetting the question, but there's a great story and we love stories. and I are all into stories.

We believe the best places are the ones that create stories. If you can tell a story about a place, that's a great place. There's a great story we love telling, talking about this at the MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They've got this long corridor called the infinity corridor. Well, it's a humble brag, it's only 250 meters long, but they call it infinity.

Simon Brown (14:04.174) Thank

Simon Brown (14:29.215) you

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (14:30.045) It's got lined up, it cuts through the main building, I think it's called building 10 and a few other buildings. all along there are these labs, material sciences, molecular biology, organic chemistry, you name it. All the most important labs are along this infinity corridor. What's very humbling, I've been there several times, what's very humbling is to walk along this corridor and see the number of Nobel Prize winners that have worked.

those labs. It's crazy in 250 meter there might be 50, I don't know exact number, Nobel Prize winners. Now there was once an interview where they asked several of those Nobel Prize winners what is it that makes the perfect environment for them to be able to conduct that research. Is it the amazing infrastructure in their lab? Is it access to you know best in class

Simon Brown (15:00.802) Wow.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (15:29.415) talent and researchers, and many of them agreed that the most important thing was the corridor. And specifically about the corridor, the coffee machine in the corridor. Because that's where they would bump into each other. And the material scientist might be discussing something with a PhD researcher, and then the molecular biologist overhears the conversation.

Simon Brown (15:36.877) Wow.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (15:57.765) And then they scribble something on the wall because there is a black, it's been painted with black, blackboard paint, the wall of the coffee corner. And then before you know that they're, you know, coming up with the next Nobel Prize discovery, it's very difficult to recreate that in a digital environment. Of course, things are progressing, but that's the power of place and that's the power of serendipity. Now to your question, Garrick.

Garrick (16:26.671) Yeah

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (16:28.478) We love triggering that sense of chance in our projects. To give the example of the Rolex Learning Center, where we created a very intimate reading and the knowledge discovery environment. We wanted to go beyond just exhibiting and displaying books in the most efficient way.

We wanted that the experience of being in that place was feeding the curiosity of the user. And we made it purposely a bit like a labyrinth. You you're constantly wandering through the different pods we call them, where the books and the documents are being archived and displayed. And you never have an overview. You're always discovering. You might bump into someone. There are secret nukes.

And we love what that creates in the psyche of people. They go there and they have that sense of every time I go there it's going to be a different experience because I will discover the place in a different way. It's not all clear and single -minded. There are many ways in which you can experience that place.

So that's an aspect that repeats in many of our projects. You were mentioning earlier this other project we did for an advertising agency in Madrid, Macan World Group. We treated this former factory as if it was a village with little huts. And we made them purposely a little chaotic so that again,

You would bump into each other, you would discover almost by chance what another team was doing. You could overhear conversations. You create nooks and little pots. That's something that for us is very deeply embedded in our understanding of great workplaces.

Simon Brown (18:39.02) interesting because I've never really thought about this until I moved to Switzerland and was on the Novartis campus there and learning about how that was designed and Marco Serra was the campus architect there and my understanding of it is that it was designed around having a main street much like you described, the corridor at MIT where people would come out of the buildings and they would come onto that street and you would then have those fortuitous meetings, that serendipitous

connection and you would then be able to create magic from those connections. And similar to the coffee machine in that corridor, have heard of curious connections where people have come together and shared the idea of what they're working on and connected to perhaps seemingly disparate ideas. And that's where the magic happens and there's new discoveries and things.

Garrick (19:34.702) Mm.

Simon Brown (19:35.328) Yeah, I'm convinced that the physical space can make a difference around those serendipitous meetings that when you you inject some curiosity, get great magic happening.

Garrick (19:47.747) reminds me of the Warburg Institute as well. know, Arbi Warburg in the 1930s had this incredible library which was rescued from Germany and brought to London where it's now sits in its own building and Institute at UCL. And the thing about the library was he had books from all manner of disciplines. And what he did, Arbi Warburg was put on...

books together by subject, but not by author. So you might find a book on Botticelli and around it were other books about medieval art or other books about contemporary art at the time, all in the same place. So you would have, he was looking for that idea of serendipity where you would find things that were similar but different enough to kind of inform each other. And they took it further, I think.

In 1934, they created a system where on the spines of all the books there are these color codes so that you can find pink, which might be for art history, and red, which might be for a particular form of some part of art history or so on, or inquiry. And then you can find other books within the library, which have all the pinks. You can go and do a recent look at all the pinks or look at all the reds or look at all the greens. And what you have are like

a sort of hypertext, pre -hypertext way of looking into and getting into the library and finding things that you would otherwise find. I love this idea that you created a space where scientists and non -scientists who have very different ways of wanting to research and find things in the library in different ways. Some people are laser beam. They will go in, they get the thing they want, they leave. Other people want to browse. And you provided a place where those people can

meet up and mix and have serendipitous sort of outcomes or experiences. The other thing I always think about your work is play. Can you talk a little bit about the sense of play? Because that seems very important to you too.

Ali Ganjavian (22:30.746) Awesome. Connecting to the art of play, I think as designers you...

Garrick (22:32.015) Great.

Ali Ganjavian (22:42.392) You're somehow a neutral figure when you're working with these large organizations. You're that you, know, that typically it's like, hey, this is like the most exciting thing we're to be working on. And you get a group of playful people in the room with aspiration of pushing certain boundaries. And I think that I connect the art of play in some of the environments that we create, which is subtle, right? It's very subtle, but it's, if it's present, it's really about drawing individuals in and connecting to.

you know, a basic human behavior, which is play. It's probably one of the first things we do as children play. Because play is a vehicle for discovery and driving curiosity. Because when you play, you have the opportunity to fail, you have the opportunity to connect, you have the opportunity to talk, and you feel safe when you play. And when you create environments where people feel safe, that's really when magic happens. And when I say safe, it's a little bit like...

You when you arrive to Manhattan, you know your way around because not because it's safe, you know your way around because there's a logic in place. There's a way of navigating in place. And when you offer that to people through physical environment, incredible things happen. also connect this to our co -design process, which is very, which is playful, which is tactile, which is a way of demystifying physical environment. Cause you know, you, when you look at physical environment, you're like, my God, this is

a mammoth task as opposed to an incredible opportunity. Now, how do you co -design and how do you extract knowledge from our users? And I think it's important to highlight this. We're talking about us as the creators of these environments, but we really honor our clients because through a co -design process, it's ultimately a creation at the service of their needs. We are creating...

attractive environments so they're compelling enough for users to be able to use them and most importantly use them consistently and come back to them. And that can only happen when you actually become like a detective, an agent within the organization to understand how they work. Because the examples that you gave in the Rolex Learning Center, McCann, Erickson, headquarters, the United Nations, the physical environments.

Ali Ganjavian (25:07.148) that are incredibly different and they serve a very different purpose. But the only way we can really frame that is understanding what that organization needs, what are they looking for, and how do we reinforce that physical environment with play as an example, but with purpose ultimately. So the role of play is critical for users to feel safe and it's critical for us to be able to get to a meaningful outcome.

in terms of a project.

Garrick (25:38.309) Can you give us a sense of how does that manifest in an environment that you've been involved in, for example? What is it about an environment that encourages people to play?

Ali Ganjavian (25:51.558) I think it depends on the organization. the example you gave of, for a management consultant, the art of play is much more in the space of discovery, learning, connecting. And in a physical environment, when you create something, when someone walks in, they're like, what is this? How does this work? Offering that sense of discovery, we tend to walk into the same meeting room with the same setup.

And there is very little newness in our day to day when we enter a physical environment. So when you create a physical environment that offers something, a sense of discovery, it's a catalyst. And an example for this would be very different for an advertising agency, which is highly creative. The folks put their feet on the table when they're working to a management consultant who is guiding, you know,

Fortune 500 company and navigating through a physical space. And I think it's important to highlight that what we're compelled by is the layers of, what is the purpose of this environment? What is the physicality of this environment? What are the rituals within this environment? Which is something that most people don't talk about. What are the rituals? Because ultimately people come together to conduct rituals and

for a management consultant to guide their clients through a new experience or law firm to guide their clients through a new experience is very different to an advertising agency or a pharmaceutical company. And play will mean different things for different people and for different organizations.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (27:33.829) In character.

Simon Brown (27:34.284) So as we're guiding people to come back into the office environment, there a need therefore that we completely rethink what that office environment is actually for? So bringing in that sense of play, but also coming back to what you said earlier, Ali, having different spaces for different purposes and you don't clean in the kitchen or cleanse in the kitchen or sleep in the kitchen, et cetera.

If we're going to be sitting in the office on Teams calls all day, then is that the best use of that space? And that's the sort of criticism I hear around coming back into the office. So do we need to then reinvent the office in a very different way? Bringing in play, bringing in the creating spaces for the rituals that should happen together in person rather than things that can be done.

digitally. What are you seeing as the trends and how you're working with organisations now on maybe reinventing that space?

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (28:40.422) That's an excellent question Simon. I think the key word is intentionality. We almost need to relearn how to work and why we work. We work with many organizations and when they come and we start having a conversation they say well our remote policy is two days per week or three days per week or...

Sorry, we say, politely say, that's bullshit. That's not giving you any intentionality. That's just giving you a quantitative rule to where people sit. For three days per week, they might sit here in your premises and two days somewhere else. That's giving you no sense of intentionality. People will not behave differently. Thanks to that.

Garrick (29:18.681) Hehehe.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (29:38.893) that policy. You need to make it intentional, you need to train and people need to develop the sensitivity of the added value that there is for them and for the organization when they come physically together and also the added value of not being together, just being somewhere else and getting on with your tasks. So I think that

That sense of intentionality and making people develop that sensitivity, that's a tough mission. Because that's what many people call change management. And play can play a role there. For lack of better words. And that's bringing to mind an example that may sound banal, but afterwards we reflected on it.

and actually it was almost like a stroke of genius. We were working with an organization, Intergovernmental Policymaking Think Tank. And we were talking with the leader, the leader thought, well, the physical environment is uninspiring, we need to change something. So that's what we did. We made something that is much more attuned with their purpose, their mission, their brand. They interact with lots of...

other organizations, or how do you create an environment that also offers an experience of hospitality almost. All those boxes were ticked. However, at the end of this whole process, their own employees, the ones who making the policies, those people who are very brainy, they were still sitting together in the same configuration as always when they were coming. I said, this is not helping me. I need people to mix more when they are here.

When they're in their homes, they can get on with their tasks. But when they're here, they should mix, they should learn from each other. We're not managing that. We agreed, well, we need some chance here. We need people to bump into each other more. But again, they had not developed that sensitivity or that second nature thinking of, today I'm going to sit somewhere else with people that I don't know, so that maybe something unexpected can happen.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (32:01.585) that was not happening. So we had this almost silly idea of putting at the entrance of the workplace a roulette. And we call this the workplace roulette. You come in the morning and you spin the roulette. Who doesn't love spinning a roulette, right? You're there to win something. You never lose when you spin the roulette.

Garrick (32:23.137) I have got into trouble in the past, but never mind.

Simon Brown (32:26.826) That's the whole other story.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (32:27.143) Thank

Well, whatever comes out of this roulette is good. So we installed this roulette and of course it looked like a proper roulette and people love it. They come in the morning when they come, they spin the roulette and it says, you go there today. And they go happily before they would go hesitantly to a place that they had not planned to go. And what it did...

Garrick (32:57.529) So this mixed them up, sort of randomly assigned them to different spaces in the environment.

Key Portilla Kawamura Studio Banana) (32:59.439) Exactly.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (33:03.581) And of course, that's not a solution forever. We put that in place for three months and then people, before you realize, they actually started loving sitting next to people that they were not normally working with. And then the day we removed the roulette, well, people didn't need the roulette. They were naturally going to random places. the leader of this organization was, you know, beyond happy. So it only took something like 200 francs.

Garrick (33:25.081) That's us.

Simon Brown (33:33.198) Yeah.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (33:34.077) change behavior. Of course, again, you need to find the early adopters, not everyone comes in and spins the roulette on day one. But yeah, it took about a week for everyone to be spinning the roulette and it took three months for people's behavior and sensitivity to change. So all of that, all of that, sorry, to say that we need that intentionality and that play can help in that behavior change.

Simon Brown (34:04.92) Fascinating. And yeah, I can see the how that would be effective is the you go into an office, you perceive that everyone is that sort of knows each other and is sort of sat in there in their tribes and, and therefore you would be imposing upon that and our own insecurities would lead us to you know, need to go and sit by myself over here if I don't know anyone, whereas suddenly you've created the permission to go and sit within a group and make

In reality, probably that group is also going to be mixed up with people. yeah, our mind guides us into a security of maybe everyone knows each other. I don't want to be the outsider. I don't want to intrude. So I'll go off and sit in the area where there isn't anyone fascinating. And all for a couple of hundred francs.

So how do the projects that you do build that sense of community and identity? So I know the language you use around sort of oceans of community building. maybe what are some of the ways that you've worked to build a sense of community within an organization, within a team, using the physical space to do that?

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (35:22.671) Okay, I'll kick it off and I'm sure Ali will have lots to say here as well. As I mentioned earlier, we love this concept of guilds, this medieval concept of people coming together for a shared interest. Even sometimes people who in the daily business may be competing with each other. The guild sort of bridges that gap and creates that sense of

Co -opetition, like where you're there for a common larger purpose. Place, as we mentioned earlier, is super important. Creating an environment that is neutral enough for everyone to feel they can belong there. And at the same time, with the right prompts and the right props almost,

like in theater, to trigger a sense of appropriation of the space. think that appropriation is really important. People need to understand the space belongs to them. When you're in a place where you feel like an alien, it's going to be very difficult for you to bond with the other people. And as you mentioned earlier, Simon, with this roulette example, the moment you understood or these people understood, those other people

Simon Brown (36:46.414) Mm.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (36:50.397) who are sitting there are also there by chance. Then we have something in common. We're here all by chance. So that's an example. Rituals are really important here. And that's a layer that we insist a lot when we work with our clients. It's not just the place. It's especially the people and especially

the rituals that those people, the habits that those people develop in that place. So we have found ourselves in many projects developing, designing rituals. However bizarre that might sound. Rituals that connect.

Garrick (37:35.737) I'm so curious about that. I'd love you to talk a little bit more. What does it mean to design a ritual?

K Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (37:42.212) Ali's gonna tell you all about it.

Simon Brown (37:44.495) you

Ali Ganjavian (37:51.714) Yeah, so if I connect to what Kay was saying, think at the forefront it's really important to recognize that organizations are complex, right? And we know organizations and the bigger organizations, get the more complex they get. Place provides a framework, as we just mentioned. Tools create the human scale vehicle and sometimes they're physical tools and sometimes they're digital tools. But this is all...

Simon Brown (37:52.525) Yes.

Ali Ganjavian (38:17.102) put on stage or the performance kicks off when the ritual is embodied. And let's just give a few examples of rituals. How does a physical environment and physical tools and digital tools enable people to have a daily stand up? How does a physical environment allow people to easily interconnect with one another, be it over the space creating it?

spaces between spaces. I'll just give an example of some of these. Typically, historically, when we have meetings, we'll have meetings in the meeting room. Well, nowadays we have meetings in cafes. Ultimately, it's how does one create a place that solves the things people want to come to the office for? Solves the things that people want to come to the office for. And we all need rituals to be able to embody that. The roulette example was

We all have a common language, we all do this and consequently we do this at the beginning through a trigger, but then we do it naturally because we've been given the permission to embody and act on these rituals. And these rituals are very, if I exemplify these from a human level, again, the fact that we all have daily rituals at home like brushing our teeth, this is, know, it's a ritual that we've adopted for dental hygiene, but then there are rituals that we adopt

for behavioral hygiene, for community building within organizations. And these become incredibly valuable because they reinforce that drive of the organization, bringing those peoples together within the organization. I just want to highlight that it is, organizations are complex, places frame behavior, tools enable action, but rituals really bring that to life.

And sometimes two of these things are done. Sometimes we provide the tools and the place. It's like, hey, look, new technology, good luck. But actually, what are those? And I think if we just connect back to EY, when we created Wavespace, it's about what is a sequence of experience that a user goes through when they enter a physical space, to the point that what might they eat? What might their first interaction with the screen be? What's the first question they're seeing on a digital board? How does that digital board guide them to the next digital board?

Ali Ganjavian (40:36.066) When do they connect to the next participant? What data are they being exposed to? And it's navigating. And I think, let's not forget, as human beings, we are curious to discover. Now, how do we create rituals that enable us to discover in a physical place is really the greater question. And one size does not fit all. Every organization is different, and every organization has different drivers. But those are the catalysts that we drive for.

to create an attractive environment for users to come into and say, I left today. By coming here, I extracted value from this place, as opposed to by coming today, here I sat on my computer and did what I do at home.

Garrick (41:19.983) So these places are really in the service, as you say, intentionality, it's in the service of what we're trying to achieve. And then the rituals are the way that we create new behaviors within these spaces. Are these rituals, I mean, guess spinning a roulette wheel, as you say, becomes a ritual. come in, like you make a cup of coffee, you come in, you spin a roulette wheel. So it's...

It's about being intentional about creating new rituals, new things in the space, new objects, new things that, as you say, body what you're trying to achieve. I mean, these are huge concepts about... It reminds me of a group of Japanese artists called Nomukura and Gintz. don't know if they... know, the Nomukura and Gintz did a lot of work on crazy...

completely new types of environments. They created an environment in which you had to be upside down in order to navigate. They created environments which were softly padded but were spiky. They created environments where as you moved through the corridor you'd be twisted to a point where you had to then you had to kind of walk sideways and then grab it. It was a little bit like a jungle gym for adults.

But this, and one of the titles of their projects was about living forever. And they believe that our bodies were informed by the environments that we lived in and their art project was about how do you create an environment which enables us to live forever? Completely different thing. But that's a diversion for me. I I'm coming back to curiosity and...

how we are creative and how you guys are curious. I'd love to really start to explore some of the ideas about the human aspects and the digital realities and placemaking for community building in these hybrid environments.

Garrick (43:27.065) This series is about how individuals and organizations use the power of curiosity to drive success in their lives and businesses, especially in the context of our new digital reality. It brings to life the latest understanding from neuroscience, anthropology, history, art, business, psychology, behaviorism, and architecture. About curiosity, it makes these useful for everyone. The curious about format enables us to take a deep dive into a topic we want to know more about.

and we'll publish ebooks and have active discussions in chat areas to grow our knowledge and satisfy all of our curiosity.

Kay and Ali, if there were principles or a list of things that define the future of work, what would they be? mean, what is the future of work? And how do these principles do you think relate to our future, our longevity, wellbeing, behaviors, and the human aspects of the work you're talking about? What is the future of work in your mind?

Key Kawamura (Studio Banana) (44:35.965) That's a very big question, Garak, you threw in there.

Garrick (44:38.167) Sorry.

Ali Ganjavian (44:47.854) Can I connect to sometimes to look into the future of work? We have the tendency of looking at the where work comes from, right? And it's crazy to think that actually the way we work in offices today originates from factories. It's crazy to think that we as knowledge possessors work in exactly the same way as someone who would make nails, handmade nails in a production line.

Ali Ganjavian (45:17.934) What we are today is a consequence of what we were yesterday. We just had the privilege of the last 30 years of a crazy growth in digitization and the role of technology has completely shifted. However, we're still, many of us are still sitting on desks and rows and office buildings and many of us working doing the same from home. And this takes us to the future of work really is about how do we create value for people and for business.

That's the ultimate. How do we create value for people and for business? And we're seeing the value for people changing. Some people are driven by knowledge, some people are driven by freedom, some people are driven by mobility, and the value of people is changing. But we are all serving business. So at the core is how do we create value for people and business? The variable are there's different people and there's different businesses. So the question that we ask is what kind of places solve the things that people come into work for?

How do we make that attractive enough? And how do we make it meaningful enough for them to come back? So if someone is coming in because they learn, how do we make that meaningful and engaging enough? If someone's coming in to connect and to grow their community, how do we make that meaningful and engaging enough? I think the key is for them to come back. It's not just for them to come once, it's for them to come back and see the value in the way they're coming back.

which connects back to creating value for people and value for business.

Simon Brown (46:55.256) And I guess then how, from a practical perspective, can someone listening to this apply some of those principles into their workplace? So does this require a complete rebuild of the office space from scratch or huge investment in refurbishment and renovation? Or are there practical things that people can do with sort of limited effort, budget?

in order to realize some of the principles that we're talking about.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (47:30.065) That's very good question Simon. Which I'll answer in a second. But the answer is no. can take piecemeal action. So one can go step by step, transform. We don't believe that things can radically change from one day to the other in an organization. You break organizations. You can break an organization. What leaders strive for.

is to transform organizations to make them more purpose -driven, vision -focused, mission -focused. So that requires gradual transformation and you need to take the right steps in the right order. Now, something that is a reality is what we call the hybridization of space. Spaces are becoming more hybrid.

The word hybrid is a bit everywhere. You've got hybrid cars and you've got hybrid work. Many people think that hybrid work is just, you know, are you in the office or how are you at home? We believe that hybrid places...

Simon Brown (48:37.444) Mm.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (48:41.453) very rich because as a matter of fact our life happens in places that are are mixed that have different nature like we might all four of us at the moment be in domestic environments but we are conducting work so is this a work environment or is it is a domestic environment and this is just a very basic example but we see how

many work environments are becoming more like homes but also more like hotels, that sense of hospitality. And we're seeing also how hospitals are becoming more like homes to create that sense of domesticity. So that hybridization of space is a mega trend that is happening, sometimes in a very pervasive and almost subtle way.

People don't realize, but it is happening. We're mixing the codes and the languages of different realities because life is mixed up by definition. Now, something that we ask often our clients and the leaders, especially in the organizations is project yourself into the future in 30 years. What's clear is that you don't want your work environment to feel like a factory.

what Ali was mentioning earlier, that factory -inspired productivity -focused workflow -driven work environments, that's a thing of the past, way beyond that. Now, in the future, is your work environment like a school, where people come to learn, to upgrade their skills, to train, to exchange knowledge?

Or is your work environment like a marketplace where people come to trade ideas and it's buzzing and it's all about the exchange, the power of exchange? Or is your work environment like a theater where you are almost recreating scenarios in a safe environment? You're creating like a replica of the world and you're testing more like a lab.

Key Kawamura (Studio Banana) (51:02.523) Or is your work environment like a spa? Where you come to recharge your batteries. You don't go to the workplace to deplete your batteries. You come to the workplace to recharge your batteries. Or is the work environment a flagship? You know, like a flagship store where you come to...

Garrick (51:12.838) I like that one.

Simon Brown (51:14.564) Good.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (51:30.609) have an immersive experience into the latest concepts, services and products that you're offering to your audience and you can welcome your partners and your clients and totally embed them. Or is it a mix of these things? But these are very different things to a factory. The school. Yeah.

Garrick (51:48.451) Hmm. I don't exactly a school, a marketplace, a theater, a lab for testing a spa, a flagship. I love all these metaphors and scenarios. And the other one that comes to mind is a production space, like something, a place where you can experiment and do rapid prototyping of all your ideas very quickly, whether they're sort of when you're doing white collar work or whatever those the categories are these days, but

Simon Brown (51:49.005) Mm.

Garrick (52:16.855) a place where you can make stuff together with other people. All of that. You talk about hybrid places. Do you think that all of these things need to be present or do we turn up the volume on one depending on the culture? What do think?

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (52:31.738) Our experience is that the leaders cannot pin it down to one, of course. But by triggering that thought, you get a sense of what's important for that organization's vision. We want to be more experimental. OK, so we need to push the theater, because the theater is like a place where you can experiment and test and prototype different ideas. You can bring better testers.

Or, no, for us, partnerships are super important. Okay, so you actually want to immerse your customers and your partners into your universe. So let's make it more like a flagship. So typically they might say one or two of these vectors are more important than the other ones, maybe less. There's no right or wrong here, of course. It's all about testing, testing the waters. And then, you know, back to your question, Simon, what can one do?

As a first step and something that Garrick always loves saying is a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step, right? What's that first step? So you've made that projection into the future. We want to be more like a theater and like a marketplace. Okay, now take your work environment right now. What changes can you trigger? Physical, but also behavioral. Let's not forget.

Garrick (53:41.057) You know me too well.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (54:00.241) We need to transform also the ways of working and people's mindset. So who are your early adopters? If you had just very limited means, where would you invest first in order to trigger that shift? And gather feedback quickly. So we talk often about being in perpetual beta mode.

There's never a complete work environment. The work environment is continuously evolving. So it's important that you monitor the things that are working, the things that are not working. Try things out. Again, find your better testers, the ones who won't be afraid of testing new things, new behaviors. Gather feedback, evaluate, move on.

Garrick (54:51.439) Can I just, Kay, is that a perpetual beta mode, like beta testing, like being perpetually in that, let's test, let's see what works, let's move on, let's improve that continual evolution.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (55:09.531) Yes, and to put it in very banal financial terms, it's more about OPEX than it is about CAPEX. If that makes any sense to the folks listening.

Garrick (55:13.37) Mm.

Garrick (55:25.187) tell us tell us the difference between op -ex and capex

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (55:28.879) It's not about capital expenditure, it's not about making one big bang investment and then expecting to have, you know, to amortize it over five years. It's about continuous improvements. It's almost part of the maintenance of your organization to invest on the ways of working, on the environments and on the tools. It's part of the maintenance. You need to keep it constantly upgraded and updated.

So we believe more in that perpetual evolution, that makes sense.

Simon Brown (56:07.662) So maybe one final question, as I know we're coming close to time. if I come back to that sort of environment of the future and is it going to be a school where we can learn? Is it going to be like a marketplace where we trade ideas? Is it going to be a spa where we recharge our batteries? So if I put on my sort of skeptical work hat, then it's like, well, surely this is an environment we're going to do work in as opposed to do all of those things.

Just that, and maybe that comes back to Ali to your piece around, know, are we thinking of the workplace as a factory or in historical terms? Does that mean we need to think about work differently that work in the future is actually learning, sharing ideas, collaborating, you know, bringing energy to ourselves and to our teams. And we need to, we need to have that new mental model of what work actually is. And then.

create the environment for that rather than having a historical view of what work actually means.

Ali Ganjavian (57:10.378) I think in this conversation what we're doing is pushing different boundaries. I think that as a living organism, and I think sometimes we need to remind ourselves that business is a living organism. They're alive, they're in constant change, and they need different things. They need sun, they need water, they need soil changing. So the example that we want to emphasize here is not one extreme or another.

But what we like to talk about is creating memorable moments within your physical environment that define its identity. And that might be if we connect to the learning, maybe we double down on the learning and what this means is this physical environment induces 30 % more learning. But there are also places where I can have a call. There are still places where I can meet people. There are still places where I can dine.

but it's doubling down on the learning. It's creating that sense of physical attraction of the reason why I go there. And it doesn't mean I go there to learn 100 % of my time because then ultimately learning is typically an input. Where do I create output to create value for the organization? So it's creating these memorable moments within organizations that become catalysts and have a slightly more expansive, catalystic approach.

by emphasizing that, you know, that behavior that's...

Ali Ganjavian (58:47.864) that flavor extends itself into some of the rituals that might be happening in a meeting. That flavor extends itself in some of interactions you might have in a corridor. So I think that it's important to recognize that evolution happens progressively. At the same time, it's critical to be able to be quite bold with gestures and say, need, my organization needs to learn more and consequently I need to. My organization needs to explore more and consequently I need to. But doesn't mean, you know.

this wipe everything out and start again, there's many years of human behavior and history that have led us to the way we work today and we can't just, you know.

cousins start afresh it has to evolve.

Garrick (59:33.157) You are listening to Curious About the Future of Work and Environments, a deep dive podcast from the authors of the Curious Advantage book and podcast series. Today, we're joined by Kay Portia -Kawamura and Ali Ganjavian, who are architects and turned creative entrepreneurs. Co -founders of Studio Banana are known for projects like the famous ostrich pillow, which is sold in the Museum of Art. Since 2006, they focused on transdisciplinary creativity, design -led innovation, and education.

They sought out the speakers and design thinking coaches having presented at places like Stanford University, the Guggenheim, Bilbao, and Tokyo Design and Speak. Their work has been exhibited globally, including at Burma, New York, and the Triennial in Milan. I have to ask, if there was one thing that each of you would want to leave with our listeners today, what would it be? Because I know it's a big question, but, Kay, what would be the one thing?

you would want to leave us with.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (01:00:36.989) I'd like to invite the audience to think and to take the courage to think. When you're listening this probably in a car or on the go, doing your groceries, whatever. Next time you're sitting and doing what you consider work, what first thing would you change in your rituals or your physical environment?

Doesn't need to be in what we call the office, can be in your home office, can be just the way you sit and stand in front of the computer. What is it that you can change immediately tomorrow or this afternoon, if you're listening to this in the morning, that puts you in a posture that is more intentional? So if you want to be more open to collaboration, how can you appear more open to collaboration towards your peers, your...

your colleagues. So what is it that you're going to change now?

Garrick (01:01:43.171) UK and Ali.

Ali Ganjavian (01:01:45.228) Yeah, I would invite leaders of organizations to spend time understanding how people work and listening in on how people work within the organization. And I mean with boots on the ground, going through different floors, walking through different corridors, listening to different conversations, hearing those conversations, be it a coffee table, be it an elevator, understand how the organization works.

and identify what things they would like to transform within that organization and how that might take place. Because ultimately connecting to potentially new rituals that can emphasize and amplify what that organization becomes. leaders to really listen and understand how people work. And when I say listen and understand, I mean with their own ears, not through a report that they get submitted.

I think many leaders are surprised when we do work with them. They're like, I had no idea our teams worked in such fashion. It's definitely insightful.

Garrick (01:02:53.817) Fantastic. Thank you for a wide -ranging and fascinating conversation about the future of work and spaces and places. Now I'm going to attempt to do something that Simon does like a master. He's my hero in doing this, which is kind of synthesize some of the things we've been talking about today. I've been frantically making notes, but some of the things we've talked about included place making for community building, hybrid environments.

how it's important to co -design with the people who work in the environment and allowing that co -design process to become a catalyst for change. You talked about place and the importance of place and the erosion of place in the digital world, but how that is probably more important than ever and how coming together in the digital realm allows us different ways of coming together in the physical realm and what that means. And in order to achieve that, you talk about what makes

space is different and the tribes that inhabit those places and what goes on in them, the rituals, you talked about serendipity and play and the physical environment where there's a sense of discovery within them depending on the context on the organization each is unique. New spaces for a new age and trends in reinventing what the workspace is and most importantly intentionality, what does it mean when we get together

And how does that inform the new ways of getting together? You we've moved from sort of a factory setting, we've moved to white collar working, we've moved to these kind of spaces for churning out work into a new place with different kinds of intentionality required when we get together. You talked about how you change behavior through play and you mentioned the roulette wheel that enable people to create new ways of being and going and meeting other people.

and communities, oceans of community building, and how that links to guilds, and the idea of guilds and people working together for intentional outcomes, tools, being curious, and where we spend most of our time is the workplace, so another reason for us to get involved in this. How do we create value in these places, and what does it mean to create meaningful experiences in these places?

Garrick (01:05:17.369) Hybrid places are part of our future and you have a fantastic set of metaphors about whether the place we come together is a place for experimentation or school or learning, or is it a marketplace or a theater or a lab for testing? Is it a spa or is it a flagship where we come and find the best that's going on? Is it a production space where we quickly test and make things through experimenting? You talked about being in perpetual beta mode and the difference between OPEX and CAPEX and...

making sure that our spaces are changing in a continual way as part of the fabric of the organization. And then you asked us and invited us to ask what would be changed about these things. And when we spend time understanding how do we do that in a meaningful way by having our boots on the ground. and Ali, thank you for a brilliant conversation about the future of work and future of workspaces. Really appreciate it.

Key Portilla Kawamura (Studio Banana) (01:06:14.951) Thank you, Garrick & Simon.

Simon Brown (01:06:15.076) Thank you so much.

Ali Ganjavian (01:06:17.55) Thank you for having us.

Garrick (01:06:17.679) How did I do Simon? Thank you.

Key Kawamura (Studio Banana) (01:06:18.877) It's been a pleasure.

Simon Brown (01:06:20.142) Great summary.

Key Kawamura (Studio Banana) (01:06:22.973) Who needs a chat to see when you've got Garrick in the room?

Simon Brown (01:06:26.357) Exactly.

Garrick (01:06:27.857) my God, I know the competition is immense. Thank you so much. You've been listening to a deep dive. You've been listening to a deep dive on Curious Advantage podcast titled, Curious About the Future of Work and Environments. We're curious to hear from you. If you think there was something useful or valuable from this conversation, we encourage you to write a review for the podcast on your preferred channel saying why this was so and what have you learned from it. We always appreciate hearing our listeners thoughts and having a curious conversation.

Simon Brown (01:06:33.942) Great conversation.

Garrick (01:06:56.911) Join today, hashtag curious advantage. Curious Advantage book is available on Amazon and good book shops worldwide. Audio, physical, digital, audio book copy now to further explore the seven seas model for being more curious. Subscribe to the podcast today and follow the curious advantage on LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube. Keep exploring curiously. See you next time.