Page 42 - Yellow by TCW Issue 4

Moving Moments
Written by David Streiff Corti, edited by NZZ am Sonntag. This is a an abbreviated version of the original article
Photos: Milo Keller
In the age of agile workplaces and the Activity Based Workplace, having a well designed space is crucial to wellbeing and productivity. - TCW
Due to a new whiteboard by Swiss designer Jörg Boner, even heads of state and business leaders are getting their hands dirty - but they also gain important insights with Moving Walls of the Lucerne-based company of the same name
They have no decision-making power and keep a
low profile but the impact of the Moving Walls at
the annual World Economic Forum in Davos should not be underestimated. When the global political
and economic elite come together in Grisons, they
are right in the middle and provide an important
tool for those trying to outline the future.
The products of the Swiss-based company Moving Walls are not just office furniture. They are the result of the need to change the working world with new methods - towards a more innovative and creative way of collaborating, the company’s core goal.
Moving Walls was established by a business economist and a trained carpenter. The former deals with the moderation and creation of cooperation processes.
“I have spent a huge part of my life bringing people together, promoting dialogue between them and supporting them on collaboration related issues”, says Patrick Frick. For this purpose, a non-profit organisation, The Value Web was founded. A global network of facilitators dealing with subjects such as environmental degradation, educational reform and food security, trying to bring together
40 stakeholders to approach these problems together.
With that Frick drew attention to himself. In
2004 he was commissioned by the then managing director of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to launch a project bringing decision-makers together for work, beyond conventional speeches and panel discussions. The Lucerne native, who currently lives in Amsterdam, attention should not only be paid to the interaction process, but also to the physical environment in which such cooperation takes place.
“If you place a ten meter long meeting table in a room where twelve people can sit, screw and wire it to the floor, 95 percent of all interactive processes are already eliminated”, explains Frick – especially in a world dominated by protocols and rigid hierarchies, as was the case at the WEF for a long time.
When Frick brings people together, it’s never at a boardroom table. Instead, he and his brother and co-founder, Marcel Frick deliberated what equipment was needed to enable people to carry out a problem- solving process efficiently, and as a group. The
result is the Moving Wall, a modular, writeable and space-structuring wall, designed and manufactured in Switzerland. Originally and exclusively designed to use at the WEF, companies such as SBB [Swiss federal railways], Roche, ABB and Schweizerische Post now rely on this innovative system.
Patrick Frick is convinced that the complex problems, we deal with these days, must be visualized so that we can grasp them in their entirety – especially during teamwork, which can be carried out much more effectively while using an analogue process. The fact that IT companies in particular are working with
the Moving Wall is therefore no coincidence. “If you try to connect entire systems with each other, you need large areas to sketch the correlations and make them visible. You can’t do that on a 14inch screen.”
Additionally, the working processes today are much more agile, subject to constant changes and demand flexibility and adaptability from people, which is still not reflected in many workplaces. “We wanted to create tools that meld with the work practices so
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