In our showroom for CDW 2026, alongside showroom partners Synergy Creativ, we hosted a panel discussion with Cundall, JLL and Area.
This discussion features:
- Andrew Parkin, Partner and Global Head of Acoustics, Cundall
- Georgina Pater-Bell, UK Real Estate and Workplace Director at JLL
- James Geekie, Group Design Director, Area
- Victor Lindström, Acoustics Principal, Cundall
- Roxana Rakhshani, Senior Lighting Designer, Cundall
Some standout moments for us:
“I think what we’re now seeing and appreciating more of is that the office is inhabited by a wide variety of people. We’ve got people with different personality types. We’ve got people with varying neurodiversity. We’ve got people who span up to five generational cohorts all in one office. Within that as well, we’ve got people having different roles and different tasks. So, we’re asking quite a lot of our offices to cater for all of these things. There’s so many variables in place.”
– Andy Parkin, Partner and Global Head of Acoustics at Cundall
The office is no longer a one-size-fits-all environment, but an ecosystem that must support immense diversity in neurology, generation, personality, and task. Our product portfolio is engineered specifically as a versatile toolkit for designers looking to solve these exact variables.
Through modular solutions like the SYSTM bench desking and integrated tables, designers can create fluid zones – ranging from high collaboration tables for interactive teams to isolated work points for deep focus – allowing the space to adapt to the role rather than forcing the role to adapt to the space.
By utilizing our acoustic screens and planting, designers can seamlessly carve out low-stimulus, quiet zones for those who need them, without sacrificing the open feel of the office.
Supporting up to five generations and a spectrum of personalities requires offering choice in posture and environment. Formetiq bridges this gap by offering a wide spectrum of seating – from highly adjustable, ergonomic Monza task chairs, appealing to traditional desk-based work styles to the relaxed, soft-seating of Havana upholstered lounge chairs, ideal for informal collaboration or those who prefer a ‘coffee shop’ work style.
When the design brief asks an office to “cater to all” designers can use Formetiq not just to fill a floor plan, but to build a landscape of choices. By blending our modular desking, acoustics, and diverse seating, you empower the end-user to choose the environment that best fits their brain, their age, and their task on any given day.
“In terms of upfront design, those principles of flexibility have allowed us to tweak along the way. And that could be changing furniture settings, but ultimately the infrastructure that you’ve put in place in the office is there to flex with changing out space types. It’s manifested in challenging how many built spaces we put in versus more of a ‘modular furniture plus’ style solution that we can then flex and change as the business changes.”
– Georgina Pater-Bell, UK Real Estate and Workplace Director at JLL
Rather than relying on rigid stud walls to carve up a floor plate, Formetiq uses fully integrated systems – like their SYSTM bench desking, acoustic screens, and modular storage – to define workplace zones. This provides the privacy and structural feel of built architecture, but with the agility of loose furniture.
As client headcounts fluctuate or working styles shift (for example, moving from individual focus desks to collaborative team pods), Formetiq’s modular components can be easily scaled, extended, or repurposed. Businesses don’t need contractors to change their layout; they simply rearrange their existing furniture settings.
Ultimately, specifying a system like Formetiq allows you to future-proof a client’s office. You aren’t just handing over a finished floor plan, you are delivering an adaptable toolkit that flexes as their business evolves.
“Maybe in the 1990s I think we’d lost the plot and we were designing buildings and then just putting people in them. Now we’re designing buildings inside out which is the right way. Buildings only exist for the people in them otherwise they’re pointless!”
– Andy Parkin, Partner and Global Head of Acoustics at Cundall
Designing “inside out” means the starting point is the human experience. Our focus on intelligently crafted furniture prioritises the physical comfort, focus, and wellbeing of the user first, rather than treating furniture as an afterthought to fill a floor plan.
Today, human workflows are fluid. Our highly adaptable ranges, like SYSTM modular bench desking, give designers the building blocks to create flexible micro-environments that can evolve as the people using them change. Formetiq provides the exact elements – desks, soft seating, storage, and planting – that dictate how people actually interact, collaborate, and feel within that shell. By using these purposeful pieces to define the workspace, designers ensure the architecture serves the people, not the other way around.
Ultimately, our philosophy of furniture for the next generation of work equips designers to create dynamic, tailored interiors that prove the building exists entirely for the people inside it.
