The Design Guide 2016

14 CORPORATE VISION / Design Guide 2017 , for. design planning For is an interior design firmwith a unique approach. Natacha Do provides a unique overview of the company. FOR. is the FORum, where public issues are discussed. It is also the FOR in Swiss law, which means where an action is needed. And finally, in French the FOR intérieur is our inner self. For us, design does not stop to a build project. It is a process, a branding, a way of working, a personality, and mostly about human beings. Our strength is our inner capacity to imbricate and interconnect these elements with sense and coherence. This way of thinking and working explains why every single of our project is true to the client’s value and real to its inner self. After forty years of existence, FOR. touched every single field of interior design possible, but its true colours remain the corporate design. For some, this could be a bore, but we transformed working environments into appealing design. Corporate design is complex because people actually live more into our interiors than what they imagine. Our architectural gestures have to reflect not only the corporate image, but mostly the ones of its workers. This duality makes our design elaborated, extremely detailed and interconnected. But this process cannot be accomplished alone, and this explains why our relationships with our clients are the number one priority on our list. Because we want the best for them, we challenge their ideas and we push them to go further and beyond their limits. At the end of the day, our clients as well as their businesses grow. Throughout these four decades of activities, FOR.’s vision has evolved with the design trends, passing from the closed office tendency of the eighties all the way to the actual open residential vibe given to the corporate spaces. But the face of the city we are based in, Montréal in Canada, also experienced major changes which influenced directly our practice. With its specialized industries such the aerospace, information technology, TV and movie production, this francophone city has attracted thousands of workers and companies from all around the world, and they may not be looking for the ordinary working offices. In fact, most of these businesses hire the best geeks in town and they aim to keep them as long as they can. To do so, they base their employee retention strategy on uncorporate, comfortable and laid-back offices, with a maximum number of collaborative and brainstorming spaces, fulfilled of either ping- pong or pool tables, and where the cafeteria is furnished with picnic tables, bars and lounge chairs. Nothing is no longer the same, and FOR. has been a leader to follow this new trend in town. We have been accompanying these IT, production and special effects companies in their transition of strategy for the last ten years. Without knowing it, we have made it one of our core business and we are recognized for it. People know that by choosing FOR., they make the decision to change their status quo for something greater. In 2006, our design industry also got a push thanks to the title of UNESCO City of Design obtained by Montréal. By attributing this title, UNESCO recognized the critical mass of designers and their contribution to the city’s development and future. Since then, we witness an evolving demand of design quality from the clients as well as the citizens, which encourages us to push our work further and to reach higher standards. The province of Québec may also reach another level soon by adopting a Politic of Architecture, and this means a handful of opportunities for FOR. But before this happens, we will keep on excelling our projects and on educating the population on the importance of good design. What’s next for FOR.? Our future is fulfilled with many creative and innovative projects with clients specialized in IT, video games and special effects. Another niche is starting to rise up for us: the environmental oriented businesses, with sensitized employees well-aware of the impact of our interventions on their spaces. One of our clients in the high security sector may also bring FOR. all over the world with their offices which multiply at a fast rate. Throughout those upcoming projects, we are aware and sensible to the new generation that is coming fast on the market. They redeem casualty, nomadism, movement, absence of boundaries, speed, and more with less. Their impact on our practice is major: the usual working station tends to disappear, the brightness level is getting lower and lower, the companies capitalize on collaborative spaces, break rooms and cafeterias to satisfy their Millenium employees. FOR. will keep on leading the way to show their clients how to be ahead of this significant change in the way we work. At the end of the day, we do not make projects to win prizes. We realize them to meet and exceed our clients’ expectations. But when we do win, we have many reasons to be proud, mainly because we truly know that our projects were conducted with respect, real collaboration, fun and integrity. An integrity which is directly connected to our inner self. Our FOR intérieur.