This is classic Clara, blowing the office renovations budget on the bathrooms. Don’t get me wrong; I’m down with well-designed workplace amenities. But there’s only so far you can go with updating an office WC before you’re in the realm of pure self-indulgence, and I can’t help but feel that at least some of the money would be better spent on, like, remodelling the meeting rooms and addressing ongoing cable management issues.
I honestly don’t know how Clara comes to be entrusted with things like this, aside from people thinking she has ‘an eye for design’. Sure, she dresses well and her desk is neat as a pin, but there’s more than mere aesthetics to good office design. Companies in Melbourne are finally starting to cotton to this fact, after an age of believing that novelty flourishes would give them an edge over the local competition. People are starting to realise that functionality is a core concern in the design process, but Clara doesn’t seem to have received the memo.
It’s not even a case of, like, needing more storage or better power point positioning. It’s the whole layout of the space, and how it cues the people in it to behave. It’s everything from placement of interior walls to how the furnishings fit together to the type of lighting used. Yes, it’s the vibe conveyed by minor details like bathroom fittings. And it’s a million other things as well. I can’t see how it pays to emphasise one feature at the expense of the others, which is what Clara has done.
It’s not like there’s any shortage of Melbourne based office fitout specialists. Why didn’t we just hire one of them, instead of putting it all in the hands of Clara the Whimsical? To be fair, the toilets did kind of suck before, so maybe she just got a bit carried away. Let’s just hope the new ones make all the difference to how things get done around here.