Insights

No ruler. No symmetry. Just curves, fluid tensions, and a touch of creative chaos. Zaha Hadid taught us that you can be radical and glamorous, off-balance and monumental. Her buildings seem to surf the asphalt, driven by a visionary stubbornness that bent concrete, software and prejudice alike. Here’s your takeaway: imperfection can be a signature. And every sharp corner might be hiding a brilliant idea.

The man who put wheels on museums (Pompidou) and lightness into concrete (Centro Botín). Renzo Piano is the master of the invisible detail, of technology that hides in plain sight, of architecture as poetic engineering. As he shows us, the perfect design is the one that looks effortless, but took twenty-five prototypes to get right.

Former boxer, self-taught architect, minimalist poet. Tadao Ando sculpts light more than he builds structures. He gave concrete a sense of spirituality, creating temples of emptiness and calm. Let’s not beat around the bush: sometimes, subtracting is the only way to bring out the essence. (And yes, that goes for silencing your notifications too.)

An artificial mountain, a ski slope on a residential block, a panda-shaped masterplan, nothing’s too far-fetched for BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group). Ingels blends ecology, humour and marketing without blinking. He knows the future is built with leisure in mind. After all, if sustainability isn’t fun, it won’t stick. And a touch of humour is often the secret ingredient in any great design.

In the end, we all know: architecture is everywhere. Even under your beach umbrella, somewhere between a granita, a sandcastle and a sideways thought. And these five masters remind us that design isn’t (only) about building. It’s about choosing how we want to live, even in August.

Every August, the same scene unfolds: empty offices, abandoned meeting rooms, square metres left unused. But hold on, this isn’t a glitch, it’s an opportunity. Periods of underuse are a key indicator, and if you know where to look, they reveal exactly how your space (doesn’t) work. 

Who’s using what? When? For how long? And most importantly: why do some areas stay deserted even when the office is full? Monitoring space usage — flows, peaks, dwell times, activity mapping — lets you move from “it feels like” to “we know for sure”. And it’s often the quiet of the off-season that gives you the clearest view. 

In these cases, data analysis isn’t about justifying a choice already made, it’s about guiding the next one. It helps you see where to invest, where to reallocate resources, where less space is enough (and where better space is needed). Because office ROI isn’t just about how many people work there, it’s about how much value the space can generate even when no one’s around.

Switching off takes effort, it goes against the way we’re wired. Our brains crave constant stimulation and notifications: each one a micro-reward, a hit of instant dopamine. Turning everything off is like cutting off the oxygen supply to a deeply ingrained habit. But there’s more. As Nicoletta points out: “Disconnecting doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means creating the conditions to process something new. It’s an active pause, not a passive one.” In other words, detox isn’t about halting, it’s about shifting gears. It’s when lateral thinking kicks in: creative solutions that emerge when we break free from our usual patterns. No wonder the best ideas come during a walk or under a beach umbrella, it’s all about timing.

Rachel Whiteread, a British artist, has quite literally transformed emptiness into matter. Her works are casts of empty spaces: she fills with resin or concrete the places that usually remain invisible – the inside of a house, a bathtub, a bookshelf – giving us back their negative space as sculpture. As if to say that emptiness is a reversed fullness. A fullness that speaks of who was there, what it contained, of entire lives moving within those volumes. Because without emptiness, no space would ever truly be habitable: we couldn’t cross it, live in it, or act within it.

But you don’t need to get your hands dirty with concrete or wield a circular saw to understand emptiness. John Cage, an American composer, taught us that silence is also full of sound. In 1952 he composed 4’33”, a piece where the performer plays no notes. Four minutes and thirty-three seconds of apparent silence in which, in reality, you hear everything: coughing, chairs creaking, rain on the roof, the breathing of those in the room. Cage reminds us that emptiness is always full of something, you just need to know how to listen.

If everything around us is oversaturated, emptiness becomes a radical act of care. Emptiness as digital detox, as mental space, as a design choice that renounces the superfluous to leave what truly matters: air, light, breath. It’s the square between buildings, not just an urban interstice but a place of encounter and sociality. It’s the clearing in a sacred forest which, in Shinto traditions, becomes a frame for the divine, a sacred space precisely because it is empty. It’s the Zen garden, offering nothing superfluous except its own essentiality, becoming a metaphor for contemplation and meditation.

To speak of emptiness as care means recognising we don’t need to fill every space to make it exist. On the contrary, emptiness is a reservoir of possibility, the field of all potential transformation. And above all, as Isabella tells us: “Emptiness is the last remaining luxury: a space you don’t need to justify, that exists to help you exist better.”

Munari designed it in 1945 as a conceptual provocation. An iron seat tilted forward, suspicious and slightly uncomfortable, intended for “very short visits”: the guest sits down but never relaxes, in fact, they slowly slide off. Needless to say, visits don’t last long. A design object can also be a psychological statement and social critique. This is the chair of someone who works with surgical efficiency: a minute longer would become an applied psychology session. If it could speak, it would say: “The exit is that way.”

Designed in 1956, it is the most iconic lounge chair in the world. Moulded wood, black leather, a posture that’s relaxed yet innately superior. Created to offer “the warmth and comfort of a well-worn baseball glove,” today it’s the throne of anyone who owns at least three volumes of critical theory and can quote Rem Koolhaas by heart – always with a gin and tonic within reach. If it could speak, it would say: “I’m working, even when I look like I’m on a break.”

Designed by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf in 1994, the Aeron Chair is the queen of contemporary ergonomics. Made of breathable mesh with no unnecessary padding, it offers infinite adjustments and has become a symbol of global smart working and tech office aesthetics. If it could speak, it would say: “My back comes first.”

Every chair is a personal manifesto: of power, comfort, or style. Observing it methodically, as we do with workspaces, means understanding who we are and who we want to be. In the end, that’s what design is about: interpreting details to create environments that truly reflect us. And this is where the Altis method comes in: analysing every choice, even the most seemingly banal, and transforming it into a conscious gesture aligned with how we live.

At Altis, we call it EBW: Emotional Based Working. It isn’t a pre-packaged model, but an exploratory field we are mapping through our Proprietary Research. It arises from the evidence that no space, process, or company culture can truly work unless it considers the emotional dimension as a strategic resource.

Is it the opposite of ABW? No, it’s its complement. While Activity Based Working organises spaces and time around what we do, Emotional Based Working organises them around how we feel. Together, they describe work as it really is: a complex system of activities, relationships, emotional states, physical postures, and cultural narratives.

In our latest editorial exploration, we asked ourselves: is ABW still the best model? The answer emerged clearly: we don’t think it’s enough. On its own, it’s insufficient to grasp the complexity of contemporary work. To do so, we need to take a step forward – because it’s not only activities that define work, but also the emotions that drive, sustain, and transform them. And that is the true raw material of human work.

ABW was revolutionary, no doubt. It brought greater flexibility, more efficient use of space, and a boost in creativity and collaboration. But today, we work everywhere — not just where there’s a desk. Our tasks blend with our moods, time zones, Slack notifications, and serotonin swings. We’re no longer just “operational units”. We’re tired, curious, overloaded individuals searching for meaning. And this is where ABW starts to show its limits.
Because nowadays we also need other kinds of spaces: ones that allow us to recharge, to connect, and simply to exist — even when we’re not doing anything “productive”.

ABW took us far. But today, the challenge has shifted. Because people entering a space aren’t just looking for a desk — they’re looking for a context that understands them. Maybe now is the time for Emotional Based Working: an invitation to tune into the emotions that inhabit a space, and to design not just for what we do, but for who we are. This is only the beginning.

If this question resonates with you, or even if you’re just curious,
write to us at [email protected].
We love hearing from people who are ready to look at things differently.

Altis works by tuning in. First it observes, then it acts. First it listens, then it designs. First it understands, then it rewrites the rules.
Because every project has its own frequency, and our job is to catch it – before setting timelines, steps, and direction.

We’ve given our method a name: Consult – Design – Deliver
Yes, it sounds good. But more importantly, it works. Consult means opening a conversation without assumptions: we ask questions, observe the context, meet people – from the CEO to the youngest manager. Design is where thinking, data and empathy come together. We co-create scenarios, translate insights into layouts, bring needs and visions into dialogue – sometimes even a simple workshop can transform a floor plan. Deliver is more than a handover: it means leaving a lasting impact. Every space we create is also a cultural statement. It matters that the people who inhabit it feel at home, naturally.

Of course, our method includes tools. But also pauses. There are analyses and sprints – and moments of productive stillness. All of them are necessary stages. And while it might seem like lost time, to us it’s the only way not to waste it.

Altis works across several countries, collaborating with local teams to adapt our method to each context’s cultural, regulatory and operational specifics. That’s how we keep our promise: staying on time and on budget without compromising design quality. Because for us, the goal is always the same: shaping a space that works just as we – together with the client – imagined it.

If you’d like to see how we’ve helped others before you, visit www.altis-project.com or get in touch at [email protected].
We’re always up for a conversation.

The Apple Campus is a monument to performance: vast open spaces, immaculate surfaces, diffused light. All designed to spark those “creative collisions” between employees that Steve Jobs held so dear – the same Steve who, back in the Pixar days, proposed a single central block of toilets to force people to bump into each other several times a day (a proposal eventually rejected by the execs). That principle lives on in the ring shape of Apple Park, pushed to the extreme. But did you know that when the campus first opened, many teams actually asked to stay in their old offices? Or that Apple, post-pandemic, was among the strictest in enforcing the return to office, stirring internal controversy? That’s where the narrative starts to crack. Because when the shell is louder than the experience, architecture becomes representation – and nothing more.

Sirens. Smoke. Evacuations. For those who remain — and survive — everything halts. The idea of continuity, the very scaffolding of the everyday, begins to fracture. And with that, our sense of stability starts to slip.
In recent years, we’ve learned to talk about resilient, flexible, adaptable spaces. But in moments like these, resilience alone isn’t enough. We need reassurance.
Physical space — even when shared, temporary or decentralised — can offer more than stable Wi-Fi. It can become an emotional container. A fixed point in the chaos. This isn’t about aesthetics or furnishings. It’s about design intention: lighting that doesn’t dazzle, volumes that don’t oppress, sounds that don’t invade. Design that listens — without raising its voice.

When everything around us shakes — whether from a fire or the background noise of daily uncertainty — it’s not performance that saves us. It’s the ability to still feel connected. Seen. Part of something. That’s why, today, designing space shouldn’t just mean optimising. It should mean caring. And ultimately, designing trust. This is the lens we use at Altis: a psychosocial approach that starts from people — from their tensions, their unspoken needs.
We don’t design just to help people work well. We design to help them feel well — even when working becomes difficult.

You can explore this topic (and much more) in our dedicated section on the Altis website: Proprietary Research.