• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Sudha Menon

The interiors of Deutsche Bank, located at the nearly century-old Tata House.

Alice in wonderland. Nothing can more aptly describe what one felt while walking past the reception and into the office of food solutions company Monsanto India at Andheri in suburban Mumbai. It can easily double up as a live museum of the country's crafts and textiles heritage.

A vivid burst of colours greets a visitor at this office which looks unlike an office. Where else can you find butterflies, beetles, snakes and such other animal life motifs used as embellishment on the office flooring and fruit laden papaya trees tempting you from their home in the lush green terrace garden? Imagine what it would do to the black-tie, conservatively dressed banking community, if they had to work out of an office that has vibrant shades of red, orange, rust, blue and green in every nook and corner!

When the company set up their office in Mumbai a few years ago, the design for the place was already being implemented at its offices in Washington D.C., Toronto and Singapore. The group's Global Planning and Design Department head honcho Joseph Pereira came up with the idea of doing away with that symbol of office hierarchy — the ubiquitous office cabin — and instead designed an open office space that would foster communication and understanding between different cadres. "It takes a very different organisation to decide that its CEO and staff will have the same kind of workstation and facilities. Having done that, we have proved that we are a flat organisation where the only role designation plays is to demarcate functions", says V. George, Facilities Manager of the company.

The office was set up when Monsanto started its transition from a mere trading company to a complete food solutions company, which resulted in an increase in the number of employees. But nothing had prepared the staff, then working out of a 6,000-sq ft office in the Bandra-Kurla complex for the quantum jump to a 36,000-sq ft one. But having convinced the management that Monsanto did need that much space for its operations, Pereira got into giving shape to what has become a conversation piece in any talk on corporate interiors.

The office is the result of a brainstorming session with the employees. Every member of the organisation was individually interviewed. That done, the company's brief to architect Hafeez Contractor was simple: design an office that would be at once Indian and contemporary, an office that would be one with the community around it, be modern and functional and yet reflect the ethos of the country.

Here it is difficult to find a dull corner. Contractor has demarcated the 30,000 sq ft area, devoid of any straight lines or angles, into colour-coded zones with blue for the HR department, red for finance, green for agricultural products and marketing and yellow for general business and strategy department.

Workstations at Monsanto are not run-of-the-mill grey/brown areas where employees can be found pushing files or peering into their computers. Instead, employees have personalised workstations designed by Deanne Beckwith of Herman Miller — bean shaped tables, with a lower one tucked beneath for additional space, a telephone on a raised counter to save table space, a single filing cabinet and open shelves to reduce the piling of paper. The workstations are in clutters of three with each one separated from the other by fabric partitions. Textile expert Jill Bunn was brought in for selecting the fabric and textiles to adorn the office and she has done a brilliant job, using fabric and treatments and embellishments ranging from Sewa, Banas Craft, Lucknowi chikankari, Punjab's phulkari and the rich silks of the south to literally bring in the colours of the rainbow into the office. In yet another shift from run-of-the-mill-offices, Monsanto does not have a boardroom. Instead, open discussion areas enclosed by glass blocks are scattered across the space. Every time you see black granite inlaid with floral patterns you are passing by a discussion area that looks out into the lush, green terrace gardens. The only closed spaces, in the work area, are the telephone booths that staff use when they have to discuss matters either personal or confidential. The office itself is a circular one straddling three wings of the building and when it was designed each employee expressed the need for a little bit of nature at his/her workplace. They got much more than they asked for: The lush green terrace garden which skirts the office end-to-end is a spanking 5,000 sq ft and has among other things lotus ponds, bird baths, flowering mogras, great palms and a full-fledged green house which continuously nurtures other plants for the gardenIn addition to the privilege of having one of the best-known corporate addresses in town, the office is also translating into large savings for the company. For instance, George says pre-emptive maintenance by the property manager and facilities like source control, which automatically control the amount of power and energy consumed within the premises translates into lakhs of rupees of savings in annual energy bills. Not only does this environment and employee-friendly office have a non-smoking zone, it also has non-inflammable carpets made from recycled fibre. Curtains are used to the bare minimum; instead, large, floor-to-ceiling-windows are used to let in natural light. Curtains are used only to cut off glare from the monitors, when required.

Move over from Andheri to what is today one of the busiest areas of Mumbai's main business district, where the Tata House was located, and you get a rare insight into the grand style of the turn of the century colonial villa, built by French architect Gabriel Morice in 1908.

So when Deutsche bank decided to take over the nearly century old Tata House in 1989 for its offices, it was achieving two things: kick-starting its global policy of fostering local culture and art around the world; and providing its staff with a workplace that would be unique in terms of ambience.

When the bank acquired this place, it undertook a complex four year old restoration and renovation process to fit the requirements of a modern bank. Since 1994 the bank, in keeping with the tradition of collecting contemporary art and displaying it on the premises, has developed a comprehensive permanent collection of contemporary Indian and German art.

So what is the synergy between art and banking? "We appreciate art as a universal language in the environment of banking, a business that is primarily based on communication. Bringing people and business together is the prime task on an international bank and art can help us do this task better," says Douglas Neilson, Chief Country Officer, Deutsche Bank India. Accordingly, art has been chosen to blend with and accentuate each department of the bank. For the main banking hall, younger artists from the major art centres in India have been chosen. A positive tension is created in the square conference room, where Hella Brent's square lines on Indian handmade paper take their place opposite Markus Oehlen's somewhat graphic drawings. The main hall on this floor has colourful animal drawings by Hartmut Neumann and the hand-coloured photos of Florian Merkel. In the dealing room, where a lot of concentration is required, a continuation of Geiger's circles seems to support the task.

The open office plan itself has worked wonders for the staff, especially because it keeps communication channels open within the small team . While the paintings on the wall itself is enough relief for staffers looking to take a break, most of them say that the most charming aspect of their workplace is its immense terrace with its plaster of Paris cherubs poised to take flight off the balustrade. It is here that the employees take a break, often throwing impromptu parties on weekend evenings when the sun sets on the city and the glow of bulbs light up its magnificent profile.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section
Designing a new image

Copyright © 2002, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line