MODULAR SPACES FOR THE NEW ERA OF OFFICE DESIGN

Jouko Urpolahti - General Manager, Vetrospace Ltd

This week Quiet Mark warmly welcomes modular spaces company Vetrospace to The Quiet Revolution; the first Finnish company to have its products certified by Quiet Mark. 

Founded before the pandemic, in 2017 Vetrospace manufactures unique meeting pods and phone booths that incorporate critical health technology, including anti-microbial lighting, anti-viral nano-coating and clean-air ventilation. The result, they say, is the most hygienic, private modular spaces on the market.

On December 1st, 2021, Vetrospace CEO, Juoko Urpolahti took time out of his busy Slush schedule to talk to The Quiet Mark Podcast, from Vetrospace's latest product, the Streamspace.  Helsinki's Slush has grown into the largest single gathering of venture capital in the world – 1,700 investors ranging from VCs to angels, CVCs, and LPs, all looking for the next big thing. Vetrospace supplied this year's Slush event with almost thirty indoor air purification meeting rooms. 

Image: Vetrospace supplied this year's Slush event with almost thirty indoor air purification meeting rooms

Would Streamspace be enough to keep out the noise of the 8,000 Slush attendees and enable our Host, Simon Gosling, to record their conversation in peace and quiet? Hear the difference it made for yourself, at 4mins 50secs of Episode 34 - MODULAR SPACES FOR THE NEW ERA OF OFFICE DESIGN.

Vetrospace was born out of a desire to not only provide a peaceful environment for those that use their modular spaces, but extend its use to a point where the products, in time, pay for themselves, through more hygienic, healthier work environments, that foster improved team performance, and reduced absentee costs. 

Adam Cossey, Partner at Hawkins\Brown recently told The Quiet Mark Podcast, that modern work practices have seen the pre-pandemic ratio of 6 desks per 10 people, drop to just 3 to 10, as companies increasingly adopt hybrid styles of working in which staff work some days from home and some at the office. 

People returning to the office, after long spells working from home, no longer want to work in loud, open plan spaces with long rows of desks, surrounded by many distracting discussions, and the noise of people tapping away on their computer keyboards. They want a more zonal way of working, with softer furnishings, improved acoustics and break-out zones to suit different styles of working. In addition, with so many meetings taking place on video conferencing platforms, pods and phone-booths of varying shapes and sizes have become a permanent feature of the modern office; as was reflected by the sheer numbers on display at London’s recent Workspace Design Show. 

Despite its forward thinking beginnings in pre-pandemic 2017, Vetrospace launched in 2019 thus coinciding with the pandemic and the changes in our lifestyle and work environments. This sparked a necessity to continue working on the air ventilation qualities of Vetrospace pods. “People’s attention started to change during the pandemic and they were prioritising air quality for obvious reasons. More than 90% of Covid infections come from the air, so the air needs to be purified. We looked into this to ensure our spaces produced purified air to the highest quality. Our spaces are now ISO7 certified clean rooms, which means they’re clean enough to be used in medical labs and spaces. We carried out over 600 tests with universities and labs to improve how well our spaces work.”

Juoko also spoke about the role of modular pods beyond the office space and into other areas of our changing lifestyle. “You can find our products in Universities, Schools, City Halls, Shopping Centres and other public areas such as in the financial sector who don't want to lose working hours due to illnesses.” 

Shopping centres in particular provide a very interesting use of modular spaces, in a world where online shopping is forcing many store closures. “We host pods in shopping malls, where users can book working slots from 5 minutes to several hours via an app on their phone. It's growing in popularity in Finland but we are also moving this feature to the UK and USA soon. It's already used in government places in Finland to control who can enter certain spaces. The shopping centres are dying due to the online shopping lifestyle so they want to know how to use these huge buildings in the future without shutting them down.”

Image: Jouko Urpolahti and Simon Gosling during the Quiet Mark Podcast recording session. 

Google Meet enabled them to see one another but Jouko’s voice was recorded directly to .wav and .mp3 formats, a feature of Vetrospace’s latest product, Streamspace. 

The new Streamspace product reaches out to creative forms of working such as podcast production, music and other forms of audio recording. “It’s being tested by the biggest media company in Finland right now as they believe in our growth. It's a ready made studio which is more economical than building a whole studio in a building”. 

In fact, in recording our podcast episode, Jouko used Streamspaces built-in A/V systems to see our host, Simon via Google Meet, whilst recording his audio locally, directly to .wav and.mp3. He then shared those audio files with Simon via WeTransfer, for the edit, improving the overall audio quality radically, especially when compared to many previous guests whose compressed audio Simon has had to record at his end, via the video conferencing platform.

In a world where we prioritise ease, flexibility and personalisation, Vetrospace ticks all the boxes as the modular pods can be installed anywhere as long as there’s floorspace and access to electrical plug sockets for power. Even the ventilation of the pod is built-in and doesn’t need any connection to the building itself.

Quiet Mark is thrilled to welcome on board a brand that not only connects improved acoustics and sound installation with top quality air ventilation, but also one that adapts to these ever-changing modern times.

To learn more about Vetrospace, listen to Jouko Urpolahti on The Quiet Mark Podcast