Room for thought

Workshop time should be time well spent. To do that, you have to invite the right people. Those who can contribute; those who can get something going. You involve these people in the preparation phase. You have to know the topics at hand. You develop a dramaturgy, a sequence of well-timed inputs and questions. This goes a long way towards making a workshop successful. And then you make the mistake of holding the workshop in your own conference room. Colleagues arrive late (“I had another short meeting with my team”). They sit down at the conference table, entrenching themselves behind their laptops. They run out to quickly take care of something … The intention was to work on an important topic in a focused, undisturbed, and concentrated manner in order to finally take a step forward, address the latent conflicts, and explore possible courses of action.

But this also requires suitable spaces that provide room for possibilities, thinking, action and play. Workshop rooms should invite people to think and talk without distractions and to generate ideas while talking to each other. The light is invigoratingly bright, the acoustics are pleasantly soft, the gaze is allowed to wander into nature. People like to step outside the door to get some fresh air for the next round of thinking. If the room also provides materials for visualization and flexible furnishings, and if physical well-being is taken care of, then you realize how enabling and supportive the structure of a space can be.

At Metaplan, we have known this for over 50 years. That is why, together with the architects at WackerZeiger and with artistic support from Armin Chodzinski, we have brought the “Metaplan Forum,” our campus in Quickborn, up to the latest standards. Reminders of the past have found just as much space as the latest technology for the design of hybrid workshop formats involving people who cannot attend in person.

Welcome! We look forward to seeing you!