A new way of working is making its way into the office world: collaborative spaces, hot-desking (unassigned workstations), and a multitude of different types of meeting rooms depending on their use (one-on-one, where confidentiality is essential; working meeting rooms; rooms equipped with screens for video conferencing; boardrooms, etc.). In our implementations, there are increasingly more lockers and fewer desk pedestals (even more so if the tables have no assigned owner). Coffee Points are understood as socialization hubs, where people also work with their own laptops, connected by Wi-Fi alongside those teleworking from home... Just what we explain in class at ELISAVA, in the "Workspace Design" course we have been teaching with Ricardo Guasch for 22 years now... a puzzle that must allow more than 500 people to find a harmonious place to work.

The interior design we propose (when an architect does interior design, they end up doing architecture) responds to these new needs of today's office: to this hybrid work. The commitment to an open-plan office (not even the company director has their own office) must be compensated with those rooms we call PODs and telephone booths, providing the necessary privacy. However, above the new ways of working, there was something fundamental: the old floors with their immense rooms looked like school cafeterias or post-war hospital wards. Avoiding that vision of infinite corridors, with rooms on both sides, was one of our objectives. Therefore, the corridors are broken to provoke diagonal views, not only in the floor plan but also through the central courtyard between the two wings of the building, understood as a whole.

In addition to the Coffee Points on each floor, there are multipurpose rooms overlooking the courtyard which, strategically located depending on how the furniture is organized, can serve as meeting rooms, conference rooms, entertainment areas, or occasional dining areas, even though the cafeteria for the various buildings that make up the complex is in the new building. Fundamental issues have also been acoustics, the soundproofing of meeting rooms and PODs, and biophilia bringing nature into the central courtyard and the various office floors. For this reason, the central courtyard that articulated the old building has become a garden. This consideration has been present in all decisions because it is in the company's DNA, just as sustainability is.

The bathrooms have been renovated, and previously selected furniture has been used. Part from Vitra, part supplied by Bernadí, and others designed by Emiliana (Emili Padrós and Anna Mir, good friends), who won the competition held for this purpose, which had to comply with the White Book of offices that the company has in its different locations and which was drafted by our friends at MESURA. Sometimes acting as architects (as happens with chefs) is about finding the right proportions between the ingredients. I once heard that the difference between poison and the vaccine is the dose.

There are many project decisions that are not apparent (what I call playing without the ball). It was necessary to glaze the first-floor corridor overlooking the central courtyard, and it was done with butt-joint silicone glass that only a trained eye would discover is an addition. The stair railing did not meet today's regulatory heights (nor did it have to, because the license was granted as such), but we added an extension that makes it non-climbable and, if it is not explained to you, it seems original. Also, how to integrate the new turnstiles into an entrance that had to be for service because the main one is through the other building, or how to make the training room function independently of office hours.

The good rapport we always had with the owners meant that we also ended up doing the entire fourth floor of the new building, which includes an office section (with similar finishes, but given the different floor-to-ceiling heights, the various solutions had to be adapted) and the company's laboratories, a project developed by DEERNS to which we limited ourselves to providing legal coverage.

The project was developed according to the Anglo-Saxon "Design & Build" model, in which a company previously selected by the owner sets a GMP (Guaranteed Maximum Price) and you become dependent on them like any other industrial contractor (a supplier, in this case, of ideas and design). The truth is that the balance of power is inverted; the cart is put before the horse, and it is hard to adapt to the idea that the client is the builder, because not even the client believes that. But that seems to be the tune of the times. The truth is that one works a little less than in the conventional way, but is paid much less. That is the truth, because engineering firms no longer report to our contract either. The luck, in our case, is having had a very good construction company, ISG, with whom the relationship was always fluid, and a very good Project Manager (MACE), and a very good team of quantity surveyors, BETARQ, with whom we reunited after many years. I always say that if things go well, it is everyone's merit, and if they go badly, it is the captain's fault—a role I claim. As with coaches, they can be fired from a team, but no one can ever tell them what the lineup should be.

Everything was developed in collaborative BIM. We had to buckle down, learn, take classes through the person recommended by Capell, and buy the license. We know how to do it for future occasions now. I don't see many advantages, but it must be an age-related issue. Some of us maintain that architecture is always somewhere else. It is what remains when you take everything away from what we build... the essence. And as Oíza used to say, when one gets older, one is almost only interested in poetry and geometry... if they aren't the same thing.

The truth is that in architecture (and in life), I have always been more interested in the "what" than the "how."