Most office pods get one life. Ours are already on their third.
The word that stopped meaning anything
"Sustainable" is printed on almost every brochure in our industry. Usually, it points to one material, one certificate, or one factory. All of those are good things. None of them answers the question that matters most.
What happens to this when the office changes?
Because offices always change. Leases end. Teams grow or shrink. Somebody reorganises everything, and the floor plan that worked five years ago no longer works at all.
When that day comes, the walls and rooms that were built into the building have to be knocked down. They cannot be moved, because they were never meant to be taken apart. The company pays to demolish them, pays to take the waste away, and pays again to build something new. Three bills for one wall, and a lot of wasted material.
That is why we build our workspaces in modules.
Four things that only work if a product comes apart
We decide at the drawing stage that every pod can be taken apart again. That one decision is what makes the rest possible.
Repair. If something breaks, we replace that part, not the whole pod. The ventilation unit, the door mechanism, an acoustic panel, a pane of glass. Each one has its own part number. We change the broken piece and everything else stays where it is.
Reconfigure. A pod does not have to stay the way it was delivered. The inside can be changed as the work changes: new furniture, new technology, a different layout. And because the pods are separate units, the whole floor can be rearranged around them when teams move or grow. The room adapts instead of being rebuilt.
Relocate. When a company moves, the pod moves too. It comes apart, goes on a lorry, and is rebuilt at the new address. Nothing is thrown away, and nothing new has to be built.
Resell. A product that comes apart still has value, and we put a number on it. Through our
Taiga Cycle programme, a client can return an eligible workspace and get back up to 50% of what they originally paid for it. The pod goes on to its next life, and the client gets the freedom to change or upgrade their space without writing off the old one. A wall built into a building offers nothing back. Someone has to be paid to remove it.
A pod that cannot be taken apart may be well made and good looking. But it is built once and stays that way. One building, one layout, one life.
The promise you cannot show in a showroom
You can test almost everything about a workspace in one afternoon. Listen to the acoustics, feel the air, close the door and see if it feels solid.
Long life is the exception. Nobody can show it to you. You only find out years later, which is probably why the word gets used so easily.
So here are our numbers instead.
We design our products to last about fifteen years. Glass and elements have a five-year warranty. Electrical components have two. And since we started in 2015, not one Taiga product has reached the end of its life. Every pod we have ever built is still in use. Some have been serviced, some have moved to a new address, a few have been sold to a new owner. All of them are still working.
We know how that sounds from a company that is only ten years old. The honest answer is "so far". Ask us again in 2035.
Year ten is not very exciting, which is the point. The ventilation has been serviced. The fabric has probably been changed, because fabric is always the first thing to look tired. The frame, the glass, and the acoustic core are the same ones we delivered, and they still look like they belong in the room.
Why we have not redesigned it
Office design follows trends. Shapes get rounder, then squarer, then rounder again. Every year at some fair, someone asks politely whether our pods are starting to look familiar.
The easy business answer would be to redesign the pod, launch it as new, and let our customers buy the same thing twice.
We have said no every time, for two reasons.
The first is technical. The shape of the frame and the way our pods connect to each other are what make them repairable and movable. They are also what makes a pod from 2016 work together with one from today. If we changed that just to look fresh, every pod we have already sold would lose those benefits.
The second reason is design. We are a Nordic company, and we design the way Nordic designers have always done: simple shapes, natural materials, nothing added that does not need to be there. That kind of design is quiet in a good way. It does not shout when it is new, so it does not look dated later. A pod that was never fashionable cannot go out of fashion.
Quality works the same way. A fifteen-year product only makes sense if it is built well enough to reach fifteen years, and if it still looks like something you want in the room by then.
So we change the things we can change safely: materials, finishes, fabrics, and the technology inside. A new look would be easier to sell. A product that still works and still looks right in fifteen years is worth more.
Most of the damage is done before we deliver
We use FSC-certified wood, carpet made from 100% recycled Econyl, and recycled polyester fabric. Our factory runs on renewable energy. Those are the right choices, but they are not the whole story, so we had a Life Cycle Assessment done to find out where our emissions really come from.
The answer was useful, and a little uncomfortable.
Most of our emissions happen before we build anything. They come from making MDF and glass, and from transporting raw materials to us. Glass takes a lot of energy to produce. Board is board. Transport, we can improve a little, but we have not solved it. We would rather say that out loud than leave it out.
It also explains why we care so much about how long a pod lasts. Almost all of the emissions are already spent by the day we deliver it. After that, the only thing that changes is how many years of use we get for them. Read more about emissions and carbon footprint on our
sustainability page.
Six years in one office is not many. Fifteen years in three different offices is a much better deal for the same emissions.
This is a strategy, not a feature
Modularity cannot be added later. A product is either designed to come apart or it is not, and that is decided at the very beginning, long before anyone picks a fabric.
So here are two questions worth asking in any showroom, including ours. What happens if one part breaks in year eight? And can I still buy that part for a product you stopped selling five years ago?
A company that designs for repair will answer both with a part number and a price. A company that only likes the word will answer the first one warmly, the second one vaguely, and then show you the new model.
Please do ask us. That is the whole point.
Karri Hautanen
CEO, Taiga Concept