Fosbury & Sons: Changing Our Perception of Work

Fosbury & Sons started its mission to change the perception of work a few years ago. Now, the creative workspace is expanding with two locations in Brussels to create a bigger impact on the office market. Stijn Geeraets -co-founder of the company- sat down with TLmag to discuss his dreams and plans.

TLmag: The slogan of Fosbury & Sons is ‘the office is dead’. Could you maybe elaborate a little bit on that?

Stijn Geeraets: We want to make a statement with that. We asked ourselves a simple question: why do offices still look like they did 50 years ago? These places just didn’t change. While we do have a lot of other needs right now, and we know that an environment -the plants, the light and also the coffee that is served- has a huge impact on your work. It changes how you feel and how you spend your day. It all has an impact on the way you can be creative, open-minded and problem-solving. The office is this place where people don’t really like to be. But well, that’s exactly the place where individuals spend most of their time.

You’re opening two new Fosbury & Sons’ locations that are opening in June in Brussels, how do you approach these openings?

Each location we create is unique since we start by looking at the building and working from its characteristics. We really want to honor the building and emphasize its character.

Then we work together with Going East, who is in the lead of interior design. The briefing for them was actually very short. We told them to forget about the office and to create a home. With, of course, the functions an office needs. We found the brain needs four things in an office: space to work individually, in collaboration, in focus and it needs rest. So our environment is designed around those functions with a feeling of home. It’s a close collaboration. We’re sticking together and discussing the materials and the progress of the projects. Every detail is being discussed. We’re constantly on the lookout for beautiful objects.

The first location you guys opened was in the WATT tower in Antwerp, how was the end result and were there any surprises?

That brings out a bit of my background: I’m a product designer. That’s why I always have to tweak and do things better, the product is never finished. So we’re constantly evolving and something we’ve noticed quite quickly is that we can also take care of bigger companies. Two months after the entry we took two more floors for bigger companies.

We used to have the perception that we are only here for freelancers and small businesses. But actually, we are office providers. That can be a company of two or forty people. Actually, that is really good. Since our target is to change the perception of work. To make a change, you need to reach more people.

Do you see these collaborations happening in this creative work environment?

Yes definitely! we also have our own office here. So we also work together with clients of ours. For example, the website is redesigned by a client of ours. The lawyers that are here, help us out a lot.

When I see collaboration happening here it gives me goosebumps. We see it happening every day. I get this excitement because that was a dream. We always said we want to tear down those walls between big companies and smaller creatives. We’re really succeeding in that. That’s creativity, in essence, It’s bringing together elements that don’t necessarily find each other naturally.

So what can we expect in the next few years? 

Our main focus is this change of perception of work. We want to find solutions for the Belgian market, but we’re also looking into expanding in Amsterdam and The Hague. Because, again, we want to create an impact. So we need to reach to more people. We just want to enrich the quality of people’s lives, we’re doing that in the office.

The images are of the Fosbury & Sons second location ‘Boitsfort’ in Brussels, by © Jeroen Verrecht.