Sevil Peach

I have to admit it, l have a soft spot for people that fly under the radar. Yes, many of those with high profiles are deserving of all the attention they receive but there is something about the ninja, whom quietly, calmly and methodically floats into the action that l secretly admire. Sevil Peach is a ninja. Quietly changing the way millions of people live and work and nobody knows it.

Vitra Citizen Office, 2010. Image from Vitra.

Whilst Sevil Peachs’ design practice encompasses a spectrum of typologies, her influence in workplace design is huge and in todays’ ‘living with Covid’ mindset, her workspaces are more relevant than ever. Her work on Vitra Citizen Office in 2010 (at Vitra Weil am Rheim campus) is still one of the most inspiring spaces l have visited. Not because there is anything mind blowing about it but rather, it is so simple, so obvious and so easy that l thought, ‘why isn’t everyone doing this?’ The Citizen Office is ‘simply’ a workspace made of series of diverse settings or spaces for team members to work in any way they wish at any time. Hardly mind blowing but surprisingly it’s not the norm for most workplaces.

Sevil Peach. Image from Vitra.

‘Divserse settings’ aside, Sevil Peach also infuses a kind of residential feel to the space, to make the interior less office-like and more home-like. More comfortable, softer, less intimating, less male corporate, more spatially inclusive. Workspaces should be engaging, why else would a person come into the office when they can now easily work from home. The office must engage people and draw them into a space that enables ideas to be shared, youth to be mentored and collective visions realised.

Refurbished by Sevil Peach. Home once owned by Frederick Barnard, whose best known work includes drawings for nine Charles Dickens novels . Residence. Image from Dezeen.

Born in Turkey in 1949, studying Interior Architecture at Brighton Unversity, Sevil Peach formed her practice with Gary Turnball in 1994, having previously been an Associate and Project Director at YRM Architects. Having worked across a variety of sectors such as residential and retail, l think it’s her workplace stamp that will be her biggest gift to us all. We forget that every day millions of people go to work and l think that anything that can be done to make the experience of work more satisfying, more enjoyable, more efficient and more connected (with people), can only be a good thing. Sevil Peach you are a ninja.

SW.