Elisabeth Hanna

Meet Elisabeth, our Spaces & Events Specialist

You’ve shaped both our Stockholm and Heraklion offices. What were you looking for when creating these spaces?

I wanted to create places that feel like Fairlo – warm, welcoming, creative and a little unexpected. Of course, an office needs to work practically, but I think it should do much more than that. It should be somewhere you actually want to spend time. That means creating space for different things: getting together around a problem, focusing on your own, having a spontaneous conversation, playing table tennis, taking a break or just sitting down with someone you don’t normally work with to get some new perspectives. The best offices make all of those things feel natural.

In a world where we can work from almost anywhere, why do you think we still need an office?

Because we’re simply better together.

Today you can work on your laptop from anywhere, so the office has to offer something different. It should help create relationships, energy, creativity and those small everyday interactions that make us feel like a team. There are so many things that happen when we share a space that are almost impossible to plan for. Someone overhears a conversation and has exactly the information that’s missing. A question gets answered in 30 seconds instead of becoming a meeting. An idea gets better because someone from a completely different part of Fairlo happens to join the discussion. And then there’s everything that isn’t directly about work. We build relationships, laugh together, learn from each other and get to know the people behind the Slack messages. We don’t need an office because we need somewhere to put our laptops. We need a place that helps us connect.

How has sustainability influenced how you’ve designed the offices?

A lot. We’ve challenged the idea that creating a beautiful new office means buying everything new. We’ve reused materials, renovated furniture and given existing pieces a new life wherever we can.

I think that makes the spaces so much more interesting. They feel less like a perfectly designed showroom and more like a place with personality and a story. For me, sustainability and great design don’t have to compete, instead, constraints often make you more creative.