Finding a place for focused work is getting more and more difficult, whether you’re trying to get work done in your favourite coffee shop or having to shout over your colleagues in an open-plan office. Silen has a solution: mobile and modular pods of different sizes that can be used for focused solo work sessions or bringing your meetings into a quiet, well-ventilated and comfortable space so you can concentrate on the task at hand.
Founded as an offshoot of an office furnisher Wallenium, Silen is the brainchild of CEO Endrus Arge. A long-time player in the office furnishing market, Arge put down the first sketches of what a silent work pod could look like whilst bored at home during a bout of flu in 2017. From there, it only took his team a year of research and development to launch the first product in 2018.
Since then, Silen has grown at an astonishing pace and now boasts clients like Spotify, Airbus, Amazon and Volkswagen in over 40 countries whilst still maintaining the core of its business in Estonia. Both the offices and production have been located in the small Nordic country from day one.
Even though many clients already see the value in Silen’s pods, competition in the office furniture industry is tough. Arge claims it’s the high build quality and innovation in design and materials that sets Silen apart: “Innovation isn’t really about trying to cram the latest gadgets into the pod. We find each customer and worker have their own preferred products that they like to use, and technology becomes obsolete so quickly the pods need to be separate from the tech used in them. Our pods are made to be used for 15-20 years. Would you want a meeting pod with a fax machine in 2021? That’s why we focus on build quality, acoustics and comfort.”
Currently, Silen’s pods are available in 1, 2, 4, 6 or 8-person sizes with lots of customisation options for furniture, appearance, ventilation, and electrical connectivity. The future will see product mobility and modularity improve even more. It’s important that customers can easily join different modules together and relocate the pods around the office with the space’s hidden wheels.
In addition to offering flexible work and meeting space options for offices all over the world, Silen have also realised there’s a pressing need for quiet elsewhere in our urban centres. That’s why Silenbooking was launched. To put it simply, Silenbooking is like Airbnb for quiet working spaces (with great WiFi!). The first public working pods will be popping up in coffee shops, transit hubs and other public places in Tallinn and on the U.S. east coast in the second half of 2021 and expand from there. Just visit the website, find your closest pod and whoosh – you have your own nest of tranquillity in the midst of urban chaos. Perfect for that important video call or getting a good hour’s work in while you wait for a train. When you’re done, just close the door behind you.
With new working and office arrangements introduced by the recent mass-migration to video calls, telecommuting and being constantly available, there’s another area where quiet is desperately needed: relaxation. To help with this, Silen have teamed up with 3D-sound meditation journey provider Synctuition to launch MindSpa.
MindSpa will be a series of custom-built Silen pods that provides a space to get away from it all and switch off for a few minutes. The interiors feature custom decor, comfortable armchairs and hi-fi grade headphones to immerse you in Synctuition’s audio journeys, which are scientifically proven to give the same effect as 4 hours of traditional meditation with a 20-minute sound journey. With the help of MindSpa, employers can give their teams a way to switch off and recharge in the middle of their busy work lives. For now, you can visit the Silen Showroom in Tallinn to see MindSpa. In the near future, you will be able to use them in hotels and airports all across the globe.
So, if you need a spot away from the noise to get some work done or to just take your mind off everything for a few minutes, you now know where to look. There’s a good chance we’ll be hearing more from these crafty Estonians soon!
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