In a recent piece for the Architects Journal, incoming BCO President Paul Patenall extolled the virtues of a Danish idea called Arbejdsglaede, (almost) literally the joy of work. There is no equivalent word in English, of course, but it also taps into our assumption that we can learn a thing or two from our Scandinavian cousins about wellbeing and the ways in which we should find happiness in our daily lives and surroundings.

In terms of office design, we are prone to borrow nuanced words from other languages to express ideas that otherwise need some explaining in English. Perhaps most famously, there was a lot of talk about hygge a couple of years ago.

A straight dictionary translation of hygge would be something like cosiness, but the word also embodies an emotion and an approach to life that embraces a certain degree of slowness and an enjoyment of the present moment. It’s no coincidence that it became modish in a distracted and hurried world. Although the concept is usually referred to as Danish, the word itself is shared with Norwegian, which also offers us the word koselig, which means cosiness but also hints at it being best enjoyed at a fireside.

Both words share some characteristics with the German term Gemütlichkeit, which means something like comfort but with an undercurrent of domesticity, relaxation and warmth. However, while we might instinctively lean on Scandinavians to express ideas about wellbeing, we seem to prefer Germanic terms which express less pleasant or hard-nosed ideas such as Schadenfreude, Angst and Kitsch.

This is a shame because the word Gemütlichkeit accurately describes both the intersection of domestic and office design and also one of the ‘killer variables’ that underpins productivity at work; comfort. And by comfort we don’t just mean ergonomic comfort, but also air quality, the right temperature, daylight, rest and freedom from interruption.