Meaning and Fusion of Work

Outdoor Office Day Faber / Timisoara Foto: Sebastian Capotescu/ Anca Savu

Meaning & Fusion of Work happenings propose a broad interdisciplinary reflection, debate and research, both scientific and cultural – artistic perspectives, on key questions about the society evolution. Meaning and Fusion of Work is based in Timisoara (RO) this year’s European’s Capital of Culture. We’ve met Anca Savu and Sebastian Capotescu a while ago talking about cities, wellbeing, work and life in general. Being one of the leading voices in Romania when it comes to promote the outdoor office idea and after organising two great #OutdoorOfficeDay events in Timisoara in June 2022, we wanted to know more: how did this ‘working outdoors’ in green(er) cities idea develop at a personal level and what did that mean for the Meaning and Fusion of Work platform?

Anca and Sebastian: The Meaning and Fusion of Work platform has objectives in the greener cities area but also objectives related to increasing the wellbeing of the office workers; these objectives matched perfectly with the outdoor office movement ideas. Working outdoors in 2022 exceeded our expectations both as the interest generated in the event and as in the number of participants. There were more than 500 people taking work outdoors at the Outdoor Office Day(s) in Timisoara; most were people working In the city, part of them also from other countries as participants of the opening event of the ErgoWork International Conference 2022 (an outdoor event at Faber Cultural Center). ErgoWork Society - the initiator of the program - saw a perfect match between the Meaning and Fusion of Work objectives and Outdoor Office Day movement ideas.

And indeed, last year we organised two Outdoor Office Day events in Timisoara: first one at Faber and another on the Iulius Garden. Faber is a prominent cultural center in the city which also hosts one on the most important co-working spaces of Timisoara. The employees of Faber - very active participants and friends of our initiative - took work outdoors too. During talks and a focus group held that day we also concluded that it is preferable to work as close to home as possible in order to lower the impact on the environment due to transport related carbon emissions.

For our second #OutdoorOfficeDay event, Iulius Garden was available to be uses by the tenants of the United Business Center. There was one space especially transformed into an outdoor office. Also, an ample space for both, artistic happenings and debates, was created. At Iulius gardens we were surprised by an unexpected large number of participants; we knew that our invitation to work outdoors in the middle of the urban nature was very much welcome

Outdoor Office Day at Iulius Timisoara

But what kid of work do Anca and Sebastian personally take outdoors? Sebastian: ‘All outdoor works for me are nice, I appreciate them and I am using them. The number one is having walking meetings, secondary sitting surrounded by nature with colleagues, both in the urban nature or wilder nature”. Anca loves nature: “it gives me inspiration, relaxation of the brain. Personally, I prefer wild nature, but I can also enjoy urban nature without any problem. I'm happy with all outdoor forms, alone or together with colleagues. I'm enthusiastic only when I'm thinking of that so you can imagine how much power and good energy I can take from the nature”. Nature gives us peace and reduces stress, improves mental and physical health. For meetings, discussions, an outing in nature is very welcome, but for working on the laptop, it is necessary to arrange several shading and power supply solutions.

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Where will you find Anca, Sebastian and many others on June 15th 2023? Check it out on the Meaning & Fusion of Work website.