Contract furnishings provider, Hightower received multiple awards at NeoCon 2021, including IIDA's 'Best Small Showroom' (under 4,000 sf) and 'Best of Competition' for its newly designed Chicago showroom.
Humanscale welcomes Elizabeth Margles to its Marketing Division in the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Margles comes to Humanscale with twenty years of experience in design, fashion and retail and a background in public relations and advertising.
The exclusive relationship with Kontrol's BioCloud® Technology will provide real-time detection of airborne pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 to help make workplaces safer as organizations return to the office.
So was the workplace section of the show indicative of the most talked about issues in the field of contemporary office design? The answer is not really. While the majority of people in offices still spend their working lives at bench desks sitting on task chairs – a fact reflected in the products on show from Hands, Orangebox, Flokk, Nowy Styl and Century Office – there was little to highlight one of the two most talked about issues in the workplace right now; sit – stand desking.
A new, in-depth study has a powerful message for employers. “Working conditions really do matter,” says the report’s lead author.
During Clerkenwell Design Week 2017, Oliver Heath and Interface concept designer, Josefin Carne, asked the question 'What is your +Positive space?'
When companies try to create “branded” experiences for their consumers, the results can be seriously cringeworthy. Anyone who’s ever stepped inside a company’s corny, hashtag-laden “activation” knows that’s not the way to make your brand more meaningful.
“Tenants want open floor plans but also a place to collaborate and a place to have a private conversation,."
They were supposed to generate a sense of camaraderie, enhance teamwork and encourage an open flow of ideas between colleagues after decades of segregation in booths.
Tech giants like Apple are building vastly expensive headquarters – but university-style spaces have been used by companies for decades, write Agustin Chevez and DJ Huppatz.
Research by Oxford Economics has suggested that open-plan office designs were at odds with the working style of many non-managerial staff, with 53 per cent of employees surveyed saying the ambient noise in such workplaces reduced both their satisfaction and productivity, and 41 per cent adding that they did not have the necessary tools to cut out the noise and focus on their work.
Interestingly enough, we found that tech companies are dealing with the same wellness issues as the average organization, but many are addressing the issue through design strategies and innovative solutions.
Private offices are usually thought of as traditional work spaces that force some difficult trade offs: workers get more privacy but less interaction with others, plenty of quiet concentration but no collaboration, and great image and status but limited function and flexibility.
"The need to connect with nature is embedded deep within our psyche. As a species, we have divorced ourselves from our natural habitat: the open plains. Just as zoo animals and lab rats that are placed in sterile, unenriched environments show signs of physical and mental stress, so do humans when forced to work in lean, sterile and unenriched workplaces.
Consider how you view your time at work--is it a transaction where you show up for a paycheck, or is it an experience where you grow and learn?
The open plan concept popular more than a decade ago has since been enhanced with smarter, more advanced planning models. Not only has the nature of work evolved dramatically since the heydays of the open plan in early 2000’s, so too has our understanding of how workspaces can foster engagement, satisfaction, and productivity.
You can’t improve something before you figure out what its status is at the moment. What are the main communication means in the office? Is it email? Is it effective? Are the important messages getting suffocated under the pile of other messages?
Gates writes about how the American workplace was essentially set up around the notion that employees had partners who would stay home and do the (unpaid) work of caring for children and the household, etc.
Open plan offices seem to have become the default design for workplaces. This is due largely to pragmatic advantages like cost savings and utilisation of floor space. However, just because they are popular doesn’t mean they are best.
With a plethora of reports around that generalise the behaviour of an entire generation of people, yet another exploration of the Millennial has to be approached with caution.
According to an annual public survey of more than 5,500 people who work remotely or are interested in doing so – compiled by a flexible job search and info platform called FlexJobs – the top factor many professionals use to determine which job to choose is whether the prospective employer can help them achieve the ever-desirable work/life balance.
Business is, by definition, geared towards profit. So how then to justify spending money on employee’s leisure zones?
Programming for outdoor space presents a unique set of considerations as compared to programming for an indoor environment.
