The Working Space
TWS - Orgatec 2022 Photo/Video Album

A quick walk thru of Orgatec 2022.

TWS - Orgatec 2022 Photo/Video Album
Manufacturer, NeoCon 2021
Source: CFN News Desk
Hightower wins multiple NeoCon awards including ...

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.

Hightower wins multiple NeoCon awards including ‘Best Showroom’
Manufacturer, People
Source: CFN News Desk
Humanscale Announces Elizabeth Margles as Chief ...

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.

Humanscale Announces Elizabeth Margles as Chief Marketing Officer
Manufacturer
Source: CFN News Desk
Steelcase teams up with Kontrol Technologies to ...

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.

Steelcase teams up with Kontrol Technologies to provide air quality monitoring and viral detection technology
Manufacturer, People
Source: CFN News Desk
Alan Jay Heller dies at 81

For over 50 years, Heller offered leading designers the opportunity to work with new technologies to create innovative products. Those were great partnerships and they resulted in great products.

Alan Jay Heller dies at 81

Workplace

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Mix of core and flexible workspaces will shape real estate by 2030

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Mix of core and flexible workspaces will shape real estate by 2030

Thanks to the combination of a changing workforce and greater connectivity, up to 30 percent of corporate real estate portfolios will incorporate flexible workspaces by 2030, with offices more likely to be built around core hubs and comprising fewer locations. Along with this the Internet of Things and smart buildings will create new ways of managing productivity, sustainability and the user experience. These are some of the key findings of JLL’s new report series ‘Workspace, reworked: ride the wave of tech driven change’; two reports exploring the impact of technology, data and digital disruption on work spaces and real estate investment strategies. The series focuses on the office sector over the next 15 years, looking at how occupiers, developers and investors will need to view real estate differently and adapt in order to enhance investment returns and create work spaces that are fit for purpose in a rapidly changing, highly-connected world.

Via workplaceinsight.net >

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Design-Focused Thinking is the Basis for an Exceptional Experience

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Design-Focused Thinking is the Basis for an Exceptional Experience

Design can be approached in many ways, but it ultimately boils down to a simple formula: sketching + research + tailoring = design-focused thinking. And by following this formula, you can use the power of perspective to bring your clients’ ideas to life.

When discussing ideas with a client, it’s important to listen first. You can only see a client’s architectural vision by viewing things through their eyes and no matter how long you’ve been an architect or designer, each client’s point of view is always different.

Via interiorarchitects.com >

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Home workers take fewer sick days than office based colleagues

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Home workers take fewer sick days than office based colleagues

Working from home has long been branded ‘shirking from home’ but a new survey suggests that home workers actually take fewer sick days. The research by CartridgePeople.com and published in the SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) Workers Report, found that home workers are not only happier but they are also healthier than their workplace-based counterparts – taking an average of 2.4 sick days per year, in comparison to the 2.6 taken by those working from company premises. Of course, that doesn’t tell us if they are in fact healthier, or that they’re more prepared to carry out their work duties from the comfort of their bed. But the survey of 1,096 British workers, including both home workers and those who work from their employers’ premises, also revealed that the majority of workers (60 percent) did feel happier when working from home.

Via workplaceinsight.net >

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Inside Out: How To Build A Thriving Workplace Brand

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Inside Out: How To Build A Thriving Workplace Brand

Love All Serve All.  This has been the corporate mantra at Hard Rock since 1971. While it was created as a customer-focused corporate purpose, it is one that shines out, and shines in. This company was ahead of its time in creating a culture where employees are encouraged to be themselves, from the hotel store clerk who could be a ringer for a member of ZZ Top to a waitress who dazzles you with music factoids while taking your order to a bellman with full-sleeve tattoos. And this ethos has created a strong, positive culture where people are, literally, comfortable in their skin and feel loyal to the brand. As a result, this seems to create an atmosphere in Hard Rock franchise establishments—from restaurants to hotels—where employees seem to want to do their best. “We don’t mind the people who work here being different; they can be who they are as long as they do a damn good job,” one manager told me recently.

Via forbes.com >

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D.C.’s offices are getting funkier, more modern

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D.C.’s offices are getting funkier, more modern

In the past 10 or so years, offices in Washington, D.C. have been changing their look by opening their spaces, offering more amenities, and going green. The reason why is that technology in the workplace has evolved, and the workplace has had to evolve with it to keep up.

Marty Caverly, chief investment officer for Resource Real Estate, Inc., said, "It used to be when you left the door of the office, you’re off the clock. Now, we’re always on. So, the environment has to be different."

It’s not just tech companies in Silicon Valley that are upping their game when it comes to workplace design. In the D.C. area, offices are using their spaces as a recruiting tool, especially for Millennials.

Via dc.curbed.com >

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American workers prefer the 9 to 5 but would take a pay cut in exchange for home working

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American workers prefer the 9 to 5 but would take a pay cut in exchange for home working

According to a new study by researchers at Princeton University and Harvard University, the average American worker is indifferent to flexible working hours and instead prefers a set 40-hour workweek. According to the study, most workers aren’t willing to take even a small pay cut to determine their own working hours. However, if given the option to work from home, many workers — especially women — would take an 8 percent wage cut to do so. The findings, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), also show that workers consistently dislike irregular work schedules set by employers on short notice. They would even give up one-fifth of their salary to avoid working evenings or weekends. Nearly half of jobseekers would not take an irregular-schedule job even if it paid a quarter more than a 9 to 5 job. This is true even of workers who currently have irregular work schedules.

Via workplaceinsight.net >

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The art of managing space in the workplace

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The art of managing space in the workplace

New sources of information about how our workplaces are performing are a boon to professionals trying to determine the right amount, type and configuration of space will keep employees, CEOs and managers happy—all at once. But it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. All too often, we are buried in superfluous information, or have paid for technologies that seemed useful, but don’t move the strategic needle.

“Investments in workplace monitoring technologies should help achieve business objectives, provide actionable information, or achieve projected cost savings,” says Phil Kirschner, Senior Vice President, Workplace Strategy Americas, JLL. “It’s important to invest in the right technology, at the right time, and at the scale that makes sense given your company’s place in the workplace strategy lifecycle.”

Via jllrealviews.com >

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The Open Office Culture Conundrum: Are Startups Choosing Communication And Culture Over Productivity?

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The Open Office Culture Conundrum: Are Startups Choosing Communication And Culture Over Productivity?

Are companies today blindly following the open office trend, when it comes to restructuring their offices, or are they systematically investigating into what best suits their employees? Is it possible that in an effort to efficiently use office space, companies are disregarding the needs of the majority of their employees.

Via inc42.com >

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How Experiential Design is Changing the Way We Navigate Space

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How Experiential Design is Changing the Way We Navigate Space

User experience design (UX), grounded in human-computer interaction, has moved beyond the palm of the hand and to change our expectations of physical space. In a digital world analogy communicates through familiarity, teases ontology, and provides access.

When it works well, UX design breaks down resistance to new technologies by drawing on intuition and using the familiar to lighten the cognitive load. For example, you don’t need to think when you see that camera icon on your iPhone; the recognition is instinctive. In this far-from-dehumanizing context, technology becomes friendlier as the phone’s capabilities are easily recognized and accessed.

Via interiorarchitects.com >

An Office on Wheels, Straight Out of the ‘Mad Men’ Era

An Office on Wheels, Straight Out of the ‘Mad Men’ Era

In 1966, Imperial, a brand owned by Chrysler, built a show car with an executive office inside. The front passenger seat swiveled to face backward, and a fold-out table created a mobile conference room. It had a telephone and a “datafax transmitter” (a fax machine) that could transmit a page in six minutes. It was the ultimate “Mad Men” automobile. (Don Draper actually drove a 1964 Imperial on the show.)

This concept car got so much attention, Imperial produced some for customers, minus the phone and fax, called the Imperial Crown Coupe Mobile Director. Imperial advertisements noted, ‘Now you may work your way to work.’ While it was one of the more expensive American cars of its era, it wasn’t very popular, and very few were ever built. Today, probably a handful or two still exist.

Via wsj.com >

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Weird science; how workplace professionals are in danger of obsessing about data

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Weird science; how workplace professionals are in danger of obsessing about data

There’s been a series of reports recently and a lot of PR to back them up, plus we’re headed at pace into the workplace event season. Pretty soon we will be neck deep in data. And misleading headlines. Some of it is good. Some of it is bad. We need to be wary of the data, the science behind some of it and the wild claims made as a result. There’s a great piece about how big data isn’t the answer to our problems in Wired. One argument it puts forward is this: “today’s data sets, though bigger than ever, still afford us an impoverished view of living things.” It feels like there is a poor view of the workplace right now. One problem here is the commercial imperative to get results. That means the PR teams pick over the bones of what might be quite thin research and then bold arguments are extrapolated. It means detailed insights are blurred by headline grabbing claims, or simply not there in the first place.

Via workplaceinsight.net >

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Improve employee engagement by making your workplace an “experience place”

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Improve employee engagement by making your workplace an “experience place”

Any workplace optimization strategy needs to start with your business drivers. And for many today, the key driver for success is talent. How to attract the best, yes, but more importantly, how to keep them happy when they’re on board.

While it’s easy to chalk the talent war up to a competition for Millennials, it’s important to understand that the reason attracting younger employees is so important is because there are so many more of them than anyone else. Millennials in the workforce outnumber Gen-Xers two-to-one, and Baby Boomers are retiring by the thousands every day.

Via officerenew.com >

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Facebook rolls out Work, a social network for your office

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Facebook rolls out Work, a social network for your office

After two years of private beta testing, Facebook is unleashing its Work software on the world. The product is very similar to the social network used by over a billion people every day. But it focuses on connecting users with a network their colleagues at work, and charges a fee per user.

Work will be taking on office communication companies like Slack, a Silicon Valley darling which has obtained a multi-billion-dollar valuation, aka "unicorn" status, based on its aggressive growth. Right now it appears Facebook is undercutting Slack, charging between $1–3 per user, versus the $6.67 per user Slack charges for its standard package.

Via theverge.com >

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Industrial robots will replace manufacturing jobs — and that’s a good thing

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Industrial robots will replace manufacturing jobs — and that’s a good thing

If you listen to the wrong people, the North American manufacturing industry is doomed.

There is no denying that the U.S. and Canada have been losing jobs to offshore competition for almost half a century. From 2000 to 2010 alone, 5.6 million jobs disappeared.

Interestingly, though, only 13 percent of those jobs were lost due to international trade. The vast remainder, 85 percent of job losses, stemmed from “productivity growth” — another way of saying machines replacing human workers.

For many, this scenario is even worse. China and Mexico may be “taking our jobs,” but at least they’re going to other humans. Robots, on the other hand, allegedly threaten to wipe entire sectors, like manufacturing, right off the map. The level of fear-mongering here is high: “How to Keep Your Job When Robots Take Over.” “Is a robot about to take your job?” “What Governments Can Do When Robots Take Our Jobs.” It’s enough to make anyone a little nervous.

The facts, however, tell a different story. Over the last 20 years, inflation-adjusted U.S. manufacturing output has increased by almost 40 percent, and annual value added by U.S. factories has reached a record $2.4 trillion. While there are fewer jobs, more is getting done. Manufacturing employees are better educated, better paid and producing more valuable products — including the technology that enables them to be so much more productive.

In fact, there are currently two million jobs going unfulfilled in the manufacturing sector, largely due to an aging workforce — the average age of a manufacturing worker is almost 45, two and a half years above the national non-farm median — and negligible interest in those jobs from younger generations.

More via techcrunch.com >

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Perkins+Will integrates healthy materials into their new Seattle office

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Perkins+Will integrates healthy materials into their new Seattle office

On an early May day, Perkins+Will Seattle gave The Architect’s Newspaper a tour of their new offices in downtown Seattle, the first of their global offices designed to incorporate their in-house healthy materials initiative research. The Seattle office moved east in April from their prior space on First Avenue above the Seattle Art Museum, to Minoru Yamasaki’s 1977 Rainier Tower on Fifth Avenue. The relocation gave Perkins+Will the opportunity to live-test their healthy materials initiative—putting their research on toxic building chemicals into action on themselves. In 2009, Perkins+Will developed a precautionary list of harmful building materials, compiling governmental agency information about building chemicals that may harm our environment and ourselves.

“We wanted our workspace to reflect who we really are, and to some extent use ourselves as a little test lab. Can we walk the walk?” said Ed Palushock, associate and senior project designer at Perkins+Will who heads up the firm’s Material Performance Research Lab.

Via archpaper.com >

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UK Workplace Survey 2016: Bridging the Gap

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UK Workplace Survey 2016: Bridging the Gap

With a dramatic gulf between the haves and the have-nots in the UK workplace, it is imperative that businesses bridge this gap if they are to unlock innovation in the workplace. At the same time, it is equally important that businesses enrich the human experience and help people optimise their performance at work.

As a research-based design firm, we use data, evidence, analysis and insights to fuel creative solutions to the core questions facing today’s hyper-connected workforce. Our most recent insight study, the 2016 UK Workplace Survey, officially launched on Sept. 6 at a client event in London. Joined by a panel of industry experts and workplace specialists, we asked the question, “How can the workplace be a catalyst for innovation in today’s organisation?” The ensuing debate brought to the fore some interesting observations.

This post is part of a series of blog posts on Gensler’s 2016 Workplace Surveys.

Via gensleron.com >

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How to Choose the Right Amenities for Your Office

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How to Choose the Right Amenities for Your Office

“You can’t always get what you want,” sang the Rolling Stones. It’s true in life and no less true in the workplace environment, particularly when it comes to amenities. But a smart and strategic approach to amenity selection and design can result in something much better: you get what you need.

The idea that amenities can help in recruiting and retaining top talent has resulted in a veritable corporate keeping-up-with-the-Joneses competition, with companies trying to one-up one another with over-the-top perks. “I’ll match your fitness center with a climbing wall and raise you a kegerator.”

But no matter how lavish the amenities, they’ll prove ineffective in making any kind of positive impact if they don’t align to a company’s culture and the characteristics that make an organization unique.

Instead of wasting time and money copying what others are doing, the solution is to build a sustainable environment that truly works for the company and its employees. This can be readily achieved by approaching amenity selection and design through a framework of three critical factors: location, wellbeing and culture.

Via gensleron.com >

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How to Use a Standing Desk Without Annoying Your Co-Workers

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How to Use a Standing Desk Without Annoying Your Co-Workers

As with any new piece of automated equipment, navigating the proper etiquette of standing desks can involve a bit of a learning curve.

You will literally stand out. Embrace it.

“If you have a standing desk, that’s still viewed as being somewhat dorky,” said Joel Johnson, 37, a publishing consultant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. “It’s not a big deal, but some people are never going to be accepting of it. Some people will roll their eyes. It’s fair game for light teasing.”

Think about where you take meetings and what it means.

If you’re standing and co-workers are sitting, it’s like you’re at a lectern, so rise (or sink) to their level. “There is a sitting area in my office with a table and a few chairs, but for a lot of meetings, people will just come and stand at my desk,” said David Carter, 47, the chief creative officer at Mithun agency in Minneapolis. “Psychologically, it says we’re not going to hang out and have a longer meeting than necessary. It’s a little bit of a power move.”

Via nytimes.com >

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Green buildings improve occupant’s cognitive function and health

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Green buildings improve occupant’s cognitive function and health

New evidence which supports the argument for the Well building concept as new research suggests that compared to people in high-performing buildings without a green certification, occupants of high-performing, certified green buildings had nearly a third (30 percent) fewer sick building symptoms, a 6.4 percent higher sleep quality score and a 26.4 percent higher cognitive function score. The new study from Harvard University and SUNY Upstate Medical University, supported by United Technologies suggests that there may be an even greater benefit to working in green certified buildings than originally thought. “The Impact of Working in a Green Certified Building on Cognitive Function and Health,” demonstrates the importance of green-certified buildings to the health of occupants – particularly for office workers whose health, productivity, decision-making, and sleep could greatly benefit.

Via workplaceinsight.net >

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Are we seeing the workification of home or the homification of work?

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Are we seeing the workification of home or the homification of work?

Thinking and theories about working environments continue to be much debated, of course. As part of this ongoing discussion, Bisley recently hosted an event at its London showroom to continue the aspects of the debate that focus on how offices seem to be morphing in to homes, and how our homes are, conversely, functioning as places of work. The panel discussion was led by Professor Jeremy Myerson of The Royal College of Art and WORKTECH Academy. He was joined by Kirstin Furber – People Director at BBC Worldwide, Sebastian Conran – a leading product and furniture designer, David Barrett – Head Buyer of Living, Dining and Home Office at John Lewis and Amelia Coward – Founder and Creative Director at Bombus.com.

Via workplaceinsight.net >

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