WDM's Bob Fox and Kathryn Nuss interview industry experts at a 2015 IFMA World Workplace gathering of Workplace Evolutionaries (WE) in Denver.
VIDEO: WHAT DRIVES INNOVATION IN THE WORKPLACE?
Tomorrow's Workplace Will Have Virtual-Reality Pods and In-Office Vegetable Plots, Say Students
Given the constant proliferation of new technologies, it’s hard to say with any certainty what the workplace of the future will look like. Undeterred, design professionals continue to do their best at speculating—often via competitions and workshops—and many of their radical creations often appear ripped from sci-fi storyboards.
Dingy Basements and Cluttered Garages. How Startup Spaces Inspire Office Design
Leaders of startup and emerging companies looking to rethink their office space might want to take a few cues from the aging, cluttered garages they drive by each day on the way to work.
Airbnb was just voted the #1 best place to work
The Most Beautiful Tech Office Of The Year
Place Viger in Montreal symbolized an age of glamorous travel and cosmopolitan ambition. Constructed in 1898, the train station was done up like a French chateau. But time wasn't kind to the building and over the decades, it fell into disrepair (thanks, Great Depression). Today it's the site of a $250-million mixed-use redevelopment project that seeks to revive the abandoned structure. Lightspeed, a point-of-sale software company, is one of the newest tenants and it enlisted local firm ACDF Architecture to overhaul three floors within Place Viger for its global headquarters. The concept mixes punchy graphics, whimsical features, and an historic framework to forge a minimalist office that feels sophisticated, not overwrought.
A look inside IBM's new 'agile workspace'
Employees are moving into what’s informally called “the agile workspace” on the third floor of a building that is temporarily called "002." Construction started in August and employees began to move in four weeks ago. For decades, it’s housed the long white hallways and windowless offices typical of Big Blue. But today, it’s open spaces, whiteboards and adjustable desks. Its employees don’t have assigned desks.
HOK Collaborates with IFMA on New Workplace Strategy Research Report
What is the state of today’s workplace, how has it evolved over the past five years and what are the trends for the future? A new research report explores these topics and reveals how organizations are using new workplace strategies to improve the productivity and success of employees.
The International Facility Management Association (IFMA) has released Distributed Work Revisited: Research Report #37, which is a follow-up to its 2009 Distributed Work report. HOK helped IFMA develop and analyze the survey, collect the case studies and write the report.
Projects Aim for Zero-Net-Energy Sustainability
Two projects in the southern part of the Bay Area could serve as the new baseline for environmentally sustainable buildings. In Mountain View, AP+I Design employees might feel a little tipsy as they relax in the lounge of their new digs on Easy Street. That’s because they’ll be sitting on a bench curving its way around a rotund wall constructed out of wine-barrel staves. Specifically, the side of the staves that made the barrel interior was used, so the wall retains the deep, dark red stain left by volumes of wine.
Five Corporate Screening Rooms Designed by IA
Mobile video is a fast growing market for content developers and publishers, with nearly 40 percent of YouTube’s audience of 50 million accessing the site from their smart phones or tablets. But some clients are investing in a large-format, communal viewing experience with screening rooms in the workplace.
A Tour of The Trampery’s London Coworking Space
The Trampery is a London-based network of facilities built for the innovative start-up community. Currently, The Trampery has 4 locations in London. This one is located in Shoreditch.
A Peek Inside BrightRoll’s Hip San Francisco Office
BrightRoll is a San Francisco-based tech company that builds software that automates and improves digital video advertising globally.
Netflix’s Former Top Recruiter on the Workplace of the Future
RIGHT NOW, THANKS TO SOCIAL MEDIA, we have a connection with customers that we’ve never had before—instant feedback on how a company is doing. As a result, you’re going to see a tighter connection between what people do and who they serve. We’re not going to have silo departments within a company that operate on their own and never see the outside world. And we need to educate our employees accordingly by teaching them how the entire business works and how they fit into the machine. I’d rather have employees spend one hour learning how a company makes its money than sit through a yearlong course on conflict management. Knowing how a business works will help employees understand why decisions are made, and that goes a long way toward improving performance. Corporate jargon does nothing but slow us down, and it’s the exact opposite of the transparency and openness we’re going to see more of in the future.
Read the article on wsj.com > [paywall]
NEW EUROPEAN office for HORTONWORKS defines new ways of working
Geraghty Taylor Architects has completed the first London office of Hortonworks, the high tech Californian based start up. The move reflects the company’s continued growth and success in international markets and also brings a new Hadoop open source Community Hub to Central London.
RURAL COWORKING IS A THING, AND WE LIKE HOW IT SOUNDS
By now, coworking is a standard concept among city dwellers. Once a hip, new trend among the millennial crowd, it is now arguably mainstream, with an estimated 781 coworking spaces throughout the US, according to a 2013 report — a considerable increase from the very first of its kind, which opened only 10 years ago. A simple Google search illustrates the dense concentration of these spaces within cities: there are some 76 coworking offices in San Francisco alone, representing almost 10 percent of the entire pool of such facilities nationwide. This is not to say that every urbanite regularly uses a coworking facility, but it is likely that if they were to be stopped on the street, they could not only explain it, but tell you where the nearest one is. The same cannot be said for most rural communities, towns, villages, and small cities across the country.
A Look Inside Bruketa&Žinic OM’s Office in Croatia
Bruketa&Žinic OM is a full service digital agency, that focuses on brand strategy, packaging design, graphic, product design, strategic planning and online/offline marketing communication.
A Look Inside SurveyMonkey’s New London HQ
SurveyMonkey, a technology company that offers a cloud-based online survey and questionnaire tool that helps users gather survey-related informations, recently moved into a new UK headquarters designed by Oktra.
PODCAST: The Dramatic Rise of Unassigned Work Spaces
The most dynamic organizations are embracing new transformations that are changing the face of the traditional workspace.
Thanks to advances in technology, new workspace designs, and employee “change engagement” strategies, distributed workforce models are dramatically on the rise, and are here for the long-term.
As a result, unassigned workspaces are becoming the new norm. At the same time, many organizations are decreasing the amount of space required to support staff liberated and productive from multiple locations.
These were the key findings of International Facility Management Association’s (IFMA) annual “Distributed Work Revisited” study, which also highlighted how facility management professionals play a vital role in developing workspace strategies of the future
WorkSpace Today recently had the unique opportunity of speaking with Jed Link, Manager of Communications at IFMA and Gordon Wright, Senior Vice President and Director of Consulting at HOK, about these dramatic shifts.
Bike Commuting Is On the Rise. Is Your Office Ready?
Over 900,000 people in the United States rode bicycles to work in 2014. This fact and other data collected by the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) show that the number of workers commuting to work by bicycle in the US grew 62% from 2000 to 2014, making cycling the fastest-growing commute mode in the United States. In light of this change, particularly in the nation’s 50 largest cities, landlords need to reassess the facilities they offer; failing to do so can mean the loss of valuable new talent.
The Open Office Debate
The proliferation of open office design has had a tremendous impact on the American work experience. From Silicon start-ups to major corporate campuses, open offices have come to represent forward thinking design and the importance of fostering collaboration. However, there has been a lot of debate as to how and when to utilize the concept effectively.
What these photos of Facebook’s new headquarters say about the future of work
Deep inside Facebook’s massive new headquarters, the largest open-office workspace in the world, a rough-hewn building that feels like the idea economy’s take on the industrial factory floor, sits the desk of Lindsay Russell. The desk is a white slab, 5-feet long, no drawers. The top has room for her laptop, computer monitor and a few knickknacks. Russell, a brand strategist, also has an office chair and small file cabinet. That’s it. No coat rack. No office phone. Her just-delivered dry cleaning, handled by Facebook, hangs by its metal hangers from the desk’s lip. There are no cubicle walls. No partitions. Her desk sits cheek to jowl in a pod with five other desks, a scene repeated across the cavernous Frank Gehry-designed space filled with 2,800 Facebook employees.