Customized facilities—from mega data storage centers to trading floors and call centers—let clients strategize and choose the appropriate level of performance and security they demand.
Technology Defines Ever-Evolving Specialty Spaces
Innovative design vs innovative process
Is the concept of innovative lab design more about the design process than the actual physical space? Has it been 30 years since the last real innovation in laboratory design has been introduced? Other than the introduction and rapid incorporation of technology in the laboratory, what else has changed? Isn’t innovative laboratory design today a mix of both research connectivity and paradigm change within an organization coupled with the physical environment?
Building for the Future: How Tech Is Reconfiguring Office Space
Technology has made travel agents irrelevant, killed off record and video stores and rendered paper maps obsolete. Now it’s taking aim at your office.
Report reveals huge surge in use of flexible working worldwide
Three quarters of companies worldwide have now introduced flexible working to enable employees to vary their hours and work from home or on the move according to one of the largest global surveys of its kind conducted with 8,000 employers and employees across three continents. The Flexible: friend or foe? survey was commissioned by Vodafone and took place between September and October 2015. The countries surveyed were Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, the UK and the USA. A total of 8,000 employers and employees were interviewed online. The rapid adoption of high-speed mobile data services, fixed-line broadband and cloud services is playing an integral role in this workplace revolution: 61 percent of respondents now use their home broadband service to access work applications and 24 percent use a mobile data connection via their smartphone, tablet or laptop with a broadband dongle.
What Douglas Adams can teach us about workplace design
Each day you can find somebody or other sharing their thoughts on ‘the office of the future’ or ‘the death of the office’. My view is that you should steer clear of taking this sort of stuff head-on, on the basis that hardcore deskheads have heard most of it before and already concluded that there are more important things to worry about in a fit-out than what a pool table and a second hand armchair tells us about workplace design. Since I first tried banging on about this sort of thing in the mid 1990s, a period of time which saw a great deal of feverish speculation of this sort, an innocent world in which you still had to explain what you meant by ‘hot desking’ rather than sneer at it and before we all learned how to spell Millennium, I’ve learned how naïve the debate can be. Whatever the business case, whatever the legislation, the demands of employees and whatever the potential of the technology, the workplace is valued far too much to be disposed of completely.
Fresh Dirtt: Holliday-Scott Interiors Design Studio
This environmental consulting company needed a workspace that reflected its focus on sustainability and could accommodate future expansion with minimal impact on their employees and the planet. DIRTT’s pre-engineered walls with insulation made from recycled cotton fibers were used throughout the office, while DIRTT Power’s modular system shortened the installation schedule and made changes and future additions easy to handle. Glass office fronts provide privacy without blocking the flow of natural light into the space. Custom graphics and write away surfaces reflect the company’s environmentally friendly approach and reinforce the company’s key values.
6 Modern Home Offices We Love
From appropriated nooks to glass-encased rooms, each of these modern offices works a unique angle.
What you can expect from the workplace of 2020
The future office must also cater for workers from four generations - Millennials, Generations X and Y, and Baby Boomers in senior management. What drives productivity amongst one group may not necessarily work for another. So already we are seeing the development of workspaces that can shift and adapt to changing requirements.
WHY COWORKING MAKES PEOPLE HAPPIER AND HEALTHIER
In my previous life, I spent a lot of time in corporate offices that were just not good. Good, I suppose, in the sense that showing up resulted in a paycheck every two weeks; but not good for mental or physical health. Endless cubicles, no sunlight, low engagement, little sense of purpose, and chicken fried steak in the cafeteria. Seriously! Chicken fried steak. Convinced that our best selves shouldn’t be left waiting for us out in the parking lot while we punched the clock every day, I became passionate about creating a workspace where you are better off when you leave than when you came in.
Google set to open Kirkland campus expansion with ‘human-sized nest’ and ‘hideaway caves’
Crepe-making rooms, hideaway “cave” areas, human-sized nests, and more — you’ll find them at Google’s new Kirkland offices. The tech giant will officially open its Kirkland campus expansion next Tuesday, doubling the size of its existing engineering center just east of Seattle. The new 180,000 square-foot LEED-platinum certified building has a number of unique and eccentric features as noted above, in addition to a skylight, a living roof deck, cafes, and micro-kitchens. The land formerly housed a chemical mixing and packaging plant and Google completed two environmental cleanups to remove contamination at the property.
KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE FUTURE OFFICES 2016 SUMMIT
When it comes to workplace, small companies and big ones have more in common than you think. I’ve spoken with 20 person startups who are asking themselves the same questions: What does the future work space need to look like to best engage employees?”
DESIGNING A WORKPLACE CULTURE OF INNOVATION
As the speed of business accelerates, companies are investing heavily in innovation in an effort to keep up. Creating a culture of innovation, particularly in large companies, isn’t easy though. Here are four common workplace pitfalls that stifle innovation inside companies.
What the commercial property market tells us about trends in office design
It’s become commonplace in recent years for certain people to foresee the death of the office. The problem with this argument is that, in spite of its drawbacks, office life maintains an attraction for both employers and employees and there will always be an upper limit on how long people want to spend away from other people. Things are changing but the death of the office is a myth. As we’ve known for at least a quarter of a century, there is no absolute need for us to go to work at all. Theoretically we could just do away with offices completely if we wanted to. But as we have seen, the fact we have evolved technology to the point where we could forget about bricks and mortar, doesn’t necessarily mean we will. Not only are there practical reasons for offices to continue to exist, there are emotive ones too. If you want evidence of this, look no further than the records currently being set by the UK’s commercial property markets.
The Temptation of Co-Working Spaces
Technology has upended where we work. The line between work and play has been blurred, and the difference between the office and home has all but disappeared.
As a result, there’s a new class of white-collar workers (or no collar, to be precise) who roam the earth looking for places to get their jobs done.
Some of them work from home, curled up on the couch or in a home office — maybe with a drone hovering nearby. Others camp out at expensive cafes, refilling their mugs of fancy coffee throughout the day. (Yes, I’m referring to myself.)
Going off Script: The Office of the Future Is All About the Experience
After several boom years in the tech sector, we've grown accustomed to seeing the next big thing in workplace design. From the now-quaint time of foosball tables, firemen's poles, and bouncy castles to the recent era of onsite, Michelin-starred chefs and certified masseuses, to the current wave of Starchitecture (Norman Foster at Apple, Gehry at Facebook, and BIG/Heatherwick at Google), Silicon Valley has been constantly evolving and re-inventing itself for the benefit of its workers and in the service of never-ending innovation - or so the story goes.
Psychology Of The Office Space
Unhappy employees are estimated to cost the U.S. economy between $450 to $550 billion each year due to costs related to lower performance, more sick days, and higher turnover rates. These trends have led to office design becoming much more prominent subject in thought leadership since the height of cubicle sprawls.
7 easy ways to create new gathering spaces in the office
Just as changing seasons motivate us to change our furniture arrangements at home, our workplace routines, floor plans and layouts often have to change, too. Multi-generational considerations, the pressure to innovate, and the need to attract and retain talent are forcing companies to better understand the importance of collaboration and the necessity of wellbeing in their office designs.
VIDEO: Silicon Valley design firm walks the DIRTT talk
Recommending big ideas to their high-tech clients wasn’t enough for AP+I Design. Founder Carol Sandman and the firm’s other principals decided to create their own net-zero carbon footprint workspace in an existing building, showing their clients first-hand how sustainability and aesthetics can be combined in a viable and engaging solution. As both client and designer on this project they were fully aware of value for money, and their exciting and practical new space will help them attract and retain the best talent in the field.
TRANSFORM CORPORATE WELLNESS WITH ACTIVE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY IN 2016
In 2014, U.S.-based corporate employers spent an average of $594 per employee on wellness-based incentives. Spending was expected to increase to $693 per employee in 2015, and is climbing even higher in 2016. It’s no surprise that corporate wellness has grown into an $8 billion industry.
From Don Draper to David Brent: The 6 most famous on-screen offices
Where do you get inspiration for your office design? With both the Oscars and BAFTAs on the horizon, we’ve taken a look at some of the most famous TV and movie offices and to analyse the best (and the worst) on-screen office design.