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.
If you're wondering what Google's new set of offices will look like, an early set of mockups has been released to show its possible appearance once constructed. Google's early renders will put the expanded campus near the tech giant's headquarters in Mountain View, California. City officials publicized the images this week, and it features a quirky and unique design that is a stark contrast from the sharp-edged facades of other corporate world offices.
Offices need to be built around people, rather than trying to control and corral employees, argues Jonathan Openshaw. We first started writing about the rise of ‘Bleisure’ (the convergence of business and leisure) back in 2009 at The Future Laboratory, and since then we’ve seen the boundaries between work and play dissolve drastically. ‘We’re seeing workplaces that are more intelligent, connected and human-orientated – a move from facilities management to hospitality’ explains Jeremy Myerson, co-founder, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art. His comment hints at the convergence taking place in workplaces that are now as much about leisure, wellness and hospitality as they are about observation, quantification and efficiency.
New research used wearable badges to uncover the connection between lunch room furniture and performance.
Who doesn’t love a nap? Even better are things that make naps easier and more cozy. Smarin are known for their nap-friendly lounge pieces and the France-based studio recently completed an installation in Dubai called the Nap Bar. Sounds like heaven, right?
Flexible working is on the way to becoming the norm in financial services with the average employee spending 39 percent of their time working remotely, according to new research from tech consultancy Intercity Technology. The company surveyed a mere 100 employees from different organisations within the financial services market to gain insight into their workplace habits so you may want to treat this carefully. The respondents also thought this proportion of time spent remote working would increase in the next two years to 41 percent, with an ever increasing adoption of technology-led solutions in the workplace. Additionally, the surveys suggests that 70 percent of employees believe using a device of their own choosing positively impacts the way they work with their colleagues, with the biggest specific benefits identified as flexibility (51 percent), more productivity (42 percent) and improved collaboration (33 percent).
While the fluorescent-lit rows of cubicles — implemented to save costs in an era when workers had no choice but to work at the office — have been summarily rejected by the new generation of tele-able employees, young hires are looking for a workplace experience that engages in more ways than the quirky or off-beat.
Traditionally, office buildings are self-contained units with amenities for the exclusive use of building tenants. Over time, we’ve seen dry cleaners and banks sprinkled into the programming mix, but those are not the types of hospitality and retail experiences attractive to today’s tenants. Now, we are designing retail banks that co-locate with cafés, and restaurants with menus that go far beyond the lunch-time deli. Health and wellness considerations are also factored in with the increasing inclusion of gyms and fitness studios.
Perfecting the art of office design remains a work in progress. Though architects and planners have been incorporating innovative design principles for decades to try and adjust to the evolving preferences of workers, keeping employees happy in the workplace can be an elusive goal, says a New York Times Magazine article by Nikil Saval.
Google's much-hyped new campus has a somewhat new look. After the City of Mountain View limited the buildable space, the tech company was forced to reduce the overall size of the complex. The overarching concept remains intact—a micro "city" of buildings lined by bike paths, outdoor walkways, and gardens—but, like many ambitious projects, it's had to make some concessions when the reality of regulations sets in.
“If you look back over history, workplaces tend to reflect what was happening in the economy,” said Bob Fox. “We have moved from simple clerical tasks to highly collaborative creative thinking, and today’s workplaces show it.”
Experience this webinar on workdesign.com > [fee]
With the advent of new technologies, and a dynamic mix of different generations in the workforce, the way people work has drastically changed – requiring changes in the design of the physical workspace, as well. No longer is the workplace just a physical place to gather employees – work is becoming a place to collaborate, exchange ideas and communicate with colleagues and clients. A new paradigm is emerging that carefully balances teamwork, focus work and continuous learning. The most successful organizations will look at their workplaces as not just merely physical locations, but strategic tools with the power to impact how an organization functions. The goal will be to create a high-performance workplace, one that is thoughtfully designed with employees in mind, incorporating elements that will enable an organization and its employees to thrive. To bring this goal to reality, organizations must re-examine the work they must perform today, as well as the work they will be challenged to perform tomorrow, aiming to create a space that aligns with their current and future needs and goals. Doing so will help to create an environment that enables employees to achieve corporate objectives in surroundings that reinforce organizational values and support their multi-dimensional needs.
Architecture firm Studio106, wanted to be able to enjoy the nice summer weather that New Zealand has to offer, without leaving their office.
In a world where technology allows us to work anywhere, at any time, those that are enabling this freedom spend more time at their desks than any other industry.
Diatribes against open-floor-plan work spaces are quite fashionable these days. Remember this Washington Post piece? Or this one by a former Fast Company senior editor? Even one of our own Inc. contributing editors chimed in recently with 10 Reasons That Open-Space Offices Are Insanely Stupid. What's in the water?
Design experts are working with companies to nudge employees in a healthier direction without them noticing. Active design, the latest trend in office planning, uses workspaces to nudge workers into making healthier choices. That means bathrooms that may feel unduly far from one's desk, or a staircase that's easier to access than the escalator. Companies have increasingly enrolled their employees in voluntary, and not-so-voluntary, initiatives to promote good health and fitness, but active design requires no buy-in. It's invisible, which eliminates a lot of the pitfalls of employee-sponsored wellness programs. "When they're mishandled, wellness programs become platforms for shame, embarrassment, and disappointment," said Danna Korn, chief executive officer of the Sonic Boom Wellness program.
We’re used to hearing people predict what The Office of the Future will look like. It’s been going on for a very long time now and each new generation of commentators on the subject comes up with its own forms of wishful thinking, wild generalisations, distorted conclusions and failures to account for the inherent unknowability of future disruptive technology. The best way of reminding ourselves of these pitfalls is not to look forward, but back. In this broadcast from 1967 (above), legendary US newsman Walter Cronkite reports on how people saw the future of work and technology. While some of it was prescient, some of it was inevitably wide of the mark, not least by actually underplaying the impact of technology. Cronkite was not alone in envisioning the future of work, of course.
One of the main reasons why books such as Catch 22 and 1984 make such mediocre films, is because celluloid struggles to capture the books’ preoccupation with the ways in which language can be used to subvert meaning and rationality. We don’t always have to lean on the bookcase to see how this works. It’s been evident recently in the coverage of the massive growth of zero hours working worldwide, although they have now been banned in New Zealand. There are now up to 1.5 million people on zero hours contracts in the UK and the adjective most commonly associated with the practice in the media coverage has been ‘flexible’, despite the fact that from the perspective of the majority of the people working on such contracts they are anything but. It’s yet another example of the subversion in our use of the term flexible working. It’s Doublespeak; an expression which means something completely different to, or indeed the opposite of, the thing it is describing.
As work styles have changed, workspace design has also changed; and it goes beyond ditching the cubicle and adopting ping-pong tables. Truth is that even though there’s a more casual approach to work and doing business, professionals remain as concerned about getting their work done as ever…they’re simply not so concerned about where and when they get it done. With habits of work different than years ago and with new technology in the picture, workspaces have had to adapt their design to fit the users’ needs. Below, you’ll find 4 design elements that we believe flexible workspaces should have in order to be successful and keep a client base flowing.
W. Clement Stone once said: "You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Are the things around you helping you toward success -- or are they holding you back?" That's what facilities managers and office managers around the world are asking themselves about the office spaces they're responsible for organizing.more How can they set up a space that's not just a place to shelter all your employees, but one that's a strategic tool for productivity, collaboration, and growth?
Kontor recently hosted our second Tech by Design event, which brought a crowd of West Coast influencers in tech, business, and design to Instacart’s office in San Francisco. At the event, Kontor officially unveiled a suite of new workflow tools that enable designers and their clients to easily collaborate.
