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.
Sit-to-stand worksurfaces are popular; spending money is not. When budgets are tight, some companies create protocols to determine which employees receive a dedicated height-adjustable worksurface. In the interest of providing a benchmark, I would like to outline the strategies that I have seen, and provide an ergonomist's perspective.
With spring in full bloom, it’s hard to ignore the positive effects of more sunshine, more flowers, more greenery all around. It’s also hard to ignore the urge to get out if you’re stuck inside an office all day.
We reached out to Jennifer Busch, Teknion’s VP of A&D, to find out how Teknion incorporates biophilic theory in their products and why we should all work to include more elements that stoke our biophilia (literally: a love of life, or, according to Busch, “the notion that all people are connected to nature”) in our workspaces.
Bringing nature into the workplace is not only a beautiful design element, but has been shown to reduce stress, minimize illness and enhance employee wellbeing. Whether your workplace has green spaces inside or access to green spaces outside, the impact is overwhelmingly positive.
Cuningham Group Architecture, Inc. has turned the 25-year-old Twin Cities Public Television headquarters in St. Paul into a vibrant and open office environment, replete with interactive workspaces and a soaring new lobby.
Historically, corporate headquarters was a giant bureau drawer, a “temple for reviews,” and only named as the headquarters due to size or the number of executives located there. As Silicon Valley giants emerged they turned their headquarters into more inclusive mini-cities. But what too many of them still lack is a reason for being, one that amplifies rather than stifles innovation. The whole headquarters model needs to be transformed, if not upended.
Green buildings are good for the environment—that is well known. But what benefits do they offer the people who inhabit them? A recent report from the World Green Building Council tackles that matter head-on, looking at the impact of environmentally friendly construction on user productivity and well-being in the retail sector. But the question isn’t a new one. In fact, says Scot Horst, chief product officer at the U.S. Green Building Council, it has its roots in the very beginnings of the green building movement.
One thing’s for certain: the way we work is changing, which mean offices are changing along with it. Technology has untethered us, making it easy to open a laptop or swipe a phone from virtually anywhere. Three-piece suits have given way to jeans and flannel, and the mysterious schedules of senior executives have been unveiled by the new norm of working out in the open.
Innovation isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a requirement for survival in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace. Not surprisingly, businesses of all scales – from start-ups to corporations – spend great capital and focus on increasing innovation in their organizations. Whether it’s disruptive innovation that changes the marketplace entirely, or incremental innovation that improves one product from another competitors’ offerings – innovation is fuel in the business world. In order to best instill an innovative culture, companies should consider the design of their office spaces and how they’re engineered to naturally spur the type of creative thinking that can turn an idea into a scalable innovation. It’s not enough to simply find an empty room and re-name it a think tank, incubator or hackerspace. Energizing the innovative spirit in an organization via design requires concrete strategies and intentional efforts – and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
Technology has been redefining where and how we work for more than a decade. With that shift has come new expectations and challenges when accommodating multiple generations of business travelers. Airports and hotels are changing rapidly to keep pace with the realities of a modern, mobile workforce.
Sometime today the Philadelphia 76ers and Kimball Office will launch plans for what is being called the “Sixers Innovation Lab Crafted By Kimball” with the goal being to cultivate an entrepreneurial spirit and foster innovation while connecting and energizing the business communities in the local region. Selected companies will receive office space in the innovation lab furnished by Kimball Office as well as access to industry experts, executives and financiers, and a lot more including business solutions services; plus the opportunity to pitch industry-leading investors and venture capital firms.
When your office lease expires, opting to stay in place and upgrade your existing space can yield significant savings. However, successfully achieving such cost reduction requires careful attention to and management of a wide variety of issues in what can be a complex project process.
“Think of the workspace as a tool. And any tool — whether a computer or a wrench — will require training,” said Jed Link, spokesman for the Houston-based International Facility Management Association. So “if you approach an open office the same way you approach a closed office, it’s not going to work.”
Companies and teams today are hungry for workplaces that provide the warmth and feel of a residential space. However, residential options often fall short when it comes to supporting the tools and features we need to work well: technology, durability and flexibility. The Coalesse Design Group considered this trend when they designed the new Potrero415 Tables.
While a lot of attention has been given to TAMI clients and tech tenants recently, there has been significant movement within other industries as well. I recently sat down with CBRE’s Wyatt Melzer to discuss the changing outlook for traditional financial services. His group focuses on the Boutique Financial Service Market, with his particular emphasis on spin offs/new funds.
JLL's Global Head of Corporate Research, Dr Marie Puybaraud talks about the workplace of the future.
The idea that extraterrestrial organisms have throughout time seeded the surface of the Earth is not the sole preserve of loonies, mystics, conspiracy theorists, the permanently stoned and various wishful thinkers. This idea of panspermia has some pretty high profile and serious adherents. Perhaps one of the most surprising was the renowned but controversial astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle; pillar of the scientific community for much of his life, atheist, Darwinist and the man who coined the term Big Bang, albeit as a way of disparaging it. Yet also a man who believed that the global 1918 flu pandemic, polio and HIV were each the result of micro-organisms that fell from the skies rather than developing here on Earth. The broader scientific community dismisses such thinking because it derives in part from either an incredulity at the processes involved – as was the case with Hoyle – or an ignorance of them.
At Kontor we see thousands of workplaces every month — from radical concepts to chic updates of traditional spaces — and spot new design ideas early. These emerging trends need to be on your radar right now.
Workplace design is important to millennials It’s an undeniable fact, companies need to successfully recruit and retain millennials to drive desired business results. As of 2015, millennials make up the largest generation in the workforce and that number will continue to rise in the immediate years ahead. Millennials are no longer a sub-group of employees on the horizon, they are the people leading teams, redefining corporate goals and contributing business ideas for the future. One constant amidst this shift in our workforce is that employee recruitment, compensation and training remains organizations’ largest expense. Successfully hiring and keeping strong employees is directly correlated to profit. It is estimated the cost of replacing a millennial employee ranges from $15-20K on average.
Based in Grand Rapids, MI, and with offices in New York City, Drop Drop Studios is a creative studio specializing in video production, photography, web and social. With award-winning short films to their credit, their visual artists bring stories to life by evoking emotion, capturing the essence of the human struggle and celebrating the joys that bind us together.
See ya later, sad office plant! In celebration of spring, Breather, an on-demand workspace network (we’ve featured them here and here), has partnered with The Sill, NYC’s leading plant design company. Together, they’ve turned an existing Breather unit into “The Oasis” — “a space for Breather members to immerse themselves in a room overflowing with productivity-enhancing greenery,” said Dave Haber, Breather’s VP of growth and marketing.
