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.
Embracing a new “evolution-friendly fitness method”, Biofit is a nature-inspired biophilic pop-up gym that has opened in London’s Ladbroke Grove.
Designed by award-winning landscape architect Lily Jencks, the Biofit gym features living plants, artificial grass, natural pine essence aromatherapy and hand-made wooden workout equipment. There is nothing digital, electrical or mechanical.
n an era where digital workplaces are quickly becoming the norm, organizations which design physical spaces, digital technologies, and social networks specifically focused on enabling more collaborative work, perform above their direct competitors in their respective industries – in employee connectedness and responsive leadership. This is according to research conducted by Nick van der Meulen of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) and MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR). The report assessed on a basis of five indicators, including growth in market share, profit growth and employee satisfaction, and found that trusting employees by giving them autonomy is the key to making a success of the digital workplace. The survey of 313 organizations showed that the high-performing organizations have an integrated and company-wide approach to greater employee connectedness.
Sara Armbruster, Vice President Strategy, Research and New Business Innovation at Steelcase, spoke at the 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum about the concept of “The Entrepreneurial Society.” She discusses her belief that the workplace itself can help leaders lead better, and, in turn, help others around them succeed.
When you're trying to align your culture with your purpose, one of the areas that you should consider is the way your office design reflects that alignment. If your work is creative and forward thinking, but your office environment is dull and boring, that sends mixed messages to employees and customers alike.
So how can you align your culture with office design to ensure employee engagement with your purpose and encourage customer engagement with your brand? Start by thinking beyond the cubicle to office designs that suit the cultural values you want to promote.
This is an installment in Steelcase's series of interviews with architects and designers about this evolution of the workplace. It features Maria Peterson, Senior Interior Project Designer with Perkins+Will. Maria and her team worked with multinational technology company Lenovo to design their new Morrisville, North Carolina headquarters in a seven month timespan. We asked Maria to give 360 the behind-the-scenes story of this project.
Steelcase 360: Perkins+Will believes that workplace design is more than simply delivering a beautiful space. Tell us what you consider when approaching a new project.
Maria: At the end of the day, a newly designed space should be a beautiful space, as you mentioned. However, it also needs to seamlessly support the culture and productivity of the client’s business. Each client is different in how they work, the flexibility they provide their employees and the amenity spaces they want to incorporate.
Rebranding by committee sounds like a recipe for madness — and often can be — but for Sasaki, it was the only road we could have taken to arrive at the singular brand identity we revealed in the fall of 2016. It took 16 months from kickoff to launch because of the sheer complexity of the endeavor. For a design firm of 270 people, led by 30 principals, with offices in Boston, Mass. and Shanghai, a practice spanning the globe and eight core disciplines, over 60 years of history, it was no easy feat to collectively define ourselves and our future.
Configura, maker of CET Designer space-planning software, has formed a collaboration agreement with Open Systems Technologies (OST) that will increase opportunities for more CET Designer Extensions around the globe.
OST, is a technology firm with more than 225 employees worldwide headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, signed a collaboration agreement with Configura in 2016, becoming a formal implementation partner with the Sweden-based company. OST Configura Services, now with six employees and two contractors working full time, offers design, development and support for companies using Configura's software.
Building software for startups is a huge challenge. Not because writing the software itself is that hard, but most startups have managed to create the least optimal places to do work. In my 10+ years of experience as a software engineer at startups, I cannot trust employers to provide me with an adequate work environment, and this holds me back from doing the best possible work for them. I am an ambitious, driven individual, and I want nothing more than to provide the places I work with my best possible output. I will give whatever company I am working at 110%. Most of the places I have worked have done a great job at preventing me from doing this. That’s why from here on out, I am taking a stand and drawing a line in the sand. Henceforth I will only work in a “remote” arrangement.
Most startups nowadays are obsessed with the open office environment, and it’s nearly impossible to find companies that do not implement this type of layout. They’ll claim it’s because they want an “open and transparent culture,” but if you know anything about the subject, you’ll know this is the worst possible setup for actual work, and doesn’t improve communication or culture. You don’t have to look far to find plenty of research on the subject- and quite frankly, there is simply no debate here. There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that open office layouts foster a more collaborative environment.
At this time of every year, the media is just getting over its predictable annual fixation with with retrospectives and forecasts. The last few of these workplace trends pieces are now dribbling out, many of them indistinguishable and based on some very familiar tropes and assumptions. These days such things tend to be shaped into lists, because that’s how the Internet likes these things. That is all perfectly natural and we are free to make our own mind up which of these features are meaningful and which are the cookie cutter products of the permanently unimaginative. No footballpundit was ever fired for stringing together clichés rather than thinking and talking, and no marketing person has ever lost theirjob for publishing a list of Ten Trends. One thing all of these lists seem to share is an assumption that many of the ideas they reflect are new. That’s understandable. Nobody wants to think that what they consider to be on trend has all been seen before. The young people currently roaming around with wedge haircuts and ripped jeans won’t thank you for telling them they are 80s throwbacks.
Take an inside look at Apple Campus 2's construction during one of the most rainy periods of time in recent history. Featuring jaw dropping aerial imagery via drone, this footage is sure to tantalize your senses.
According to a new report from Glassdoor about America’s labor market and job trends, "2016 was a landmark year for hiring." When measured in rising pay, unfilled jobs, and historically low unemployment, 2016 proved one of the strongest in our economy’s recent history.
Interestingly, "landmark" times for hiring also yield fascinating times to be designing and/or creating the future of workplaces. Just as Glassdoor celebrates the strength of 2016, it also acknowledges that the current 5.85 million unfilled job openings in America translate to lost productivity and increased competition for talent. It also recognizes new technologies spurring innovation will also change how we work and the tools we need. Competition for talent? Enhancing productivity? New technologies and tools? Strategic and successful workplaces can play a critical role in helping companies adapt and solve these challenges.
Workplace changes — expansions, consolidations, relocations — are common, but they can often be complicated. From culture clashes to furniture selection, any number of conflicts can arise when organizations undergo a major facilities-related change. Workplace changes directly impact both the facility and the personnel, so employees must be empowered with tools and information throughout the process to make sense of the changes affecting their workplace.
On its own, moving can be a substantial undertaking. Add in 100 employees, three separate business units with unique systems and configurations, and a new unassigned, activity-based workplace standard, and the result can seem a little hard to tackle. One of our recent clients, a confidential defense contractor, did just that.
Research in Cognitive Neuroscience on the built environment may change the way we see how people relate to the built environment. It may even change how we design.
In architecture, we often talk about designing for healing and learning, but what does this really mean for the people who use the spaces we create? We have great intentions for our designs, but beyond our years of professional experience, how do we know that a space is going to be experienced in the way we desire? Do we have the tools and metrics to back up our assertions about how our spaces will be used, and how they will be experienced?
I’ve had it with the modern-day open office: bright fluorescent lights; fish-bowl distracting conference rooms that always leaves you wondering who your manager is meeting with; long shared desks.
Once upon a time, corporate executives thought cubicles were an optimal format for workers. Furniture giant Hermann Miller created the first cubicle in 1967 as a response to the chaos of open offices: rows of desks laden with clattering typewriters and chattering telephones, which was thought of as tremendously distracting and counterproductive.
You can say the same thing about open offices, but cubicles actually absorb and reduce sounds, and their walls cut down on visual distractions. All this makes it easier to perform better at your job. For example, cubicles seamlessly integrate technology by incorporating power and data management in panels, so you can easily plug in and situate your monitor without disturbing your colleagues. Moreover, cubicles give architects and designers flexibility when designing office spaces.
But cubicles are about twice as expensive as a benching system — those long desks that accommodate many workers. Though the cost of office furniture is opaque because it is usually bought through a sales representative, an average cubicle runs about $3,000, whereas an office bench station costs $1,250. It’s attractive for companies to save money on furniture like a benching system, and if they hire more workers, they can pack them like sardines at the same desk. But more workers, less space, and saving costs doesn’t lead to more productivity.
A recent study by Peldon Rose found that for many British workers, winter has a negative effect on their mental wellbeing. Though you can’t fight against winter for your members, there are certainly ways in which you can make your workspace more ‘winter-friendly’.
A Peldon Rose spokesperson told Allwork that even though the findings did point to a tendency of gloominess and Seasonal Affective Disorder (the disease with the most accurate acronym ever: SAD), “the findings were also positive from the point of view of coworking and business centre providers, because of the importance workers have placed in collaborative and social work space in supporting mental health. 75% say that these spaces are key to their mental wellbeing.”
Every physical setting sends distinct signals to meeting participants – signals that set the tone and provide a context for the conversation, even when they are subtle or not in anyone’s conscious awareness. You understand instinctively that the place where a meeting occurs has an impact on the nature of the conversation. Just imagine the difference between a conversation around a large formal conference table with expensive executive chairs and one that takes place in an informal employee lounge, with the participants seated in a circle on soft bean-bag chairs. Or consider the classic image of a boss seated behind a large desk, in front of a large window framing her silhouette as she delivers a performance review to a “lowly” subordinate sitting across the desk in a low, hard-back chair. Now think about that same performance review being conducted on two softer wing chairs of equal height, with a low coffee table between them. Or in a nearby restaurant or coffee shop. Or on a trail in the woods adjacent to the corporate office. Which of those conversations do you think will evolve in a more caring, respectful, and supportive mode?
Today, a changing workforce, new technology and emerging office cultures are reshaping the corporate office. In the meantime, engagement is down, recruiting is competitive and a new emphasis on collaboration asks more of the modern workplace than ever.
I was joined by Cedric Jones, Director of Real Estate and Facilities at Exelon in hosting a workshop for forty-plus attendees at Future Offices West 2016 in Los Angeles. We planned to cover five trending workplace-related topics in “Knowledge is Power: Understanding Trends to Realize Measurable Results,” but our lively discussions only left us time for three—and response was tremendous. Today, I’m sharing how our participants from corporate real estate responded to two questions we asked about each trend as well as my Aha Moments regarding design for the corporate workplace.
First up: PEOPLE. We’re coming up against a massive demographic shift. At 40% today, by 2025, millennials will make up 75% of the workforce.
London design team leader at Morgan Lovell, Amanda Godwin-Jones gives her thoughts on the year ahead in office interiors.
As we enter 2017, the wellbeing of employees remains central to office design, with a noticeable shift towards home-inspired interiors, according to office interior design, fit out and refurbishment specialist Morgan Lovell’s London design team leader. Here, Amanda Godwin-Jones outlines her views on what 2017 has in store for office design.
We recently spoke with David Galullo, CEO and Chief Creative Officer of Rapt Studio, who recently designed the offices of Dropbox, Google, Fullscreen, and Ancestry.
David tells us about what branding looks like in the contemporary office landscape looks like and how the firm works to help clients create an environment which matches the unique identity of each organization.
Experiential graphic design (EGD) enhances the connection between users and the built environment by highlighting shared values and culture. As workplace design pushes the boundaries of flexibility and expression, EGD applications are challenged to strike a balance between autonomy and resilience. Embarking on 2017, we predict immersive experience and collaborative content will drive our practice in the year ahead.
In 2017, the desire for immersive experiences will drive innovation, and this will affect the built environment. Branded spaces are becoming sensory rich journeys. Storytelling in built space requires much more than a simple logo or mission statement on the wall. To create unique and relevant environments, designers must take an integrated approach to communicating message and values, and use brand messaging tools—from materials to lighting to creative technology—that deliver impactful and emotional connections to space.
