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.
Looming above San Francisco's SoMa district, LinkedIn's impressive new building has been the talk of the town since its opening. We had the opportunity to sit down with Neil Schneider, Design Director of Interior Architects, for an exclusive look inside LinkedIn's newest (and perhaps coolest!) office.
Companies continue to focus a great deal of attention on building better office environments: open floor plans, formal and informal collaboration spaces, increased natural light, and even a bit of whimsy are all accepted design practices. And, like all of the other aspects of our lives, technology continues to be integrated into our workspace.
In his book, The Great Good Place, the urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg wrote about the importance of third places—the informal “public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact.”
Silicon Valley is not too cool for school. The best example rests in its glitzy corporate campuses which fully comply with the valley’s famous “think different mantra.” Here, employees work (and play) in headquarters that rock in design and culture—boasting glass-walls, lush courtyards, gourmet cafeterias, herculean gyms, family-friendly policies, and fun, fun, fun. Apple’s solar-paneled mothership comes on line this April. But these youthful companies don’t flinch on productivity—they’re changing the world, proving a happy, well-designed environment is a more efficient one. Here’s a tour of inspired “think different” corporate world headquarters (in and beyond the valley). This is the future—cubicles be damned.
A new flexible office solution has arrived: the hybrid model. Finally, a solution that allows growing businesses to take the space they need on terms that suit their growth plans. What we need is the space for this new model to expand.
I’m not talking about space for start-ups. Cities are just about providing enough spaces for entrepreneurs and teams in their infancy.
I’m talking about established businesses, perhaps three to five years old, looking for 50 to 100 desks or more. They are still rapidly scaling so don’t want to take a traditional five- or 10-year lease, but they’ve moved beyond taking a few desks in a co-working space.
In February 2016, Perkins+Will’s Minneapolis office moved into our new studio, fondly referred to as studioIDS. It offers 100% unassigned seating, a variety of work settings, and radiates the simplicity, thoughtfulness, and authenticity of our organizational purpose. Located in the iconic IDS Center in the heart of downtown Minneapolis, studioIDS was informed by our workplace mobility pilot program —Mobileapolis—that offered employees flexibility over where and how they work. A year after our move into the new space, we reflect on our journey, look at our post-occupancy metrics, applaud our successes, and identify further areas of opportunity and innovation in our new home.
When Airbnb sent round a survey to its employees in Paris asking what they’d like in their new office, the request was for a petanque field.
For the uninitiated, petanque is a form of boules played with a wooden ball. “We were like, ‘weeeelllll, that may not happen, it could be a little dirty and loud’,” says Rebecca Ruggles, Airbnb’s lead international designer, whose job is to make these wild workplace dreams come true.
Though the request may seem ambitious, it’s within in the realms of possibility for a tech start up as successful and disruptive as Airbnb. The holiday rental platform has transformed the hotel industry by giving anyone with a spare room and a mobile phone the ability to run a small hospitality business.
Workplace culture is changing how businesses operate and is driving the demand for alternative workspaces. The closer we approach the year 2020, the more redundant the office cubicle is becoming. Our attitudes about why, how, and where we work are changing. Unlike previous generations, it can be argued that the workforce of today and the future place a higher premium on self-determination and flexibility than higher salaries.
If you observe the labour market demand for businesses which acknowledge the need to offer workers flexibility in working hours and locations, you'll realise that it has never been higher. As a result, those companies quick to adapt will attract the best talent. However, the challenge for many businesses is the lack of know-how and leadership that enables the effective transformation of business practices through rethinking performance measures, encouraging operational open-mindedness, embracing cultural diversity, and updating communication channels. All which are essential for responsive organisation.
It’s a fascinating moment for workplace design. There are so many interesting developments on the right track doing some great things, but so many workplaces are still pulling the wrong levers. Coming out of the 20th century, capitalist society has been trained to create value based on competition and business success. Rationality is celebrated leaving emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects. Architects and designers, basically humanists, now design workplaces for the wellbeing of the individual who is spending most of his or her life in this environment.
Technology giant Microsoft has a new Italian headquarters in a Herzog & de Meuron-designed building, featuring an open, free-flowing layout. The company occupies six floors inside the Feltrinelli building in Milan, with an office space masterminded by local studio DEGW. In the spirit of the company’s ethos of a “new world of work” where staff flexibility is encouraged, the space is open with no dedicated work stations so that everyone is allowed to move about.
Corner offices are a coveted piece of corporate real estate — but they probably shouldn't be.
According to newly published research from office design company Steelcase, corner offices meet only a small percentage of modern CEOs' needs. Many leaders say they value teamwork over unilateral decision-making, yet still work in fixed spaces designed to isolate.
Eight or nine years ago, we had grown to the point where we needed a second 10,000-square foot floor. Before reviewing any blueprints, however, I decided the new space should reflect my self-deprecating, somewhat irreverent ways as well as my personal hobby of performing stand-up comedy. In other words, it had to be an "office named Steve" in which Steve (that's me) felt completely at home. After all, a comfortable Steve is a productive Steve.
So, I had Montroy Andersen DeMarco create a workspace that featured high ceilings, exposed ductwork and a way cool staircase connecting the two floors. They also baked-in private phone booths as well as conference rooms with bay windows and such creative names as the theatre, the porch and the living room.
What is the Workplace?
For many of us, work starts first thing in the morning when we look at our smart phone to check business e-mails. Work has become what we do, not where we do it--we no longer have to “go to work” to do our work. Your workplace is where work gets done--wherever that is.
We increasingly are seeing a work-life rhythm, in which people switch between work, home and social life to balance different tasks. This rhythm can occur anywhere that allows you to accomplish goals.
HGA Workplace Strategists Dave Paeper and Melissa Jancourt get beyond the buzz and offer some insight into the dynamics impacting today’s workplace.
LiquidSpace, a platform for leasing out flex space, expanded its platform today to include flexible workplace designs for companies with 10 to 200 employees. The altSpace program allows tenants to curate a new office (such as above) with LiquidSpace-approved landlords and partner spaces.
The program is now available in major U.S. markets, including the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Dallas, and Washington, DC. LiquidSpace has offered this service as a pilot program in San Francisco during the past 12 months.
The needs of introverts have received much more attention in recent years. However, the tech industry's penchant for open plan offices means that managers must ensure that they are enabling workers of all personality types to be their most productive.
"An intentional focus to develop a work culture that is inclusive and supportive of all individual differences will allow all employees, including introverts, to feel more engaged, valued, and nurtured—thus mining the full capabilities of all employees' knowledge and talents for enhanced team and organizational effectiveness," said Ozias Moore, assistant professor of management at Lehigh University. "Managers and team leaders must realize that the personalities of individual employees do influence group interaction and outcomes."
Successful business leaders realize that having engaged employees is not an HR program, but a core business strategy. We know that companies with engaged employees outperform those with less engaged employees. Yet, according to Gallup, a staggering 87 percent of employees worldwide are not engaged.
We may be preaching to the choir when we say this, but office design has a tremendous impact on how employees work. According to studies noted in our April design news post, the designed work environment has the power to encourage—or discourage—team members’ creativity, productivity, and collaboration.
Creative collaboration is more than just a business buzzword. It’s a proven business practice, with benefits for the company and for those who do the work.
Granted, developing a collaborative work environment isn’t easy—it requires well-planned communal spaces, the right furniture and tools, good organizational leadership and communication, and a shared commitment to goals.
Why do we strike up more spontaneous conversations with people in bars than we do in the workplace? The answer isn’t alcohol—it’s the eye height you engage with people at.
In bars, the counter and stools are placed at a height that puts those sitting and standing at the same eye-level. The height of the counter and matching stools is so well established at between 40 to 42 inches that it’s known as “bar height.” Eliminating this 12-inch difference naturally engineers conversations between strangers who are now both sitting and standing face-to-face. That 12-inch difference makes casual conversations much more likely to happen. (And not just because you’re two glasses of wine into your evening.)
By this logic, in order to facilitate communication and collaboration, we should make our workplaces more like bars. Without the drinking.
IA’s Design Intelligence group researches, adapts, and creates new technologies for our clients and design teams to best implement design and change. The group has explored workflows from Automated Programming to Virtual Reality, but what is it doing now, and what can we expect from design technologies for interior architecture in the near future?
As a child, my mother would tell me, “Finish your work first, then you can play.” The idea that work is a task to complete before life can happen has colored my academic and professional life. It’s a widespread concept that cripples creativity and drains the joy from work by severing the connection between passion and productivity. As we design for the workplace, we begin to question the concept of work, as well as our attitudes and beliefs about it. To continue to evolve workplace design, we must return to the core of our practice, with a willingness to examine, challenge, redefine and broaden our perceptions of work.
While there is general consensus that the most successful people love what they do, it’s easy to fall into the trap of designing for single-purpose, machine-like employees. I have had clients who monitor employee trips to the restroom because they see it as lost productivity. I have had clients who are more concerned about maintaining their hierarchy than elevating their people.
