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.
From the way we consume media to the way we order food, every aspect of our lives is becoming customizable — a factor that is particularly important to the millennial and Generation Z cohorts. This is one area where it’s imperative to remember that by 2022, Gen Z will be your entry-level employees and millennials will make up a significant portion of your managers and key decision-makers — and their expectations for the workplace will hold even more importance than today.
Most law firms in New Jersey have been slow to adopt modern office trends. I’m not talking about slick, glossy interiors that look like they belong in a magazine. I’m referring to spaces that have outdated planning metrics and are not adaptable as technology continually evolves. The fact is most of these firms lease more space than they need!
Unispace is designing the largest corporate development in the Southern Hemisphere for an undisclosed client. The building in Australia is expected to be future-proof so it is relevant in 2030, according to Dean Rikanovic, Unispace design principal in Australia. This has meant incorporating artificial intelligence, around 50 different work environments and adding plenty of wellness elements and amenities to keep employees happy.
In the modern world, the consumer is more powerful than ever and the desire for personalisation is driving an increasingly flexible and bespoke market. This applies to all products and services we consume, and is fast becoming an important factor in the success of design.
What makes you get up and go to work each day? According to the Question & Retain (Q&R) Happiness in the Workplace Pulse Check, 40 percent of us say the most important factor that makes us happy at work is feeling valued and supported; 19 percent of us get out of bed for the intellectual challenge work provides; and for 12 percent, the pay and benefits make that early alarm bell worthwhile.
As events go, the inaugural outing for the Smart Buildings series of conferences was not without its technical hitches. Hosted at one of British Land’s latest developments in Paddington Central, it became apparent as the event wore on that the building was still undergoing some final cosmetic touches. Drilling on adjacent floors and a stilted fire alarm mid-way through one of the presentations served as occasional interruptions to the busy programme, but the speakers and organisers continued with practised ease. The space itself, while serving as an immersive example of a Smart Building in action, felt at times somewhat cavernous for the delegation of one hundred or so attendees. Despite these few small teething issues however, this ambitious event succeeded in delivering a full day of insightful presentations and debates, with a highly engaged audience of industry experts.
A project that's been in the works for about nine months has become a reality. Wednesday was the official grand opening of IBM's agile workspace.
This workspace takes a more open approach to the office, encouraging collaboration.
In Silicon Valley, many workers have been spoiled by sprawling campuses, free company buses, fun slides and scooters, in-house chefs and laundry services offered by prominent businesses like Google and Facebook. In New York, startup employees are accustomed to working more with less.
Not every trophy campus is a monument to a company's success. In fact, it can have just the opposite effect, reflecting a sour turn in fortunes.
The ramifications of leaders’ actions and their need to immerse deeply in a wide range of topics puts extreme pressure on executives to make every moment count. After years of interviews and observations, Steelcase researchers identified three drivers causing leaders to work in new ways.
Once upon a time, an organization wanted to appeal to new and existing clients, while inspiring both employees and recruits. They had an excellent product, offered quality service, and leveraged its brand power well through its public persona. The one place it hadn’t considered as part of its brand arsenal was its own workplace
Have you ever been called to a meeting room only to arrive in an underwhelming cube, where you immediately begin to shuffle chairs around like bumper cars? And after all that kerfuffle, there still remains one isolated worker standing in the corner, without a car of their own to park around the table. While not disastrous on any scale, these repetitive and sometimes awkward encounters are avoidable, and largely delineated by an unsuitably executed built environment. Such situations — whether similarly inconsequential or more cataclysmic — are simple indications that good architectural and design interventions, are essential in our everyday work environments.
For centuries, ceilings have served as a focal point and source of inspiration. Whether it’s the vaulted ceiling of New York’s Grand Central Terminal or the sheer artistry of the Sistine Chapel, the “fifth wall” has played a central role in enhancing buildings and inspiring their occupants.
Many industries rely heavily on data to inform business and design decisions. E-commerce sites track shoppers online. Brick and mortar stores use surveillance cameras to monitor shopper activity. Post-occupancy surveys measure comfort and satisfaction in built projects, from professional services firms to corporate campuses.
On, the young, successful running shoe brand, keeps employees on their toes in the company's new headquarters in Zurich: while working environments usually seek to shorten paths, the On team moves around along a central aisle in an office space of over 100 metres. There are no partitions or attributed workspaces. Employees clock up a total distance of two to three kilometres daily in a setting that promotes intercommunication unlike any conventional office layout. This dynamic environment thrives on emotions and calls for a sense of comfort and well-being – for sofas which are at home in offices and office chairs that are also perfect for the home office. Cross-functionality is part and parcel of Vitra's comprehensive product portfolio, which is why the On office is furnished entirely with Vitra furniture.
ON JUNE 7, 2011, a local businessman addressed a meeting of the Cupertino City Council. He had not been on the agenda, but his presence wasn’t a total surprise. Earlier in the year the man had expressed his intention to attend a meeting in order to propose a new series of buildings along the city’s northern border, but he hadn’t felt up to it at the time. He was, as all of them knew, in dire health.
We are now in a time where the workplace is experiencing unprecedented change. As we continue to explore these changes and take a closer look at the ways the corporate work environment has distinctly evolved, we must also consider the benefits in transforming the ways in which we work. Research shows that the work environment can support the rise or decline in productivity, connectedness, and creativity based on its design and structure. Creativity has become a preeminent necessity in the modern workplace, leaving employers to reexamine how they’re prioritizing employee innovation.
From al desko to al fresco. Outdoor office spaces are popping up around the globe – but would you regularly take your business outside?
Incorporating a space that can spark moments of interaction, such as a social hub by the coffee machine, is often at the fore when designing new workplaces. At this year's Salone del Mobile presenting a new scenario for offering 'moments of meditation around the water cooler', Studio O+A's interactive installation investigated future work environments.
At the end of the 18th Century it was becoming apparent that overpopulation was something the human race would need to address for perhaps the first time. Advances in technology and the urbanisation that followed the Industrial Revolution had created a new set of challenges. These were most famously laid out in a 1798 book called An Essay on the Principle of Population, written by an English cleric called Thomas Malthus. The book helped to influence the nascent discipline of economics and informed the thinking of Charles Darwin when he wrote On The Origin of Species some sixty years later. The term Malthusian remains in use to this day when describing the central paradox laid out in the book. This paradox suggests that because population increases geometrically (doubling every 25 years by multiplication), while food production only grows arithmetically (by addition), the end result can only be depressed wages and ultimately starvation.
