February 1, 2024
A while ago, Antony Slumbers asked me why I thought firms had never done anything much about the underutilisation of their offices. This was in the first throes of lockdown-driven remote work hysteria, prompted by one of those headlines about how offices being half empty was some signifier of hatred for them.
January 30, 2024
It has become something of a preoccupation of mine to consider why so many of the conversations we hold about workplace design are largely about the rediscovery of old ideas. It may be because there are constants about how people interact with their surroundings and each other and the truisms underlying those interactions. Although these are often reframed by the amount of data we now have to support them, some things never change. More →
January 24, 2024
On 20th and 21st March ARCHITECT@WORK London will open its doors at the Truman Brewery and the team are ready to welcome the architecture and design community from London and everywhere else on both days. Discover over 200 carefully selected product innovations brought to you by a selection of high-end brands. Register online and get your visitor badge. Admission is free for all trade visitors. More →
January 18, 2024
The piece I wrote on workplace bullshit came in for quite a bit of attention when it was published and also meant I was pointed to this excellent article on how to spot it when you see it. Lots is said about the skills we’ll need to cope with the challenges of the current Century, but this is perhaps one of the most important. Especially trying to spot it in ourselves. Paradoxically, but understandably, we already seem reasonably able to spot it in our politicians and other people we don’t quite trust. More →
January 17, 2024
Organisations are having to rethink the form and function of their offices in ways unprecedented in their relatively short history. And perhaps the biggest challenge is to create places to work that reflect the organisation’s culture and the needs of the people who work there (some of the time). One possible framework for aligning an office design model with the culture of the organisation is presented in a supplement published in the current issue of IN Magazine called Gods of Work. Published in partnership with Modus, it draws on management and organisational theory and established models of office design to suggest solutions to some of the challenges facing organisations as they rethink the way they work. The office of the future for most organisations will be smaller, but much better and we hope this becomes an invaluable guide for those setting out on that path.
January 12, 2024
Monica Parker joins Mark Eltringham to share an Old Fashioned while discussing how to find wonder in the everyday, the limits of workplace design, our renewed obsession with productivity, how to achieve flow states in a world of distractions and what it means to be truly happy. There’s not much workplace news around right now as people are still finding their feet after Christmas, so we also explore some lessons we might take from the Post Office scandal about how organisations go wrong and the role of human nature in creating toxic cultures. More →
January 8, 2024
In 2022, data from Statisica revealed UK users spent an average of 4.25 hours per day using their mobile devices. A different Statistica survey found that 31 percent of UK social media users aged between 16 and 24 years reported spending between 1-2 hours per day using TikTok, while 25 percent reported spending between 3-4 hours per day on the social video app. More →
January 4, 2024
Design Guild Mark are pleased to announce that IDEAS Ltd will be sponsoring the ‘Furniture category’ for the 2024 Design Guild Mark Awards. Founded by Keith Lovelace in 2002, IDEAS is a leading authority in ergonomics and inclusive design for any commercial or public space including leisure, sports, hospitality, healthcare, and education. Keith has always had the philosophy that everything should come under the term ‘Good Design’, meaning that a product has been designed in such a way that it is desirable, inclusive, sustainable, robust, innovative, functional, attractive, and repairable, to name a few – values which are shared by the Design Guild Mark and form the criteria by which each submission is judged. More →
January 3, 2024
We know, and have for a long time, that the workplace is in a state of near constant flux. The meteor strike of lockdown was an accelerant, not a deviation. It also laid bare -yet again – the faulty assumption that there is some sort of general evolution towards an idealised version of the office or conversely the universal adoption of remote or hybrid working, whatever it is. That is why we see so many people routinely willing to suspend their critical facilities to make extravagant and even absurd predictions about the office of the future or even the death of the office.
December 31, 2023
Each day for 25 years, between 1968 and 1993, a man called Stanley Green would rise early, enjoy a spartan breakfast of porridge and an egg, pack up a lunch of apples and vegetables, strap them along with a placard and some pamphlets to a bike and cycle the 12 miles to Oxford Street from his home in Northolt. There he would share his ideas for improving the physical and psychological wellbeing of the country, based primarily on the idea that the consumption of too much protein led to the moral turpitude he had first encountered in the Navy during the War and which had then infected the whole country. More →
December 20, 2023
As we rapidly advance through the latter half of 2023, the office landscape is undergoing a significant shift, with the imminent fluorescent lamp ban. Just like the Rolodex, the fax machine and smoking in the office, fluorescent lighting is becoming a thing of the past in the workplace. Both the UK and the EU are taking bold steps by phasing out all forms of fluorescent lamps with some types, such as T5 and T8 fluorescent tubes, banned from sale as early as September 2023. If they haven’t done so already, business owners will need to explore alternative lighting solutions to stay compliant with new regulations, set to take full effect by February 2024. More →
February 2, 2024
Life at the coalface: How the agile workplace first appeared in the mid 20th Century
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design