Want people to return to the office? Then create the best office in the world

Want people to return to the office? Then create the best office in the world

by • Features, Wellbeing, Workplace design

best office in the worldMore obituaries have been written for the office in the past two years than at any time in history. It has often seemed like even the best office in the world couldn’t preserve the idea of the office. And it’s not like the obituaries were all that rare even before the pandemic forced us to reappraise our relationship with work and the times and places we do it. While all these death notices were being served, one particularly well-informed organisation was making some more interesting observations about it all. In particular, it constantly raised the most fundamental question of all. (more…)

The great workplace conversation (still) needs to be held with a great deal more humility

The great workplace conversation (still) needs to be held with a great deal more humility

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

great workplace conversation“Nobody knows anything”. William Goldman’s infamous summing up of the essential unknowability of the movie business also has a less quoted second part. “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.” It is a call for humility. That no matter how much we know about what we do and how good we are at it, we can’t always predict its outcomes. And that is clearly the case with the ongoing Great Workplace Conversation. (more…)

From the archive: How organic design can reflect the way people move around a building

From the archive: How organic design can reflect the way people move around a building

by • Comment, Workplace design

organic designThe story goes that, after Rem Koolhaas had been appointed to design the McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2003, the legendary architect noticed how students had created their own pathways between the buildings on the site. The site of the new building included a field on which their footprints had worn down the grass to such an extent that distinct grooves had been carved out that reflected their movements, prompting him to consider the effect of desire lines on organic design.

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Hybrid working is now the dominant business model for knowledge workers

Hybrid working is now the dominant business model for knowledge workers

by • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace design

hybrid workingFuture Forum, a consortium launched by Slack with founding partners Boston Consulting Group, MillerKnoll and MLT has released the latest findings from its  Pulse study, which shows that hybrid working has become the dominant work model for knowledge workers around the world. The report claims that the percentage of people working in hybrid arrangements has increased to 58 percent (from 46 percent in May 2021), as the share of workers who say their teams work exclusively either from home or from the office has declined sharply. (more…)

The way we talk about hybrid working can reflect a failure of imagination

The way we talk about hybrid working can reflect a failure of imagination

by • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

hybrid working is not the only option we haveThe events of the last 18 months have given us a once in a generation opportunity to reinvent work. Our generation can create a discontinuity between the assumptions of the past and the opportunities of the future. To capitalise on these opportunities though we have to dispense with the assumptions we hold about work and the places where work takes place, including many of the assumptions we hold about hybrid working. We have to re-examine the purpose of the office and what form it might conceivably take in the future before we can decide if it has any place in our plans. (more…)

What the 21st Century office of the future looked like in the 1960s

What the 21st Century office of the future looked like in the 1960s

by • Comment, Furniture, Technology, Workplace design

refraction and the office of the futureWe’re used to hearing people predict what The Office of the Future will look like. It’s been going on for a very long time now and each new generation of commentators on the subject comes up with its own forms of wishful thinking, wild generalisations, distorted conclusions and failures to account for the inherent unknowability of future disruptive technology. The best way of reminding ourselves of these pitfalls is not to look forward, but back. Only then  can we see how an image can be refracted and make allowances. (more…)

We must wake up to the realities of workplace sustainability

We must wake up to the realities of workplace sustainability

by • Comment, Environment, Workplace design

workplace sustainabilitySustainability has been steadily moving up the business agenda over the past few years, with COP26 placing more emphasis on the need for organisations to demonstrate that their operations are sustainable and lessening their overall impact on the planet. Many businesses may feel daunted by the challenges ahead, and there are certainly big steps that need to be taken in order to reduce corporate carbon footprints and move to more sustainable models. (more…)

Office occupiers set to transform the design of their offices

Office occupiers set to transform the design of their offices

by • News, Workplace design

Nearly three quarters of global office occupiers responding to a survey expect to transform their workplace design in the next two years, according to a report from Mace. The report, which was produced using data from a global client workplace survey issued by Mace to over 4,000 CRE professionals, shows that businesses worldwide are reviewing their current workplace offer following the pandemic, in a move to improve employee experience and attract people back into offices. (more…)

Winds of change are blowing through the office

Winds of change are blowing through the office

by • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Whilst driving through Zürich in a hailstorm I passed a Mercedes with a plastic bin liner taped over a missing window. Two thoughts struck me. First: this must be the result of the owner locking himself out of the car, as car crime is a fictional event in Switzerland (bike theft is preferred). The second was how utterly pointless this flapping piece of plastic served as an attempt to seal the broken window. (more…)

The great office door handle problem

The great office door handle problem

by • Features, Wellbeing, Workplace design

office door handleArchitects and designers have always a had a thing for door handles. It’s the kind of detail they like and one of the most genuinely tactile features of a building. Architects from Frank Gehry to Zaha Hadid have worked on the designs of door handles for manufacturers. It was the Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa who described the door handle as ‘the handshake of the building’ in his architectural theory book?The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses in 2005. This was cute before last March but now looks slightly menacing.   (more…)

Wondering what to do about that office of yours? Hold the line.

Wondering what to do about that office of yours? Hold the line.

by • Features, Flexible working, Property, Workplace design

Bruntwood Bloc Manchester office

At the end of April, New York magazine’s cover feature was headed ‘Remember the Office?’ The article reminisced about a world of cubicles and water-coolers, coffee points and staff parties. Its tone was elegiac, implying that it wasn’t just the enforced distance of 13 months of COVID-19 restrictions that lent enchantment to communal workspace, but the possibility that offices had gone for good.?  (more…)

Workplace data proves that the devil is in the detail for the new era of work

Workplace data proves that the devil is in the detail for the new era of work

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

workplace data and the future of workPredicting the future is a fool’s errand. History is littered with examples of people who got it horribly wrong. In 1876, William Orten, the president of then telegraphy pioneer Western Union, claimed that the telephone was an idiotic, ungainly and impractical idea that would never catch on. Almost a century later, Microsoft’s Bill Gates said that nobody would ever need more than 640KB of memory in a computer. Today’s home computers and laptops can store up to 32GB of memory. (more…)

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