April 8, 2015

Sino might: a review of the CIFF office design show in Guangzhou

by John Sacks • Comment, Furniture, Products, Workplace design

Guangzhou, about two hours by train from Hong Kong, is China’s third city. It is a sprawling metropolis. Apart from a cluster of skyscrapers and the busy, broad sweep of the Pearl River which carves the city into districts, it has few redeeming features. Unlike the previous years’ office design shows hosted in Guangzhou, the heavy rain stayed away and the weather was hot and humid. It would probably have been sunny, were it not for the pall of smog which constantly shrouds the city. The 35th China International Furniture Fair is too large to be held at one time in the 430,000 sq. m. China Import & Export Fair complex, so it’s split into two, five day phases, held six days apart. Billed as the ‘Fabulous Furniture Fair’, Phase 1 concentrated on residential furniture. Phase 2 was for CIFF Office and for Interzum – the furniture materials and machinery show.

March 9, 2015

The UK’s enduring and understandable love affair with Scandinavian design

by Justin Miller • Comment, Furniture, Lighting, Workplace design

The British have an enduring love affair with Scandinavia. From Norwegian Wood to Ikea, Abba to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and all the other manifestations of Nordic noir, the country’s love affair with everything Scandinavian shows no sign of abating any time soon. We have a particular affinity with Scandinavian design, which is both familiar to our shared Northern European sensibilities and exotic at the same time. Its influence extends way beyond Sundays spent assembling a Billy book case. Like all the best design, we love its simplicity and functionality, its order and attractiveness. The influence of Scandinavian furniture design in particular has been palpable in the UK since the 1950s when the first waves of modernism crashed on these shores and were lapped up by a population eager to build a new world following years of war.

December 5, 2014

Office workers have five key ways to get some peace and quiet at work

by Mark Eltringham • Furniture, News, Workplace design

According to a new study carried out by market researchers IPSOS and the Workspace Futures Team of office furniture maker Steelcase, office workers are desperately seeking privacy within open plan settings, where they can function effectively and complete work without being driven to distraction. As a result people are increasingly in need of more choice and control over how they work and are using a number of ways to seize it. Less than half of those surveyed (41 percent) claim they have the opportunity to undertake important work privately. The report claims that this does not mean that workers are looking to turn back the clock to the days of cellular offices because they ‘enjoy the buzz of the open plan office’ but are seeking peaceful retreats within them, depending on their own definition of what privacy means.

December 2, 2014

Iconic office chair designer to open its first UK office in Clerkenwell

by Sara Bean • Company news, Furniture, News, Workplace design

The furniture design company behind the iconic 40/4 chair [pictured] is to open its first UK HQ in London’s Clerkenwell district. HOWE, which specialises in contract, bespoke furniture design, will rent the 2,640 sq ft ground and lower ground unit at 82 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1, on a 10 year lease. Lars Bruntse, marketing manager at HOWE, commented: “HOWE develops, produces and sells dynamic design furniture solutions worldwide. London is a centre for global accounts and the UK is an extremely important market for us, so it is the right time to establish ourselves here.” Richard Reid, from Clutton’s commercial agency team said: “Clerkenwell is one of the most important design hubs in the world and we were delighted to be instructed by HOWE, designer of the iconic 40/4 chair, to find them new premises in this popular area. 82 Clerkenwell Road, with its period features, high volume space and prominent location met the requirement perfectly.”

November 7, 2014

Orgatec 2014 focuses on collaboration, quiet and wellbeing in the workplace

by Anna King • Comment, Events, Furniture, Workplace design

Anna King reports from the biennial office furniture and interiors fair Orgatec, which took place recently in Cologne: Collaboration seemed to be king once again at this year’s Orgatec trade fair in Cologne, so much so that you’d be hard pressed to find a conventional workstation amongst the thousands of products on display. Even ergonomic task chairs in the traditional sense were thin on the ground. Senator’s offering was typical in its focus on collaborative work and the provision of work settings. As well as the Ad-Lib Scholar range for educational establishments, it presented the Ad-Lib Work Lounge multipurpose chair, both the work of British design studio PearsonLloyd. This upholstered model complete with headrest is available on glides or castors so it can slot into a multitude of workplace scenarios. Shown in some rich shades such as moss green and turquoise, it comes complete with a fold-down worksurface for brainstorming or other group working.

November 5, 2014

Why isn’t the UK Government acting to curb the scandal of fake furniture?

by Tony Ash • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design

The real thing

If you’ve watched a DVD recently, it probably started with an advert highlighting that ‘you wouldn’t steal a handbag, so why would you steal a DVD?’ The point it’s making is that it’s unacceptable to buy poor quality copies of DVDs. They’re fake products and there’s a stigma attached to them, in the same way there’s a stigma attached to buying a fake watch, handbag or a forged piece of art. That’s how things should work, but this isn’t yet the case for fake furniture in the UK. And the reason for this is government inaction that is not only allowing a market for poorer quality replicas of iconic designs to exist, but to thrive. In April 2013 the UK government passed the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act, a section of which closed a loophole in British intellectual property law. Under the new regulations, artistic designs for products such as furniture would be protected for up to 70 years after the designer’s death. Before the Act was passed, if more than 50 copies of a design were made, it was considered to be mass produced and was subject to only 25 years’ protection.

October 21, 2014

The death of the office desk may have been exaggerated

by Crispin Williams • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design

Twenty years ago the typical office was a busy place, with printers running, big, bulky computers taking up desk space, post it notes, notepads, scanners and fax machines whirring in the background. In today’s workplace, desks are barren in comparison to the offices of a generation ago, purely because there is little need for so much stuff. With the introduction of modern digital devices it is no surprise that the concept of the ‘work station’ as we once knew has changed. The truth is, almost everything we use in the office nowadays is readily available online, with even websites being created for the specific purpose of serving as online meeting rooms. This means the concept of a physical office, where colleagues go to collaborate, share opinions and exchange meeting notes, is no longer a completely valid concept. With this in mind, are desks really needed to create a solid working environment anymore? More →

September 22, 2014

Winners of Design Guild Mark for 2014 announced by The Furniture Makers Company

by Mark Eltringham • Furniture, News, Products, Workplace design

The Furniture Makers’ Company used last week’s 100% Design show to announce the Design Guild Mark award recipients for this year. The Design Guild Mark, now in its seventh year since launching in 2008, rewards excellence in the design of furniture in volume production. According to the organisers, with the award of this Guild Mark for designs which meet The Furniture Makers’ Company criteria, the designers receive due recognition and the industry is made more aware of the importance of investment in design. The Design Guild Mark aims to acknowledge the work of the finest furniture designers working in volume production and the best of British furniture designers working abroad. This year’s winners include Pearson Lloyd’s RIYA task chair for Bene and a posthumous award for the classic Supporto Chair (above), designed by the late Frederick Scott and now manufactured by Zoeftig.

July 25, 2014

We may not know what the future holds, but we can certainly be prepared for it

by Justin Miller • Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design

Given the track record of people when it comes to making predictions about the future, it’s easy to grow cynical, especially when it involves a profession as subject to the vagaries of technological and cultural change as facilities management. But while we should be wary of more fanciful and long term thinking, any natural scepticism shouldn’t blind us to those predictions that we know will largely come true, especially those based on what we know is happening already. For example, recent research carried out by Cass Business School and Henley Business School and presented in the book Future Work: How Businesses Can Adapt and Thrive in the New World of Work found that two-thirds of managers believe there would be a revolution in working practices over the coming ten years. Given what we’ve seen over the past ten years, it’s impossible to argue any different. In fact the only quibble we should have with this is that it won’t take another ten years for this to happen because the process is already well underway.

July 15, 2014

Book Review: Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Nikil Saval

by Colin Watson • Comment, Furniture, Work&Place, Workplace design

Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace

Nikil Saval’s book Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace pulls off that rare feat for a parochial business book of being intelligent and informed (which many are) as well as fascinating, entertaining and realistic, which is rather less commonplace. He pulls this off with plenty of references to pop culture including television series such as Will and Grace, films such as Office Space and The Apartment and, inevitably, the Dilbert cartoons. There is also a great deal of enjoyment to be had in the slightly jaded tone of his writing and brutal evisceration of the likes of Tom Peters who is singled out for special criticism. So too, his take on the very idea of the ‘Office of the Future’ with its slides, basketball courts, pool tables and vivid colours.

June 26, 2014

The debate about open plan offices is not helped by its use of stereotypes

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Furniture, Workplace, Workplace design

The incessant debate about open plan offices is informed by a number of assumptions that can lead us to misunderstand the issues involved. Nigel Oseland eviscerates several of them excellently here, making it plain that a great deal is lost in translation somewhere over the mid-Atlantic. In truth, the European and US experiences of the open plan are very different and while we in the UK could always laugh along with our US counterparts at the organisational insanity of Dilbert, the cubicles themselves were largely alien to us. Another red herring in the debate is the idea that the open plan office is for extroverts and its alternatives for introverts. There is something in this but it’s too simplistic an idea and is often built around the stereotypes associated with sectors such as TMT, the age of workers (especially Gen Y) and supposed national characteristics, not least the reserve of Brits and the brashness of Yanks.

June 20, 2014

Where office workers would really like to work? Outdoors.

by Mark Eltringham • Company news, Furniture, Workplace design

Last year, we shared research from Overbury which suggested that what most people really wanted from their offices was for them to be a lot more like Starbucks. Now new research from Steelcase Solutions claims that what people would really like is to be working in bucolic splendour, or at least an indoor approximation of it. The survey of around 800 UK based office workers carried out by IPSOS claims that people would feel more optimistic about their work if natural light, more control of temperatures and informal, dynamic spaces were core elements of their working environments, which coincidentally are also important factors in fostering wellness and productivity. In addition, the authors of the report claim that more offices in future will apply biophilic design principles to offer staff a daily glimpse (or illusion) of the great outdoors. More →