Columnists
May 21, 2013
Office hierarchy determines ergonomic quality of workplace
by Sara Bean • Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Knowledge, News, Technology
When you consider health and safety dangers at work, there is really no contest between the risks blue collar workers face – falls from height, heavy lifting and breathing in asbestos dust – compared to the relatively minor mishaps of the average office worker. But it seems there is no such thing as an ‘average’ […]
May 21, 2013
Artists sing about office furniture. Part 2 – My Chemical Romance
by Roger Carr • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design
[embedplusvideo height=”230″ width=”210″ standard=”https://www.youtube.com/v/BS2InBvlIto?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=BS2InBvlIto&width=210&height=185&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep8069″ /] Roger Carr writes: I always like “Furniture music” by Bill Nelson’s Red Noise – but upon listening to it again it could be domestic furniture too. But “Cubicles” by “My Chemical Romance” is surely about the lonely disassociated world of the (unrequited) love sick office cubicle dweller.It’s […]
May 19, 2013
Artists sing about office furniture. Part 1 – Harry Nilsson
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Furniture
[embedplusvideo height=”230″ width=”200″ standard=”https://www.youtube.com/v/yOmZeXIVqTk?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=yOmZeXIVqTk&width=200&height=230&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep1699″ /] Given the complete and utter failure of the world’s artists to draw inspiration from office furniture, this is likely to be the shortest series we’ve ever run. It will start and end here. I’d love to be proved wrong but there cannot be many artists prepared to use […]
May 17, 2013
CBRE WorkShop concept is interesting, but is it workable?
by Simon Heath • Comment, Property, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design
I’d like to deal in this article with the arrival yesterday of the long-awaited white paper from CBRE’s thought leadership exercise, The CBRE Workshop. However, I should declare an interest for the sake of transparency. Until June 2012 I was employed by CBRE and reported directly to a couple of the people who are heavily […]
May 16, 2013
HS2 – still a train that symbolises the clash of old and new ways of working
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Workplace
[embedplusvideo height=”160″ width=”210″ standard=”https://www.youtube.com/v/audakxABYUc?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=audakxABYUc&width=290&height=191&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=0&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep9359″ /] We’ve said this before but given the recent round of agonising over HS2 and today’s news that it will already cost £10 bn more than planned, there is no end yet to us hearing more and more about the plans for the Government’s flagship construction project and all-round Keynesian boot in […]
May 14, 2013
Will the Great Trade Association Merger have any impact on office design?
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Workplace design
Anybody who has been working in and around the facilities management sector for any length of time will know that the FM profession/discipline (delete as appropriate) regularly undergoes protracted periods of existential angst about its role. It strikes me however that this is actually quite an easy question to deal with because the answer is […]
May 14, 2013
How ingrained assumptions about the workplace are eroding
by Ros Pomeroy • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design
The first day at a new job used to mean getting the answer to that all important question: “so which is my office?” In today’s mostly open plan environments, the same psychological attachment has been transferred to the desk – ‘my’ desk. However the current trend for flexible approaches to where people work means that […]
May 13, 2013
Green Office Week kicks off with a focus on individual behaviour
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Environment
This week is Green Office Week. Obviously it’s corporate sponsored, self-designated and arbitrarily timed with all the ways that leaves it open to criticism. It also offers pretty standard advice for the most part and many people and organisations will be well aware of it. What is interesting is that so much of the advice is […]
May 6, 2013
Office design goes to the movies. Part 9: BladeRunner
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design
[embedplusvideo height=”146″ width=”210″ standard=”https://www.youtube.com/v/yWPyRSURYFQ?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=yWPyRSURYFQ&width=210&height=146&start=&stop=132&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep3143″ /] Ridley Scott was one of the pioneers of a film aesthetic that mashes the past with the future, the grime and the gleam. It was a pioneering idea at the time but it’s familiar now. We now accept that the future looks a lot like the past […]
May 4, 2013
Seven thoughts on the UK facilities management association merger
by Simon Heath • Comment, Facilities management
With breathless excitement a press release announces the proposed merger of all of the UK’s major facilities management and support services trade associations, or rather notes that they: “have agreed to the concept of forming one single and united body to represent facilities management and support services.” With a sense of crushing inevitability the first […]
May 21, 2013
Flexible working boosts employee satisfaction and lowers business costs
by Tim Clapham • Comment, Knowledge, Technology, Workplace
May 2013 played host to Work Wise Week, an initiative from Work Wise UK that aimed to promote and encourage smarter working practices to the benefit of businesses and employees. Cultural, economic and social changes are affecting attitudes to how we balance work and personal lives, and increasingly, mobility and technology is shifting away the […]