January 6, 2021

The city and the office have much to teach each other

by Marian Evans • Cities, Features, Workplace design

Whatever you might hear, these times are far from unprecedented. History has lessons for us both in terms of how we view the events of 2020 and how we might respond to them, including how we progress as a species and make our lives and the world a better place. In 1832, there was an epidemic of cholera in the UK’s towns and cities. In those with a population of 100,000 or more life expectancy was just 26 years. The reasons for this were picked up on by a government official called Edwin Chadwick as a member of the Poor Law Commission. More →

December 8, 2020

Plans for 2 million sq. ft of offices in South East England

by Jayne Smith • Business, News, Property

The Commercial Park Group, a partnership between Sir Robert McAlpine and the John Baker Group, has announced it will invest £200 million to kick-start developments of two million sq ft of new offices across locations in the south east of England. More →

September 18, 2020

Center for active design launches viral response module

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing

Fitwel, the healthy building certification system operated by The Center for Active Design (CfAD), has announced the formal launch of its Viral Response module, with additional commitments for adoption from companies, including BentallGreenOak, Boston Properties, Brookfield Properties, DLC Europe, Hudson Pacific Properties, Kilroy Realty Corporation, Nuveen Real Estate, and The Tower Companies. More →

May 9, 2020

The language barrier to wellbeing in the workplace

by James Geekie • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

In a recent piece for the Architects Journal, incoming BCO President Paul Patenall extolled the virtues of a Danish idea called Arbejdsglaede, (almost) literally the joy of work. There is no equivalent word in English, of course, but it also taps into our assumption that we can learn a thing or two from our Scandinavian cousins about wellbeing and the ways in which we should find happiness in our daily lives and surroundings.

March 13, 2020

How to flourish in the workplace – Derek Clements-Croome in conversation

by Mark Eltringham • Podcasts, Premium Content, Wellbeing, Wellbeing Matters

In the third in our series of wellbeing podcasts published in partnership with Wellworking, I am in conversation with Derek Clements-Croome, one of the world’s leading experts on wellbeing and sustainability in the workplace. We look at the increasingly powerful links between personal wellbeing and green sustainable building design and consider some of the most important yet last talked about wellbeing and productivity issues such as temperature and air quality. More →

September 26, 2019

Workers remain sceptical about open plan and shared space

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace design

Despite a seeming shift towards companies embracing more collaborative workplace environments across Europe, the benefits of ‘hot-desking’ and open plan working seem to still be contentious for many workers. With this in mind, Savills, in association with YouGov, has conducted a survey of 11,000 office workers across the continent to understand just What Workers Want. More →

September 10, 2019

Are coworking spaces really all the same?

by Uri Bar-Joseph • Comment, Coworking, Technology, Workplace design

If you’ve ever shopped around for a coworking space, you’ve undoubtedly heard every shared workspace operator brag that its offices aren’t just a place to work – they’re all about community and culture. As Fast Company’s Ruth Reader put it, we’re just a “bunch of co-work startups saying the same things about how different [we] are.” She’s not entirely wrong, but (with all due respect) I think she’s missed the point about coworking.

August 30, 2019

Back to workplace basics, the joy and pain of work, squeezing people in and some other stuff

by Mark Eltringham • Features, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Let’s get the inevitable WeWork story out of the way first. A supposed news item in Crain’s New York Business has claimed that WeWork is ‘squeezing’ people into half the space recommended in the BCO’s Specification Guide; “roughly the size of two standard doors laying side by side”. You can see the editorial cogs at work here, combining a story about WeWork with one about how people are crammed into the workplace like cattle these days.

June 25, 2019

Dublin EFMC conference brings together the facilities world

by Freddie Steele • Facilities management, News

The Aviva Stadium in Dublin hosted from 13th to 14th June the 27th Edition of EFMC, the European Facility Management Conference. The event, held for the first time in the Irish capital, has brought together international experts of the FM sector and has served as a platform of communication amongst facilities managers, suppliers, Universities and associations. The event culminated with tours of One Microsoft Place and the offices of Google in the Irish capital. In the closing ceremony it was announced that EFMC 2020 will be held in Barcelona. More →

June 20, 2019

EDGE enters UK market with project on South Bank

by Neil Franklin • Company news, Property, Technology

EDGE Technologies, the specialist developer best known for its groundbreaking The Edge building in Amsterdam has announced its entrance into the UK commercial property market with the £50m acquisition of 60 St Thomas Street on London’s South Bank. The acquisition is subject to planning permission, which EDGE will pursue in partnership with the seller. The partners will consult closely with Southwark Council and the local community. After completion of the development – four to five years from now – 60 St Thomas Street will be an optimised office environment and a new workspace fit for the future. More →

May 29, 2019

Biophilia in the corporate HQ: an historical perspective

by Guzman de Yarza Blache • Architecture, Environment, Facilities management, Features, Workplace design

In recent years, the concept of biophilia and the inclusion of greenery in the working environment has captured the media’s attention, which has depicted it as an important aspect of wellbeing in the workplace, seemingly the crucial indicator of a great office. For this reason, and beyond the superficial or cosmetic use of plants in the office, I would like to analyse the relationship between nature and the corporate world from a historical perspective in an effort to understand the role of greenery within the architecture of the corporate headquarters.

February 22, 2019

When assessing workplace strategy: we should always test rather than guess

by Franklin Becker • Facilities management, Features, Workplace design

Would an investor plow millions of dollars into a stock and never bother to track how the investment does? Of course not. Nor would they confuse the expected return on investment (ROI) with the actual results. We don’t guess about financial investments. We don’t base investment decisions on what some stranger does or how they say they’ve done. So why then, do many of the largest companies in the world invest millions of dollars in buildings or renovating their workplaces and never even bother to measure results. Why are they so willing to copy the unproven workplace strategy of others? Why are they satisfied with projected results, rather than measuring how their investments actually perform? More →