Search Results for: environment

March 28, 2014

Google’s new Amsterdam office exposes Tech’s youthful obsessions

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Workplace design

All images © Alan Jensen and D/Dock

Back in the 1990s, when Frank Duffy was one of the august handful of people popularising notions of a changing approach to office design, he categorised four models of the workplace that he foresaw would come to reflect the work done in them, namely the den, cell, hive and club. Back then, the word ‘club’ conjured up images of gentleman’s clubs and Duffy himself described it in his 1997 book The New Office as ‘essentially an ingenious early 19^th Century device to allow the kind of people who are now called networkers to share as supportive an environment as possible’, illustrating his point with an old coloured engraving of upright gents sitting around in a neo-classical, Victorian, smoke-filled room reading newspapers, sipping port and chewing the fat. Nowadays, the word club would appear to suggest something more along the lines of a youth club, as the latest pubescent design of a Google office shows us. More →

March 27, 2014

Design of the Year shortlist contrasts what is practical with what is possible

by Simon Heath • Architecture, Comment, Workplace design

A great many of us pay architecture and design very little attention until it’s too late and we’re confronted with the workings of a mind that doesn’t consider whether just because we could really means we should. The kind of mind that designs a building that melts cars on the street or one with wind turbines that are so noisy they can’t be turned on. And so this week sees the announcement of nominees for the Design Museum Designs of The Year awards. It’s a studiedly eclectic list. In amongst the Lego calendars and texting fire alarms we also find a mobile gaming app designed to be used over many centuries (it is impossible to finish it in your lifetime, natch) that, it says here, “questions the inevitability of death, the meaning of legacy and the nature of progress”. I’ve searched for signs that this might be satire without success. However, we’ll focus our consideration on the nominations for designs for the built environment. More →

March 26, 2014

UK workers are amongst least engaged in the world, claims new report

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

The latest survey highlighting how disconnected the world’s workers feel from what they do comes courtesy of researchers ORC International. In its Global perspectives survey of over 7,000 employees in 20 countries, the researchers found that UK employees are amongst the most disengaged in the world. Engagement has declined sharply over the last year for UK based workers with under half (48 percent) claiming to be engaged with their jobs, down from 56 percent last year. This puts the country in 18^th position, with only Japan and Hong Kong coming out worse. Only 40 percent think their managers motivate and inspire them and only 37 percent feel encouraged by their employers to innovate. In fact the UK’s score fell according to every measure used in the report including the wellbeing index with a rating of 57 percent, down from 61 percent last year.

March 20, 2014

CIBSE’s new website inspired by iconic new City of London building

by Sara Bean • Company news, Facilities management, Property

5 Broadgate in the City of London

The look and feel of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers’ (CIBSE) new website, which was unveiled this week, has been inspired by a building. According to CIBSE the modular, precise design of 5 Broadgate, designed by Make Architects is echoed in the modern new design, improved user navigation and optimisation for mobile and smart devices of its new website. 5 Broadgate, the new City headquarters for financial services firm UBS, is a 700,000 sq ft, 12 storey building based on a single block form, featuring deep reveals to windows and openings that are designed to add to its overall feeling of substance. The new building will include up to four trading floors, each able to accommodate approximately 750 traders, allowing UBS to consolidate its London trading operations into one building, when fully occupied in 2016. More →

March 18, 2014

RIBA submits plans for new offices near its landmark Art Deco HQ

by Sara Bean • Architecture, News, Property

76 Portland Place, W1

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has submitted a planning application for the creation of new high-quality new offices near its London headquarters. 76 Portland Place, London W1, which currently houses the Institute of Physics is being designed by a team led by award-winning architects Theis and Khan and is next door but one to RIBA’s Art Deco landmark building at 66 Portland Place. Built in 1958, it was designed by Howard V Lobb and Partners and had a ground floor extension added in the mid-1990s. The planning application includes the complete refurbishment and alterations of the existing office building to create office spaces and meeting rooms for around 180 staff – located over five floors; including first to sixth in the main building and first and second in the mews building. More →

March 18, 2014

What the UK regional divide can teach us about the way we design offices

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

In the BBC documentary Mind the Gap, Evan Davis asks why London has an economy that is larger than and different to those of other UK cities, but also getting bigger and more differentiated. One of the main reasons he finds for this is something called agglomeration; the more skilled people you can put within physical reach of each other in an environment, the more productive and economically successful that environment will become.The problem for the UK is that not only is London of a different magnitude to its other cities, it does not comply with something called Zipf’s Law which states that in a typical country the largest city will be around twice the size of the second largest, around three times the size of the next largest and four times the size of the fourth largest and so on. It shouldn’t be taken too literally but it does illustrate the important economic principle of agglomeration and explains why there is such a widening divide in the UK economy.

March 14, 2014

Might a lack of joined-up thinking undermine UK high-tech ambitions?

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, News, Property, Technology

Old Street: the UK’s tech epicentre

Over the past week both Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson have offered up visions of economic success founded on new technology. Yet, as the CBI points out in a new report pinpointing the dearth of talent needed to make such dreams a reality, politicians often appear to ignore the realities of a situation. In its new report, Engineering our Future, the CBI calls for significant action to make a career in the key disciplines of science, technology, engineering and maths more attractive and easier to pursue. The report points out that these are the skills needed to underpin the Government’s stated focus on the tech, environmental, engineering and manufacturing industries that will shape the country’s future and is calling for a cut in tuition fees, new courses and inter-disciplinary qualifications to allow those skills to flourish.

March 14, 2014

Research finds the treadmill desk improves wellness and productivity

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Workplace

Despite employers offering staff access to a gym to help promote wellness, actually getting people to use the fitness facilities is another matter. The answer could be to bring the fitness equipment directly to their office; as new research shows that employees who use treadmill workstations as they work not only receive physical benefits but also are more productive. According to a recently published study by researchers from The University of Texas at Arlington, the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota, sedentary employees from a non-profit financial service company who had their current cubicles and offices outfitted with treadmill desks were found to burn an average of 74 more calories per day than they did before they received the treadmill workstation. They were also found to be more productive. More →

March 13, 2014

Over three quarters of staff say employers play equal role in their health & wellbeing

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Nearly 80 per cent of UK workers believe responsibility for managing staff health and wellbeing should be shared between both employer and employee. The ‘Employee View – Health and Wellbeing in the Workplace’ survey, conducted by health insurance provider Westfield Health, found the majority (79%) of respondents felt there should be an even balance between them and their employer when it came to taking care of their wellbeing. Nearly three-quarters (74%) also said knowing their employer cares about their health would make them more likely to be satisfied, loyal and motivated at work. And almost a third (30%) asked for better communication in the workplace about the types of wellbeing programmes on offer to them. More →

March 12, 2014

Interminable UK public sector procurement deters suppliers, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News, Property, Public Sector

Last week’s story about the jaded view UK organisations have of the way public sector organisations buy goods and services provoked a great deal of discussion on LinkedIn. Now new research from specialist purchasing data analysts Spend Network has revealed that the UK government is the third slowest in the EU when it come3s to tendering. The UK government takes 53 days longer than the EU average, with only Greece and Ireland taking longer, and they’ve had their own particular economic problems to deal with over the last few years. The data is comprehensive, covering 1.8 million EU tenders over a period of five years. It found that it takes 172 days for the UK government to award a contract after the posting of an OJEU notice, at a cost to the economy of £22bn.

March 7, 2014

UK commercial property thriving, as domestic investors shy from London

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property

Edinburgh is one city enjoying a resurgence in investment

The distinctions between the commercial property market in London and those in the rest of the UK are becoming increasingly evident, based on new data from DTZ. While the value of transactions hit a record breaking £44.7 billion last year, up nearly a third on the figures for 2012, the majority of investments into regional markets were made by domestic firms while those in London were dominated by overseas investors. Around £23 billion of the overall total was invested in property outside of the capital, a reversal of last year when more money was invested in the capital than outside it. Meanwhile foreign investors spent a total of £20bn throughout the year with the majority (£14.2 bn) invested in Central London. According to DTZ, one notable trend in the year was for UK investors to divest property in London and shift investment to other areas of the UK.