Search Results for: office design

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 24, 2014

The ties that bind facilities management with workplace design

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

There is an ongoing feeling within the facilities management discipline that when it comes to the design of workplaces, the majority of facilities managers are not consulted early enough or well enough or consistently enough to ensure that the end result of the design process is a workplace that is as functional and as effective as it could be. The reason this feeling persists is that in many cases it is true. Or at least is true to a greater or lesser extent depending on how you view these things. And if that sounds woolly, then you have to remember we are talking about facilities management here, finding a definition for which has been like nailing jelly to a wall for many years. In many cases the demarcation between workplace design and workplace management is based on the mistaken idea that the two have little correlation when in fact the relationship between them should be more akin to that between sex and parenthood. One is an act of creation and the other of care, with the latter a direct consequence of the former.

June 23, 2014

Breathing space? Why our office air could be harming us

by Richard Saint • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

As reported last week, the vast majority of office workers might prefer to work outdoors; but the office is where we spend most of our working lives. Indeed, for an average of eight hours a day, five days a week, office workers can reliably be found in the same surroundings – at a familiar desk, with familiar colleagues, within a familiar building. Perhaps as a result of this, too few of us stop to consider the risks of working indoors, assuming that the danger of serious harm is the sole preserve of outdoor working sites. Nonetheless, office work contains risks which are entirely its own. For example, while outdoor workers benefit from physical exercise, sunshine (occasionally), and fresh air, office workers perform their daily duties in a space where air is continuously recirculated, posing numerous dangers. Indeed, indoor air pollution is actually a major public health problem, posing a myriad of risks as dangerous particles accumulate in office air.

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 →

June 19, 2014

Virtually Uninspiring, Cautiously Aspirational – award winning offices for the VUCA world.

by Simon Heath • Architecture, Comment, Workplace design

World-of-work watchers will be more than aware that we are increasingly being informed that we are living in the VUCA age, which under normal circumstances is an acronym for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous but in the context of these RIBA Award Winners for 2014 might be taken in a number of other ways. Commentators and self-styled thought leaders are warning businesses to prepare for seismic changes to the way work gets done, where, how and by whom (or by what, if proponents of automation and robotics have anything to do with it). How lovely then, that RIBA have made awards to seven offices that hark back to more comforting, more halcyon, times. The text of the accompanying feature in Architects Journal is at pains to point out that offices are hard to design and that RIBA awards are hard won. I wouldn’t disagree on the former point but, from the evidence on show, it’s a bit more of a challenge to agree with the later. So I won’t.

June 17, 2014

Workplace ergonomics changed forever twenty years ago thanks to one design

by Justin Miller • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design

By common consent, the office is a little over 100 years old, with most commentators agreeing that the first true office as we understand it was the Larkin Building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1904. Yet ninety years after this building ushered in the 20th Century workplace, there was another seismic shift in office furniture design that heralded the office for the 21st Century. In 1994, there was a great deal of excited talk about new ways of working, based on the growing use of mobile computers and phones. For the first time, people were unfettered from the personal workstation and new office furniture systems. Also that year, Herman Miller launched a chair that was to redefine not only what we understood about office seating and workplace ergonomics but reshaped the wider office furniture market in its own image. For the first time it became apparent that when looking after the wellbeing of individuals and making a universally understood office design statement in this new world of work, the chair was the thing, not the desk. More →

May 28, 2014

Barangaroo South Tower 2 in Sydney is now Oz’s greenest large office building

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, News, Property

One of Sydney’s landmark new office towers has just been awarded a 6Star Green Star –Office Design V3 rating, the Green Building Council of Australia’s highest environmental accreditation. South Tower 2 in Barangaroo South is part of a $6 billion carbon-neutral development alongside Sydney Harbour. The 42 storey skyscraper is part of a three commercial building cluster in Barangaroo South called International Towers Sydney. Each of the buildings incorporates arrange of sustainable features including cooling systems using water from the harbour and solar shading. The buildings also make use of the development’s shared environmental features including an on-site backwater treatment plant which will recycle up to one million litres of water a day for use by the local community. The intention is to create a world class sustainable community in the city.

May 23, 2014

Workplace design and management of TMT sector aped by other firms

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Flexible working, Property, Technology, Workplace design

The publication of a report last week by the British Council for Offices highlights the wider impact of workplace design trends and commercial property arrangements in the increasingly important Technology, Media and Telecoms (TMT) sector. Not least it suggests that they are having a transformational influence on the way firms in other sectors approach leases, workplace design and the changing nature of work. It is no coincidence that the TMT sector is the one most commonly associated with the employment of the much-talked-about Gen Y demographic, nor that the business practices most commonly associated with this overly-stereotyped group are those that are having the greatest influence in the way we design and manage offices.

May 21, 2014

Supply of new office space in London continues to fall short of demand

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, News, Property

One of the downsides to London’s attractiveness as a business destination, as we reported yesterday, is its inability to provide enough office space to satisfy the rapacious demands of the companies who want to work there. Survey after survey reveals the same thing. Even though London has a healthy pipeline of new offices under construction, it cannot keep pace with demand. The latest survey to make the same point comes from Deloitte Real Estate whose London Crane Survey claims that the 9.2 million sq. ft. of office space currently being built will fall short of what is needed. The report claims that London office space is likely to remain in short supply for two years as the new occupancy levels of offices continues to outstrip supply. The report claims that 2014will see 7 million sq. ft. of Grade A office space delivered, the largest volume for over a decade but nearly half has already been let even before construction is complete.

May 16, 2014

BCO office standards include guidance on provisions for cyclists for first time

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Workplace design

The new edition to the British Council for Offices’ Guide to Specification, which provides guidance on industry standards for workplaces across the UK will contain guidance on provisions for cyclists for the first time. The new 2014 edition to the office standards guide due for publication later in the year, recommends one shower per ten cycle spaces and one cycle space per 100m2, reflecting the evolving face of travel to and from the office environment. Another significant change is to the recommended workplace density, which has been reviewed to take into account the ever more diverse way businesses are now using their workspaces; which includes the adoption of more flexible working patterns. The report states that: “Considering workplace density alone may overstate the demands placed on building infrastructure, or result in over provision if used as the basis for design.”

May 14, 2014

World’s most energy efficient office retro-fit opens in Norway

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Environment, Facilities management, News

What is claimed to be the world’s most energy efficient office building has been opened in Norway. Powerhouse Kjørbo in Oslo is Norway’s first energy-positive building and the, according to its developers, the first in the world to be retro-fitted to produce more energy than it consumes. The building is part of the Powerhouse project, a collaboration between a range of organisations with an interest in developing and promoting energy efficient office buildings. The Powerhouse consortium defines an energy-positive building as any building which generates more clean and renewable energy in its operational phase than was used in its construction and lifetime, including materials, operation and disposal.

May 13, 2014

Workplace design, Facebook likes and the need of companies to be your friend

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Companies put an awful lot of time and money into getting people to like them on social media these days. While it would be easy to see the like button on Facebook as the primary conduit for this corporate neediness, but it cuts across many aspects of the ways in which companies work, including their relationships with employees and the ways in which they develop new forms of workplace design and management. This is most evident in the tech palaces which are aimed at the same digital natives that firms habitually target with their online marketing, but the need to make customers and employees friends of the business cuts across a wide range of sectors. The workplace is yet another channel of communicating chumminess, and it offers many of the same challenges as social media.