Search Results for: office design

Office design goes to the movies. Part 7 – The Apartment

Office design goes to the movies. Part 7 – The Apartment

by • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

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In which Jack Lemmon exchanges the crushing uniformity of the open plan for a corner office as a reward for allowing senior managers to use his apartment as a venue for their infidelity. This is from 1960, the pre-cubicle, pre-VDU world of large ranks of serried workers in an open plan office with only the privileged few allowed any degree of privacy or the wherewithal to display status. many ways, the layout has much in common with the way many offices are designed now. Office design may have moved on in the past half century but some things are always with us.

Office design goes to the movies. Part 6 – Playtime

Office design goes to the movies. Part 6 – Playtime

by • Architecture, Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

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One of the few films to address office design as something worth commenting on per se. A film in which M. Hulot stumbles around a modernist dream of Paris, all glass, steel and cold straight lines. People inhabit box like apartments and box like office cubicles which separate them from each other and, by implication, life. The film was produced in 1967, shortly before the cubicle was popularised in real offices. In the sequence in which M. Hulot visits an office building, he gets lost, gatecrashing meetings and ending up in a gadget trade show which is furnished in a virtually identical way to the office.

Five things the Wall Street Journal inadvertently told us yesterday about office design

by • Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design

Some inadvertent truths

Some inadvertent truths

If I were to show you a headline from the Wall Street Journal announcing ‘Say Goodbye to the Office Cubicle’, you might date it at any time between the mid 1980s and 1990s. Maybe earlier. But it was actually in yesterday’s issue, dated 2 April 2013. Now, we could be amused by this or act all aghast at the sight of those dinosaurs yet to adopt a norm of open, collaborative and shared spaces never mind the ‘digital workplace’; or we could conclude that this tells us several important things about how those people and organisations who don’t keep a daily eye on workplace trends view the buildings they inhabit.

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Office design goes to the movies. Part 5 – Minority Report

by • Comment, Furniture, Technology, Workplace design

Minority ReportWe obviously like films like this. High concept noir sci-fi, based on a book by Philip K Dick of course; dystopian, chock full of ideas and technology that seemed cool and subversive in 2002 and is mundane in 2013. I mean, the screens are still cool but who wouldn’t rather have a file stored in the Cloud or on a USB stick than inside a perspex panel the size of a brick? Deskheads may recognise the furniture as the totally of-a-piece Resolve from Herman Miller designed by Ayse Birsel. They can use this fact to bore whoever they are watching with who would presumably rather be watching Tom Cruise doing his Blue Steel face in the foreground. Or is it Magnum?

Office design goes to the movies. Part 4 – Ikiru

by • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Akira Kurosawa’s film typifies the way that office life is usually portrayed in movies. The crushing bureaucracy that the protagonist Kanji Watanabe is part of – and ultimately rebels against – is symbolised by the towering piles of paper that surround him and his colleagues. Even when he’s walking around, he seems to be carrying them with him, stooped and distant. Many offices may have freed themselves of the sheer bulk of paper these days, but we can still find ourselves weighed down by hierarchy, rules, customs and information. Ultimately we also have freedom to decide for ourselves what is truly important.

Office design goes to the movies. Part 3 – Being John Malkovich

by • Architecture, Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

 

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In which John Cusack plays an unemployed puppeteer who takes a mundane office clerk’s job in the low-ceilinged offices on Floor 7½ of the Mertin Flemmer Building in New York. When he asks his boss why the ceilings are so low, he is told ‘low overhead my boy’.  Bad pun, great commentary on how it’s always possible to fit a little bit more into the building, especially if you ignore the bothersome problem of the people who work inside and their physical constraints.

Office design goes to the movies. Part 2 – 24 Hour Party People

by • Furniture, Products, Workplace design

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Warning: contains strong language.  Factory Records’ Rob Gretton disagrees somewhat with Tony Wilson’s purchase of an expensive table for the firm’s new offices in Michael Winterbottom’s wonderful take on the Madchester scene of the 1980s. But what really sets him off is the word ‘London’. Particular disdain is reserved for the fact the table is made of MDF. Deskheads will recognise the unmistakable application of a CNC machine in its manufacture and the inevitable iconic seating. And the morals are these – involve everybody in purchasing decisions and don’t fall into the trap of believing what they do in London is cool.

Office design goes to the movies. Part 1 – Zoolander

by • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design

MugatuZoolander may not be a great film but it has its moments and does come alive every time the Mugatu character arrives to eat up the scenery. Of course, as an unreconstructed deskhead, I am always tempted to  look over the shoulders of the characters in a film to see what they are sitting on. Mugatu sits on an Arne Jacobsen Egg chair. It’s over 50 years old but screams DESIGNER, hence its place under his backside. It provides an easy shorthand and so is widely recognised, but its ubiquity including as a way for places like McDonald’s to flag up a new approach to their interiors with a mixture of fakes and originals means it can feel overused.

What Ronald McDonald can teach us about office design

by • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design

McDonalds1As the UK continues to agonise over the potentially equine provenance of many of its beef products, one firm that has managed to stay above it all is McDonald’s. While rivals Burger King quickly became embroiled in the scandal after traces of horsemeat were found in its Burgers, McDonalds ramped up its claims in the national media that it only uses 100 per cent beef. McDonald’s has had a pretty good couple of years, and not all of it is down to the food. During 2012, the company spent $1.45bn this year on giving 2,400 stores a makeover. It claims that it has now revamped 90 per cent of its UK stores. (more…)

Mandates fail to bring people back to the office, but design and flexibility might

Mandates fail to bring people back to the office, but design and flexibility might

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace design

Rigid return-to-office mandates are doing little to increase attendance, according to new research from international design practice Hassell. The firm’s latest Workplace Futures Survey, titled The Mandate Mirage, suggests that the real motivator for people to work in person is choice, particularly when supported by offices designed to offer more than just a desk. The sixth edition of the survey, which polled 3,000 office workers across the UK, US, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea, finds that strict policies are more likely to generate dissatisfaction than compliance. In the UK, poorly executed mandates cut compliance by up to 41 percent, while organisations that offered bonuses or travel subsidies saw attendance increase by a third. Recently renovated offices also boosted in-person working by 15 percent. (more…)

Workspace Design Show Amsterdam 2025 returns to inspire the offices of the future

Workspace Design Show Amsterdam 2025 returns to inspire the offices of the future

by • Company news, Workplace design

The Workspace Design Show is set to make a return to Amsterdam this year, promising to bring together industry leaders, designers, and top brands to shape the future of workplace interiors. Following its successful debut in October 2023, the event will take place at the RAI Amsterdam on 5–6 November 2025, with organisers anticipating an even larger and more dynamic showcase. The 2025 edition is expected to attract over 6,000 visitors and feature more than 800 products alongside a series of high-profile discussions and presentations. The FRAME Awards will be a key highlight, celebrating excellence in workspace design, while three conferences will bring together major global occupiers including Booking.com, Amazon, Zoom, and Ubisoft. Design leaders from firms such as Gensler, UNStudio, HENN, CBRE, Colliers, and Arcadis will also contribute to discussions on the future of workplace strategy and culture. (more…)

A divine spark of inspiration for office occupiers and designers

A divine spark of inspiration for office occupiers and designers

by • Briefing, Premium Content, Workplace design

Organisations are having to rethink the form and function of their offices in ways unprecedented in their relatively short history. And perhaps the biggest challenge is to create places to work that reflect the organisation’s culture and the needs of the people who work there (some of the time). One possible framework for aligning an office design model with the culture of the organisation is presented in a supplement published for IN Magazine called Gods of Work. Published in partnership with Modus, it draws on management and organisational theory and established models of office design to suggest solutions to some of the challenges facing organisations as they rethink the way they work. The office of the future for most organisations will be smaller, but much better and we hope this becomes an invaluable guide for those setting out on that path.

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