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What have been the biggest design challenges and opportunities to emerge from the shift in the role of the office in recent years?
What is the role of the office? Is it to give businesses an identity, to connect people, to provide a work-life balance, establish workplace standards or to form a transactional base. Te answer is less defined than ever and has to be investigated for every client and location. Keeping pace with change is a proven challenge for clients, including how businesses facilitate growth and adaptability. In conjunction with hybrid working, how clients optimise the use and efficiency of the office on Mondays and Fridays, typically the least occupied, continues to be a hot topic. A reduction in social interaction impacts rapport and employee wellbeing. Without an established office base, new starters and graduates are impacted as their learning, nurturing and networking is compromised.
However, for architects and designers, the shift in role of the office has influenced more varied and dynamic solutions and arguably the industry has never been more exciting with infinite possibilities. When did you last see the variety of colour, texture and work settings in our workplaces?
Te influence of the hospitality sector in workplace design puts the emphasis on the user experience. Te importance of the office to support social interaction and employee wellness is critical, supported by enhanced operational services. Clients are more receptive to artwork and plants, where both are human interventions proven to improve mental health and productivity. Neurodiversity is better supported in the range of settings and environments designed to stimulate a broader demographic. With flexibility and adaptability critical to most refurbishments and fit-outs, the reliance on freestanding furniture has grown supporting plug and play solutions that are easily interchangeable. Employees are actively encouraged to move the fixtures, tailoring the environment to individual and group needs. Supported by greater investments in new technologies and innovations, smart IoT (Internet of Tings) solutions enhances the connectivity and intelligent reporting of offices now and in the future.
What key exhibitions, events or other sources help to keep you inspired?
We are blessed with amazing thought leadership within the A&D sector. Leesman insights, JLL Trends & Insights and the MillerKnoll Insight Group are a few of the organisations we refer to, providing access to experts and a comprehensive insight to industry and sector trends. Websites such as Office Snapshots provide access to global office designs and occupation strategies, a source of inspiration and visibility how other cultures approach progressive office design.
Exhibition and trade events including Te Workplace Event, Workplace Design Show, Surface Design Show and Clerkenwell Design Week enable us to network and identify new industry products and innovations, while social media – particularly LinkedIn – keeps us abreast instantly of broader industry trends, innovations and insights.
Can you remember Niels Torp’s vision of a new office landscape 30 years ago at BA’s Waterside? Was this the most radical thinking on offices to date? Having visited BA Waterside at the turn of century, it was clear this was not just an office but a new community concept. Bringing everything and everyone under one roof not only consolidated real estate bringing everyone together but catered for the end user with a wider variety of spaces and services.
Left Businesses embracing the hybrid working pattern model are at great pains to make their ofices as exciting to be in as possible
Below Clients promoting a full-time return to the ofice are adopting a ‘resimercial’ approach to design, making ofices as residential as possible for their workers
Network Rail developed a progressive version of Niels Torp’s vision in 2012. Te Quadrant: MK reinforced the value of a community with a greater emphasis on agility, forming a destination of shared spaces that also excelled in its approach to efficiency and sustainability. Fast forward another 10 years, and in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, the workplace has fundamentally evolved. Shared spaces have a greater significance in real estate, with the serviced office sector bigger than ever either including the newer Cat A+ sector providing fully furnished workspaces for small businesses. Niels Torp’s vision has been further deconstructed and proven to be scalable. Te workplace has advanced from the classic requirements of desks, offices and meeting rooms to a broader combination of tasked based settings. Add to this the mix of social and wellbeing spaces, Torp’s legacy has evolved as an accessible and flexible concept visible across the A&D industry available to every business.
Which office design, or other project, has inspired or influenced your own creative thinking? Whilst the original Google concept of a slide in the office has become clichéd, in its own right it has inspired clients to challenge the norm and drive positive change and inspiring designs.
Some of greatest influence and inspiration to me comes from seeing the progress in the design for corporates. In my 25 years experience, I consider this sector to have changed and developed the most. A great example of this is JLL’s office in Manchester. Smaller but perfectly formed, the project and concept break the corporate mould for space utilisation and design. Personally involved in the original planning, the project prioritised reuse and refurbishment and is the first WELL Platinum certified project outside London and the first UK office to simultaneously achieve WELL Platinum, BREEAM Excellent and SKA Gold in one fit out.
It’s great to see how commercial interiors and other sectors has diversified, benefitting from and integrating behaviours particularly from the hospitality industry. Tis has led to more creative and exciting interiors, prioritising and improving the user experience.
Northeastern University developed a new UK campus design concept aligned with their global values. Te brief was to create ‘a space like no other’, through the use of sustainable materials, functional zoning and flexible furniture solutions. Creating a destination students and faculty staff would want to attend was fundamental, as well as inspiring and attracting the very best of international students. Promoting wellness and biophilia, the result is a vibrant multi-function campus that optimises views overlooking Te Tames and Tower Bridge.
workplace-creations.co.uk
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