1. non-conference workspaces
circulation space
---The Next Office, 360, Issue 63
---Implementing Innovative Workplaces
---What it Takes to Collaborate
“A recent study of businesses throughout North America and Europe
by Steelcase and CoreNet Global shows that 86 percent of compa-
nies offer alternative work strategies such as home offices, hotelling
and mobile work.”
“Eliminating ownership of a desk, office, or workstation without
providing a richer, more varied set of work settings that truly supports
the full range of work activities will generate resentment, dissatisfac-
tion, and lower levels of performance.”
“Herman Miller’s research shows that workstations are not occupied
60 percent of the time, across industries, and private offices are
unoccupied 77 percent of the time.”
non-conference workspaces
materials library
sample return
workroom
LAN
storage lockers storage lockers storage lockers storage lockers
storagelockers
lunchroom
packages
“Employees who eat together in large groups are 36%
more likely to communicate outside lunch hours.”
---The Power of Place, Workcafe Ideabook
“Changing postures is physically energizing and mentally stimulating,
and it supports different work modes. Workplace designs that allow
people to vary postures help keep them refreshed and engaged, and
support overall wellbeing.”
---Steelcase's Anthropologist On Remaking Offices To Create Happier
Workers
"Collaboration is a creative process," she says, "but it is also highly
dependent on the creative thinking of individuals, and much of this
happens when people can sit back and reflect, or read or research
adjacent topics, or simply take the time to turn off the tasks and emails
and think deeply about a topic."
---The Next Office, 360, Issue 63
To break down silos, territoriality must give way. To increase space
efficiency, inefficiency must give over territory to more effective work
spaces.
What is proposed is a space which allows for a variety of spaces that
can be used by groups and individuals in a free flowing environment
that respects a variety of personalities, work styles, and changing
functionalities in needs and support over the course of a work day, a
project, and a long term space utilization.

2. “...by enabling people to unchain themselves from a particular work
schedule or physical space, virtual work gives people more control of
their lives. Research has shown that those who have control over how
and where they work are likely to have higher job satisfaction, better
psychological well-being, and better work-life balance.”
---The Promise and Puzzle of Mobile Work, 2012
“Today’s star performers are looking for the freedom to work anywhere,
anytime. This does not necessarily mean working from home or in
another office. They expect employers to trust them to manage their
time and to decide for themselves the most productive place for them
to work.”
---Changing Data Needs for the Changing Workplace, 2015
---The Next Office, 360, Issue 63
---Happiness (Or is it really purpose) at Work
Nancy Hickey
Steelcase Chief Administrative Officer
“Choice and control is the new status symbol – workers want freedom
to choose where and how they work.”
“Using a strategy we call‘Best Place”, we created a great range of
flexible workspaces to meet changing needs. You have the freedom to
move, to collaborate, to put your head down and focus. Freedom to
seek the best experience at work, however you choose to define‘best.’”
“...One of the most profound drivers of people’s feeling about their
workplace is allowing for personal choice—in how, when, and where
to work. Giving workers the option to work from home or from an
alternate location within the office improves workplace satisfaction,
even for people who don’t take advantage of it. Simply having the
ability to make a personal choice makes workers feel valued and
empowered.”
If an adaption is made to a freedom of choice in work environment,
and a truly mobile suite of tools--laptops, mobile phones, and the
like--we can future proof against future work needs, and respond to
changing work requirements.
As staff adapt to what it means to work independently, and deliber-
ately and consciously reconnect in the physical workspace, we can
become a more flexible workforce. This workforce will become more
aware and adept at integrating our remote workers, and prepare for
future work which may take employees temporarily or permanently
offsite to address the needs of far flung projects in multiple work sites
across the region, and the country.

3. open air collaboration/gathering
no acoustic isolation or expectations
enclosed collaboration/gathering
group acoustic isolation expectations
enclosed large conferencing
group acoustic isolation expectations
enclosed small teaming
group acoustic isolation expectations
enclosed concentration
acoustic isolation expectations
open individual work
no acoustic isolation or expectations
all conversation, phone calls, permitted
open individual work
limited acoustic expectations
small (2-3 person) group conversations, calls permitted
open individual work
limited acoustic expectations
interruptions limited to 5-10 minutes, no phone ring-tones
enclosed individual work--”focus room”
acoustic isolation expectations
no interruptions, no phones or calls permitted
enclosed individual/private team work
acoustic isolation expectations
enclosed privacy
individual acoustic isolation expectations
public facing, clients and outside groups
expected
internally focused
employee only areas
reserved only at designated time
periods to reserve for client
meetings; reserved at other times
for internal employee use only
“95% of employees say they need spaces for focused work – 40% say
they don’t have them.”
---The Next Office, 360, Issue 63
---Reinventing the Workplace - ReWork
“Workers who have the ability to block out distractions at work are
57% more able to collaborate, 88% more able to learn, and 42%
more able to socialize in their workplaces. Collaboration and engage-
ment with others stills drives innovation and productivity, but for
employees to effectively collaborate, they must first be able to effec-
tively focus.
“Simply put, if you give your employees spaces where they can put
their heads down from time to time and focus on individual tasks,
overall performance will increase. Currently, three out of every four
workers in the United States are struggling to work effectively. To
increase productivity, we need to bring focus back into balance.””
---Five Principles for Promoting Acoustic Comfort in the Workplace
---Can Better Acoustics Make Open Offices Suck Less?
“Once we satisfy critical adjacencies between workers and work activi-
ties, we should also explore the spatial impact of zoning on acoustical
comfort. An“Interaction Area”where loud, noise generating activities
can be clustered, should be segregated away from a“Focus Area”that
supports individual activities requiring focus and concentration. And
these spaces need to be separate from those that support very private,
confidential or personal work and conversations—a“Privacy Area.””
“When people are constantly interrupted, they develop a mode of
working faster (and writing less) to compensate for the time they
know they will lose by being interrupted. Yet working faster with
interruptions has its cost: people in the interrupted conditions experi-
enced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time
pressure, and effort. So interrupted work may be done faster, but at a
price.”
I”t turns out that background noise messes with our minds--especially
when that noise is a person's voice, and especially when that noise is a
person's voice on the phone. These so-called "halfalogues," in which
we only overhear one side of a conversation, are so infuriatingly
unpredictable that our brains can't focus on much else. And in an
open office, phone calls in nearby cubicles happen all the time.”
---The Cost of Interrupted Work - More Speed and Stress
In this workplace, clear communication regarding behavioral expecta-
tions and aimed to reduce distractions is critical to enable productive
work of all kinds, and reduce conflict between those varying types.

4. In this workspace, each soft seating group, workstation cluster, or
collaboration space shall be of a completely different product, by a
variety of manufacturers.
By using this strategy, employees can directly experience a variety of
the types and characters of varying workplace products directly.
Employees could even rate the varying products--either through
direct feedback solicitation by facilities or by the furniture manufactur-
er, through anonymous surveys, or simply by monitoring, through the
reservation system, what workspaces are utilized the most often.
If products are found to be unpopular or ineffective, a record of such
could be commonly kept so that all employees can have a record of
what products to recommend or steer clients clear of.
Additionally, as new furniture concepts and products are developed,
new product can be cycled into the workplace. As no workplaces are
permanently assigned, the designated grouping or space could be
blocked off as“unavailable”for the time period required to remove
one set of product and install another.
To facilitate easy integration of new product, the overall aesthetic
should be eclectic, accommodating and displaying a range of design
types from modern to traditional, sleek to rustic.
To enable all the other functions proposed for this workspace, and to
future-proof as much as possible against changing new technologies,
the power and data infrastructure of the space should be divorced
from as many of the connections to hard construction as possible.
Low profile raised floor systems, under-carpet power distribution with
elevated power outlets, should remove the infrastructure from the
surrounding permanent structure. Furniture types or accessory
systems which integrate easy access and reconfiguration of power and
data through open wiring access and accessory structures which carry
power and data in easy access independent configurations will also
assist in making easy future reconfiguration or removal.
Wireless access should be available throughout, and collaboration
spaces should integrate a variety of display types and sizes. Some
touchscreen enabled devices could be of assistance for electronic
review of designs and drawings, and collaboration spaces replete with
multiple displays to enable easy collaboration with off-site clients and
non co-located employees across the country will increase the effec-
tiveness of remote communication.

5. ---IIDA Industry Roundtable on Workplace Well Being
“Employees need to feel like they’re connected – to other people and to the organiza-
tion. They also need quiet times when they can focus, reflect or recharge. When they are
in the workplace they sometimes want the energy and buzz of working near people;
other times they need a space for heads-down work. We call this“amping up or amping
down,”and every workspace should signal the kind of work it supports to help people
determine the best place to work. Providing sensory control is a key element of wellbe-
ing in the holistic view, which includes the psychological and sociological aspects of
work as well as the physical.”
“Nomadic workers need spaces that anticipate what they need when they arrive: easy
access to power for recharging devices, a choice of spaces with varying degrees of
privacy they can control, and a range of I and we spaces near each other so it’s easy to
transition between individual and collaborative work.”
“Trust is built by allowing a team to determine how they work on a project or how they
communicate. And it’s also trusting your staff to help determine the place where they
work and how to use it,”he notes.“You can’t say‘you can work anywhere you want, just
as long as you sit right here where I can see you.’ You have to allow people to speculate
about what their work could be, where the organization is going, how the culture
functions best, and they’ll create the most extraordinary places.”
“Orthogonal floor plates often equate to an over reliance on cubicles and benching
systems…which can make employees feel like rats in a maze. “Benching is not a work-
place strategy,”said Wellwood. “It is a furniture solution with connotations of being able
to save space. It does not respond to the way people work.”
---Future Focused: 360 Magazine, Issue 64
Finding balance for individual work in a sea of collaboration
---Future Focused: 360 Magazine, Issue 64
Space shapes behavior — behavior over time is culture

6. “Environments can also support collaboration by
providing more vertical display space for people
to tack up schedules, sketches, mind maps, lists,
and other work-related artifacts so they can easily
share and refer to them...
Although information can be stored on comput-
ers, people still desire physical artifacts of work.“
---What it Takes to Collaborate
“More than half of the companies in the
CoreNet/Steelcase study say they’re reconfiguring
individual workspaces to make more room for
team spaces. Because innovation requires
collective‘we’work, it’s critical to design spaces
that not only support collaboration, but augment
it. Teams need places designed around their social,
spatial and informational needs, where they can
bring their individual work to the group to
evaluate it, make decisions or co-create new
solutions.”
---Future Focused: 360 Magazine, Issue 64

7. "“Our mission is to bring human health to the forefront of building practices and
reinvent buildings so they are not only better for the environment, but also for the
people in them,”said IWBI Senior Vice President Michelle Moore.“It’s an important
point of inflection for our market and our movement. Historically, sustainability has
focused on the impact that buildings have on our climate and environment. Bringing
wellness into the conversation adds a new emphasis on the individual, and opens up
the field for research and development.”
---The International WELL Building Institute Launches the WELL Building Standard®
Version 1.0

8. ---Measuring the Economics of Engaged Workplaces
"The benefits of sound-masking systems have
been studied extensively. Independent research
has documented productivity gains of 8 to 38
percent, job satisfaction increases of 125 to 174
percent, and reductions in stress up to 27
percent."
---The Global Impact of Biophilic Design in the
Workplace
"Our analysis has shown that perceptions of
well-being can increase by up to 15% when
people work in surroundings that incorporate
natural elements, ...for those working in environ-
ments that incorporate these natural elements,
such as daylight and live plants, reported levels of
creativity are 15% higher than the levels reported
by those who work in environments devoid of
nature...following exposure to a stressor, nature
sounds can accelerate psychological restoration
by up to 37%."