Is Open Office Dead? Not if Properly Crafted.

BUILDING DIALOGUE

Over the past 18 months, we’ve seen several articles in various publications hinting that the “open space office concept” is a failed or failing experiment. They cite cultural challenges, poor work environment and productivity decreases as a result of the use of this concept. Our experience, however, is that open office is an excellent concept to use, depending on when and how it’s implemented as a workplace strategy.

Martin Goldstein
Principal Architect, Venture Architecture

To start at the beginning, today’s office space has drastically changed. Instead of thinking about a sea of workstations depicted in movies like “9 to 5” and “Office Space,” today’s office might be seen as more of an integration of layered neighborhoods serving different functions. Perhaps a better name than “open” office would be “blended” office. That’s because today we can offer a host of new spaces that better fit the way we live and work in today’s office environment. In addition, we can layer in older workplace strategies that still remain relevant today. To understand today’s modern office dialogue, it’s helpful to start with an appreciation of what is powering this change. The largest driving factor is mobile technology.

While laptops were once a luxury item with limited computing power compared to the desktop counterparts of their day, we all know that today’s mobility has matured. Between laptops, tablets and hybrids like the Surface platform, mobility is both affordable and fully functional, offering more power than most professionals need for just emailing, documenting, sharing and accessing the web. So in addition to traditional workplace strategies, today’s portable devices create additional design opportunities to enhance a space that weren’t possible in the past.

Small “huddle” rooms allow two or three staff to gather and produce work together. Courtesy Caleb Tkach

Some of these spaces include small “huddle” rooms for two or three staff to gather and produce work together around a shared monitor. These flexible spaces allow for both privacy and acoustic isolation away from more public workstations. Similarly, soft-seating conference areas can support work with clients who are dealing with sensitive information or are in need of a more nurturing space to interact, while positioning them near an easily accessed screen. We also have started adapting the idea of the traditional phone booth for making personal mobile calls in the office suite, or for one-person business calls requiring louder volume. Similarly, conference rooms have newer options with touch-screen monitors and collaborative tools enabling easy connectivity from staff laptops and tablets. In addition, coffee shop-styled spaces and high-top collaboration tables all enable different types of individual and team-oriented work to occur.

Coffee shop-styled spaces and high-top collaboration tables all enable different types of individual and team-oriented work to occur..Courtesy Caleb Tkach

Those are just a few of the more common options, but there are many more. When these spaces fit the company culture and are properly built, they can lead to increased staff comfort and team focus. At the same time, they can also encourage heads down, focused productivity. Blended office concepts can help a client’s staff feel invigorated, well supported and more vibrant. They can provide more acoustic privacy and concentration where it’s important. Teams can also feel free to be dynamic and loud without distracting others; again, that’s only if they are a fit for the company’s culture. So the key to their success largely rests in why they are implemented in the design. This is very important. Just because these spaces are possible doesn’t mean they’re a fit.

The traditional phone booth is adapted for making personal mobile calls in the office suite, or for one-person business calls requiring louder volume. Courtesy Caleb Tkach

On every project, the design team must start with two key questions. Before talking about architecture, we need to fully comprehend “who they are” and “what it means to be that.” The buzzword of the day for this is “culture” or its community and workplace experience. How did the company get where it is today? Does it still work well in the present day? Where is it headed tomorrow and what does that mean? Questions like these help tease out needs versus wants, goals and future positioning.

Knowing the audience, truly knowing the team, is critical for the design team. It enables a designer to tailor the solutions to the client’s needs. It’s also a way that the design team can help real estate teams search for and identify ideal suites faster and more effectively up front. However, without that basic cultural understanding, the wrong strategies can be easily deployed. No one solution is a panacea. Some companies need all private offices – even today, in 2017. Others greatly benefit from a blend of these new spaces and some more traditional spaces. If a client and its architect work together through an iterative discovery process, the wholly informed team will focus and identify the blend of spaces that fit. Properly dialed in, a well-informed design can contribute to and enhance the future of a client’s success because it improves the workplace environment and its experience for the team.

Conference rooms are still part of today’s office. Courtesy Caleb Tkach

After determining which types and how many of each space are needed, the next task is to ensure they’re properly designed. For example, their location and proximity to other spaces deeply matter. In addition, the surrounding walls must be carefully detailed. This all significantly impacts their acoustic performance. Similarly, natural and artificial lighting strategies are critical to the successful implementation of these spaces. Understanding the sun’s path and how it impacts a space helps a team better plan for locations of seats and monitors as well as where and how to provide artificial lighting. Every detail matters. Together, these architectural components connect to form a suite. If not carefully crafted, these spaces will fail and can actually hurt the performance of a new suite for those living inside of it each workday.

When designs are crafted to meet the tenant’s needs with close attention paid to both the details and technical follow through, then new suites will support and serve the client and their teams. They should act as a business productivity tool that helps move the company into the future. So the next time you read that “open office” is a failed concept, know otherwise. It isn’t failed. It may have just been misapplied for a client that needed a more traditional suite. However, when designers understand the client’s goals and if they are current on how to create a better, more thoughtful and adaptive suite, then the blended office concept is an extremely effective tool for a business to thrive.

Published in the December 2017 issue of Building Dialogue.