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April 2015 — Office Properties Quarterly —
Page 21
Design
to escape the continuous position of
sitting at one’s desk, and must provide
options for employees to choose where
they feel comfortable, she said.
When enabling choices by creating
a variety of spaces, it is important to
recognize that not everyone will use
all the areas, said Liebling. “It isn’t a
one-size-fits-all solution,” she said.
“Not every single person is going to use
every single space. But it’s about being
the most efficient and productive with
the space that you have.”
Technology’s Impact
The integration of technology is also
important to collaborative spaces.The
introduction of laptops and smart-
phones helped blur the line between
work and home, as has the increase of
millennials in the workforce. Both of
which lead to a massive paradigm shift
in terms of what the workplace is, said
Liebling. “It’s no longer this place that
people show up, push their papers, hit
their numbers and leave,” she said. “It’s
really this more knowledge-based, col-
laborative environment.”
While collaborative work environ-
ments have been around in various
forms for a long time, the movement
seems finally to have found the needed
balance to thrive.
“I believe each design trend is unique
unto itself and driven by corporate
culture changes,” said Sunset. “Trends
grow out of a need or change in corpo-
rate operations, systems, new technolo-
gies, etc.They happen when the design
of our office spaces need to support a
change taking place within the work-
place.”
The mid-1990s saw the beginning of
the virtual worker, said Sunset. By the
end of the 1990s, the dot-com era had
led to a craze in unconventional spaces,
saidTabor. And 10 years ago, many
thought that to have collaborative
space one had to sacrifice other essen-
tial components of the workplaces,
which led to an imbalance, said Spatz.
“I’m going to say that human behav-
ior has not really changed, ever,” said
Spatz. “But our awareness of howwe
can shape and impact the space in
order to make it better for people, that’s
really what this is all about.”
“Open, collaborative work environ-
ments are likely here to stay,” said
Tabor. “The success and effectiveness
of those, however, is dependent upon
providing the right spectrum and dis-
tribution of spaces that provide some-
thing other than just that. Some people
thrive in that kind of environment 100
percent of the time, but not very many.
There needs to be a much greater
emphasis on providing a healthy work
environment.”
s
Courtesy Paul Brokering
A headquarters building in the Denver area, designed by RNL, features open and enclosed collaboration spaces that are integrated
into the workstation areas.