Lab

Workin’ nine to five, not a way to make a livin’: these could easily be the lyrics to a theme song for today’s nomadic workers. As the very concept of the office comes into question, employers are starting to shed the one-fits-all approach in favour of individualized, HUMAN-CENTRIC SPACES THAT RESPOND AND ADAPT.

UNStudio and Scape’s RESET installation explores individualized therapies for treating employee stress.

The Responsive Workplace

Flexible offices that CATER FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL are sparking a workplace revolution.

Words JONATHAN OPENSHAW

OFFICES ARE not best known for their flexibility. Directly descended from the monastic scriptoriums of the Middle Ages and the clerical counting houses of the Industrial Revolution, today’s offices are still largely about control, management and productivity. They are architectural edifices to efficiency, where topdown rules and regulations are imposed on indentured workers.

The situation is changing, however. Digital technology hastransformed not only our behaviour as consumers but also the way we operate as producers. Contemporary office workers no longer need a complex corporate structure in order to get things done; they have access to a whole host of digital tools that make entire departments of traditional businesses redundant.

A growing sense of employee empowerment means that the office as we know it is under attack. Workers are no longer willing to accept the old structures and strictures of a nine-to-five regimen and are questioning whether they need to commute to a bricks-and-mortar office at all. According to a recent report by software company Intuit, 33 per cent of US workers are independent or freelance, a figure that is expected to rise to 40 per cent by 2020.

Such demographic shifts are inflicting unique pressures on traditional businesses. Employee turnover is higher among millennials than among any previous generation, and it’s becoming clear that the office model is due for a radical overhaul if it’s to survive at all. Set against this backdrop is a revolution sparked by the emergence of flexible, responsive workplaces. Truly innovative employers have stopped trying to resist the rebellion. Instead, they’ve got on board, sanctioning the disruption and embracing both hi-tech and low-tech solutions that make offices more adaptable and enjoyable places in which to spend time. Here we explore a number of insights into the future of work.

NUMBER CRUNCHING

Workplaces have always been closely monitored spaces, but the all-controlling Big Brother mind-set is giving way to time-management systems that focus on the employee. Tech company Humanyze devised a ‘sociometric badge’ that tracks everything from the wearer’s movements to speechpatterns, posture and heart rate. The data is cross-referenced with the user’s productivity, and the resulting suggestions for optimizing time can make a distinct difference, as demonstrated by the 10 per cent jump in office efficiency that occurred when the Bank of America made use of the Humanyze badges.

Architect Carlo Ratti relied on the same sort of data-enabled competence in his redesign of the Agnelli Foundation headquarters in Turin. Responding to the startling fact that around 40 per cent of all office space is unused at any given moment, Ratti worked with tech giant Siemens to equip the century-old building with infrared sensors that track movement in real time. The strategy allows for automatic stand-by settings – light, heat and/or air conditioning – in rooms that are not in use, saving upwards of 25 per cent on energy consumption. Thanks to a dedicated app, occupants can also set individual environmental preferences within personalized ‘bubbles’ that fol - low them around the building as they go from place to place.

We can now design a built environment that adapts to humans, rather than the inverse

‘Throughout history, buildings have been rigid and uncompromising, more like a corset than a T-shirt,’ says Ratti. ‘Pairing real-time data analytics with digitally integrated buildings is just the beginning. Eventually, this approach may even enable the creation of workplaces that will evolve on their own over time.’ His data-enabled vision of the future workplace is the opposite of the traditional office’s top-down structure. ‘We can now design a built environment that adapts to humans,’ he says, ‘rather than the inverse.’

HEALTH KICK

Experts agree that our deskbound lifestyle is a ticking time bomb in terms of health. A study by the American Cancer Society finds that men who sit for six or more hours a day have a death rate almost 20 per cent higher than those who sit for three hours or less. The odds for women are slightly better.

These alarming statistics are causing employers worldwide to reimagine how offices can respond to health needs. Italian sports-equipment manufacturer Technogym is, unsurprisingly, ahead of the game, describing its headquarters in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region as a ‘wellness campus’ where employees have access to free tai chi classes, a basketball court and talks from health experts. Physical activity is logged into a wellness cloud that gives individual employees feedback on their progress, and the most active are rewarded.

In San Francisco, designer Yves Béhar’s Fuseproject has been collaborating with furniture brand Herman Miller to tackle the subject of workplace health. Live OS, their connected office system, promotes physical activity by sending staff subtle reminders – in the form of vibrations and light signals – to change their posture at regular intervals, while tracking each employee’s activity over time and providing recommendations on how to work smarter. The standing desk unit can be preprogrammed to adjust automatically to individual preferences of height and desk level, therefore shape-shifting every time another person uses it.

ALL IN THE MIND

Wellbeing goes far beyond physical health. It’s now understood that office design can have a profound impact on an employee’s mental health. According to the European Agency for Health and Safety at Work, stressaccounts for 50 to 60 per cent of lost working days, while a study at Harvard University shows that stress-related insomnia could cost the US economy around $63.2 billion a year in lost productivity.

There are a plethora of products and services on the market that seek to imbue office life with opportunities for rest and relaxation, such as Metronaps’ Energy Pods, which use NASA technology to help tired employees take quick naps at work, a solution that lowers attention failure by 30 per cent.

UNStudio and Scape joined forces to develop a modular series of walk-in pods that monitor and treat employee stress. Called RESET (Responsive Emotional Transformation), their installation comprises six units, each of which pro- vides a different form of treatment, from meditation to sound therapy. The idea is that different individuals respond in different ways to the same therapy; meditation may be soothing for some people yet raise stress levels in others. RESET carefully monitors an individual’s biological response to each therapy before determining the correct pod for his or her personality type.

A company must realize that different personality types require different environments

Helping to combat attention failure in the workplace, Metronaps’ Energy Pods are designed for power naps.

DESIGNED FOR ALL

For decades, offices have been profoundly inflexible and unresponsive spaces, built around the demands of the employer rather than the needs of the employee. To accommodate a workforce in which everyone has a chance to reach the so-called productive peak, a company must realize that different personality types require different environments. Inflexible office design has generated a crisis in work-related health and wellbeing, but inflexibility has been bad for businesses, too.

The demographic and technological shifts that accompanied the 21 st century’s digital revolution are turning office design on its head. Faced by an empowered and unruly staff, offices are forced to redefine their very reason for existence. They have to become highly flexible spaces that reflect the preferences of personnel.

The office is dead. Long live the office! ●