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How To Design An Innovative Workplace

Perkins+Will explores four strategies for designing an innovative workplace: 1) Incorporate biophilia and natural elements like green walls, plants, and natural light which have been shown to positively impact employee health, happiness, and work. 2) Experiment with unique and recycled materials to create one-of-a-kind pieces that stimulate creativity. 3) Promote wellness and productivity with active design elements like encouraging stair use and making amenities farther from desks. 4) Embrace flexibility and mobility with open spaces, movable walls, and different workspace types to support changing team structures and technology.

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36 views

How To Design An Innovative Workplace

Perkins+Will explores four strategies for designing an innovative workplace: 1) Incorporate biophilia and natural elements like green walls, plants, and natural light which have been shown to positively impact employee health, happiness, and work. 2) Experiment with unique and recycled materials to create one-of-a-kind pieces that stimulate creativity. 3) Promote wellness and productivity with active design elements like encouraging stair use and making amenities farther from desks. 4) Embrace flexibility and mobility with open spaces, movable walls, and different workspace types to support changing team structures and technology.

Uploaded by

muskan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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WORKDESIGN MAGAZINE- How To Design An Innovative Workplace

by Peter Busby

Peter Busby  and  Hakee Chang, of  Perkins+Will‘s San Francisco office, explore four ways to design an innovative
work environment.

Perkins+Will’s Vancouver office features a green wall in its atrium. Photo


by Michael Elkan.
Work environments are important. We spend most of our waking hours
at work, and how our office spaces are designed can have a substantial
impact on our health, happiness, and work product. For example,
a study by Northwestern University shows that offices designed with
more natural light positively affects employees. They sleep longer and
better, have more physical activity and a better quality of life compared
to office workers with less light exposure in the workplace.

But it’s not just about worker happiness or health. Office spaces can also
influence an employee’s creativity and innovation, which are critical for a
company’s overall success. The best ideas don’t come from an employee
answering email in a cubicle. They come from a space in which employees
have room to explore, collaborate, and connect.

Companies of all stripes increasingly recognize this. It’s one thing to know you need an innovative workspace — it’s
another to actually create one. There are many ways to design for innovation, below we walk you through four
tested strategies you can implement to design an innovative workspace.

Know that biophilia matters

Another shot of the living wall in Perkins+Will’s Vancouver office.


In the last decade, more buildings have incorporated sustainable design principles,
and studies have shown there are direct behavioral effects from green building
design. A study completed in 2013 at the University of British Columbia identified a
connection between occupying a high-performance building and pro-environmental
behavior related to recycling and waste disposal. The study showed that users of a
deep green building were more likely to choose the correct disposal bin (recycle,
compost, or trash) than users of a similar building that did not focus on sustainable
design principles. Sustainable climate-specific solutions should inform your decisions
if you want occupant behaviors to reflect sustainable attitudes.

For example, when deciding shading strategies for your office, material selection and
aesthetic choices can creatively reflect the appropriate historical, cultural, and
ecological influences in the region. Incorporating natural light into your space, such
as with Suncentral Sunbeamers and skylights, will provide indirect daylight that
positively affects occupants. Other strategies include having operable windows for
natural airflow, incorporating outside views into your space, and using natural eco-
friendly materials. Perkins+Will has implemented this strategy in many of our offices,
most recently in the San Francisco office. In a new build project in Vancouver, we built exterior shading structures,
operable windows for natural ventilation and a completely green roof. Recently, a 25-foot high “living wall” was
installed in our Vancouver office to clean and refresh the air, reminding us of the importance of biophilia in design.
Experiment with materials to make your space more creative

The entrance to Perkins+Will’s San Francisco office. Photo by Mariko Reed.


It’s worth investing time and resources in experimentation with unique
materials. There is a plethora of material available for use in innovative
ways to create doors, walls, lights, furniture, and more. By reaching out to
local junk yards, furniture vendors, or other local resources, you can
cheaply purchase and re-purpose materials to create one-of-a-kind piece
that provoke creativity in your office.

In 2000, the floor at our Vancouver office was made with recycled rubber
from tires. Everything in the office (except chairs and lights) was designed
in-house. In our recently completed San Francisco office, we used locally sourced tile composed of cast recycled
cathode ray tubes instead of ceramic tiles.

Incorporate “active design” for wellness and productivity

Natural daylighting in Perkins+Will’s San Francisco office. Photo by


Mariko Reed.
Employees are known to be more creative when they have physical
activity throughout the day. Of course, gyms and standing desks are a
great place to start but, beyond that, consider designing your space in
a way that encourages or even requires activity. Make stairs
accessible and attractive so they become more common than the
elevator. Move trash cans, snacks, and bathrooms farther away from
the central desk area. And don’t forget about commuting. By
incorporating showers, changing rooms, and secure bike storage on-
site, our San Francisco office encourages employees to take alternate means of transportation to get to work.

Integrate flexibility to support mobility

Open, collaborative workspaces in Perkins+Will’s San Francisco


office. Photo by Mariko Reed.
Today’s most innovative workspaces embrace mobility. Laptops,
smartphones, and reliable WiFi connections mean that workers can
say goodbye to the desk. Anything can become a workspace: a
beanbag, a cafe table, even a floor. Office designers and companies
need to adopt a flexible attitude when it comes to workplace design.

By incorporating open spaces with non-permanent walls or desks,


companies can allow the office to evolve with technology over time.
Designing different types of workspaces, such as sitting desk areas,
standing desks, and open lounge areas throughout the office will
promote productivity and inspiration. In our San Francisco office, flexible project rooms were designed for ever-
changing team structures and fully demountable sustainable moveable walls are used for partitions. The result is an
office that can be reconfigured to meet the changing needs of the team or technology at a moment’s notice.

Designing for innovation might not happen overnight for your office. Office design should be flexible and based on
the users in the space, so there is no one way to design for innovation. However, with support from upper
management and a fully committed team, you can begin to incorporate these principles, among others, into the
design of your office.

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