Entries Written By Mark Eltringham
in News, Workplace Design
Going with the flow in office design
Throughout history we’ve been aware of the state we now refer to as flow. It describes the sensation of existing purely in the moment of some activity, effortlessly achieving what we have set out to achieve and unaware of distractions. Mystics have described it as ecstasy, artists as rapture and athletes as in the zone. …
Attention to corporate social responsibility higher in family owned firms
Companies owned by families pay more attention to issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR), such as sustainability and environmental issues, according to research from Vlerick Business School in Belgium. Dr. Kerstin Fehre, Professor of Strategy at Vlerick Business School, alongside Dr. Florian Weber from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, studied family firms and …
Isaac Asimov’s remarkable 1964 predictions about life and work in the 21st Century
Making predictions about the future can leave people hostages to fortune. Just ask the Decca record executive Dick Rowe who in 1962 rejected a contract with The Beatles confidently asserting that “guitar groups are on their way out, Mr Epstein” or even multi-billionaire Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who declared in 2007 that “there’s no chance …
A new path to the future of the office
Serious concerns about the impacts we have on the planet have been around for a long time. By the late 18th Century as the world adapted to the Industrial revolution, an English cleric addressed the problem in a small book and added his name to the English language. An Essay on the Principle of Population …
Shining daylight on wellbeing and productivity
Some of the most important elements of a workplace design come free. That is just one of the essential lessons from former Sky Workplace Director Neil Usher’s influential book The Elemental Workplace, which sets out the twelve most important characteristics of a productive and healthy working environment.
Office design and the Butterfly Effect
You may recall an idea known as the Butterfly Effect that was popularised a few years ago. The gist of it is that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in China could ultimately affect the weather in New York. It encapsulates the idea that changes in local conditions in a complex and dynamic global system …
Fine tuning office design to our most fundamental needs
The best workplaces are always focused on people. Which is why many of the great pioneers of workplace thinking are from the social sciences, including disciplines such as psychology, ethnography and anthropology. These are the people who have shared the insights that help us to understand the characteristics of great office design. In particular, this …
The commercial property sector is shifting its focus to wellbeing and the individual
Last October saw the launch of a new report from the British Council for Offices (BCO) called Wellness Matters: Health and Wellbeing in offices and what to do about it. It is one of the most recent indications that the focus of property designers, owners, managers and occupiers is no longer solely on the environment …
The multi-faceted solutions to the major challenge of sedentary office work
Sitting has acquired something of a stigma over the past few years, aided by the now widely shared idea that ‘sitting is the new smoking’. In many ways, a new focus for a debate about the links between the office environment and wellbeing is welcome but the truth is that we’ve been aware of the …
Feeling touchy about office design and the places we work
When it comes to how we think, behave and interact with other people, we may be affected more than we might assume by our sense of touch. According to a study by Simon Storey and Professor Lance Workman from the University of South Wales, people cooperate a lot better with each other when they’ve been …
