Architect 2016-01

(left) The team at fuseproject, an
industrial design firm, is at its most
creative when surrounded by things that
inspire them. (below) Public transforms
every part of the office—including
individual desks—into places where
collaboration can take place.
“If you’re going to create collaborative
space, it has to be everywhere; it can’t
just be restricted to a certain area.”
— Yves Béhar
the workplace, according to Béhar. Many
offices, though, aren’t conducive to that
type of collaborative environment. To foster
a collaborative workplace, Béhar says that
maintaining the “flow” is crucial. If collaboration
requires scheduling a meeting,
reserving a conference room, and connecting
a laptop to a projector (while troubleshooting
the inevitable technical glitches),
the flow of creative work is lost. Not only is
collaboration slowed down, it’s discouraged
by the barriers that the office environment
places in its way.
“If you’re going to create collaborative
space, it has to be everywhere; it can’t just
be restricted to a certain area,” Béhar says.
“It has to be something that you encourage
throughout.”
It’s not that conference rooms aren’t
needed, but they should be just one option in
an office landscape that invites collaboration
in a variety of diverse settings. People can
collaborate most wherever makes the most
sense for them and their project: in open and
enclosed meeting rooms, at their desks, as
well as in shared spaces like hallways and
break rooms. The designer’s main responsibility
is to make those places inviting and
conducive to the sharing of ideas.
Béhar noticed a marked change in how
collaboration happened when fuseproject
moved into its new office with the new
furniture. “The transition was so immediate
from having to schedule every encounter
for a meeting versus meeting with people
in the flow of your day—the transition was
so natural.”
With less unnecessary friction in the
workplace, the pace of innovation, iteration,
and change increases. Perhaps that’s why
Béhar has noticed large companies taking
their cues on office design from smaller
companies that are sometimes more nimble
and fast-paced.
“I think there’s a renewed focus on
quality human interaction,” Béhar says of
the companies that wonder, “How can I bring
interaction and the same kind of efficiency
and speed to my large enterprise?” He foresees
a day when office workers track and
measure their movements and work habits
throughout the workday. With quantifiable
data on how much time workers spend
on various tasks and how they move about
the office, office design could become even
more sophisticated.
“You can see how we track our daily
physical activity or sleep,” Béhar explains.
“If you consider that we spend at least eight
to ten hours per day in an office, and we
don’t track any of that activity, I think it’s
quite surprising.”
The information could inform everything
from collaboration tools to furniture
design and provide evidence that good design
improves business outcomes.
“You can say you want people to
collaborate more, but what does that mean
effectively? What is the furniture’s role in
that? What is the educational role in that?”
Béhar asks.
Until the day that big data takes over
office design, however, designers can
focus on creating frictionless offices where
space and furniture facilitate, rather than
hinder, creativity.
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