There are some basic tenets when it comes to designing the modern office and one of them is this: Office furniture is not inexpensive. There are also even deeper questions regarding the very future of the office – and whether it will someday cease to exist. But more on that later.
The cost of renovating or upgrading an office leaves small business owners – with limited budgets – to determine if such investments as a $300 chair, a desktop scanner or new wall-to-wall carpeting are recoverable. Or is that new, high tech telephone system really worth the expense?
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The answer to those questions, according to local experts, is most often found in the eyes of the beholder. They suggest that securing a return on such an investment is a direct result of the overall management of the office or business.
A chair or desk itself may not do the trick – but will the body be more comfortable in it or at it produce better results? Does your biggest client come in and see a bright office with the latest in technological innovations and conclude that you and your business must indeed be a success?
Jim Libby, a registered architect in the Providence office of Newport Collaborative Architects, Inc., said all businesses that decide to upgrade their office space share a common goal.
“Increasing productivity is always the goal,” he said.
Libby said the trend of late has been to “break from the old cubicle mold and be more creative.”
The approach is no longer to separate workers and limit interaction, but rather, to bring them closer together and foster better lines of communication.
“Now, for example, small conference tables are being integrated around employee clusters,” said Libby. “Ideas generate work.”
Cost is a factor, but certainly not the factor. It isn’t so much about saving dollars on a particular office station – but more about operating more efficiently – more economically – overall.
Most office upgrades, said Craig Custer, owner of Move Management in Providence, have the same genesis – or at least, one of two reasons behind them.
“The catalyst for upgrading is usuallypeople come to the realization that their space is not being used efficiently, or that they need to do more with less space,” said Custer.
Custer likes to survey a company closely before recommending a new design or new furniture. He needs to know, for example, what office technology is currently in place. And what is the end result the company is looking for, he said.
For example, he said, for a lot of companies the issue is decidedly practical, where substance clearly wins over style.
“There are a lot of start-ups buying used furniture because they don’t have the venture capital yet,” he said. “They need to get a revenue stream going. It’s not about looking good, it’s about getting started.”
A disappearing workplace?
Of course the decision whether to upgrade an office and invest in new surroundings is potentially rendered moot by what some see as another emerging trend – that of “dematerialization.”
Last month, Chicago hosted the third installment of “Work Environments of the Future: A Scenario Review,” a forecasting workshop sponsored in part by the American Society of Interior Designers.
The group predicted a movement toward dematerialization in a society where boundaries – legal, professional and personal – no longer exist.
According to futurist Peter Bishop people in the future will move from “work places to work spaces.”
And, he said, they will forget the idea of the work place and ask; “Why did I go to one place every day to do my work.”
Bishop believes the future worker will pull what is needed from material objects and reduce time and space. Information will be extracted from paper, communication from mail, value from currency, entertainment from theaters, education from schools, selling from stores and productivity from the workplace, he said.
He believes the movement has already begun.
One group at the forecasting workshop came up with the term “designersoraus,” suggesting that in fact interior designers face an uncertain future. Designers might become more like consultants, they said, and the profession as it is known today could change dramatically.
Another visualization of the future that came out at the ASID event was one involving people working in “smart work environments” that conform to fit each person’s needs. The future work environment would allow people to go to any workstation and the height of the chair will adjust, as well as the lighting. And since dematerialization will eliminate matter, everything an individual needs will be stored on their computer system, whether that is a desktop computer, a palm pilot or a chip inside their head.
But Bishop holds out hope for designers and others who make a living creating offices of the future.
Designers, he said, will still design. But they will also be responsible for encouraging social interaction, he said. And though people could be working more independently, they will still need to meet with each other.
“If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention,” said Bishop. “If you’re not scared, you don’t know what’s going on.”
Bishop reminded attendees at the forecasting workshop that “you spend years preparing for a future that is uncertain.”
“The future can take multiple paths,” he said. “You must plan for various futures – ones that seem possible and plausible, ones that contradict and support each other.”
