PRESENTED BY

 TUESDAY MARCH 23, 2021

The Upfront

Haworth sales down 19% for 2020

Haworth reported global sales of $1.81 billion in 2020, a 19% drop from the previous year.

Despite the loss, the Holland-based company says its performance was “better than expected.” It credited efforts to diversify its product offerings.

“Haworth responded to the events of 2020 by leveraging our differentiation and global reach,” President and CEO Franco Bianchi said in a statement.

“The effect has been very different across our business segments, with commercial interiors being hit less than originally expected. Diversification between commercial interiors, lifestyle design and performance technology further enhanced our financial performance and, more importantly, all sectors learned to engage their market through digital experiences.”

He added, “We have entered 2021 with optimism, especially for the second half of the year.”

Haworth’s 2019 global sales totaled $2.25 billion, the company reported.

Bianchi said Haworth, which started in 1948 as an office furniture manufacturer, has worked to diversify its products over the years by expanding into digital workspace software, providing outdoor and in-home furniture, and expanding into markets throughout the world.

He expressed optimism about the future of the office furniture industry. Haworth is developing products to ensure companies have the tools to bring employees back to work safely.

“We want to make sure that we have a product solution that can be relevant to what they need and effective for this new work environment,” Bianchi said.

Narbutas is building a new factory, investing 25 million Eur

Office furniture manufacturing and trading company Narbutas International is expanding - in Ukmergė town, Lithuania, a new 21,800 sq. meters factory is being built. 25 million EUR own company funds invested will allow to expand the existing 36,600 sq. m and is estimated to increase production capacity by 2.5-3 times.

According to Petras Narbutas, the group's founder and CEO, the new coronavirus pandemic has affected the economies and businesses, but the company's consistent strategy – a wide network of trading partners and exports to different parts of the world – allows to look at the future with optimism.

“The pandemic has hit the office and office furniture market quite hard. We are no exception it has also affected us, our sales decreased. Nevertheless, we are in a stable situation and we believe that perhaps already next year, when the pandemic will be under control, our sales and production volumes will rise again. That is why we want to use this time for our development and expansion.”

In 2019, the consolidated sales revenue of Narbutas amounted to 98.8 million Eur and 2020 – 93.4 million Eur.

The era of work personalization is upon us

You may have heard it said that any idea repeated often enough develops some form of legitimacy. We’ve had plenty of reason to reflect on whether this notion is true or nor over the past year, especially as all-encompassing pronouncements about the future of work have proliferated and intensified. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that around 80 percent of people only read headlines. This can be a particular issue when you see a headline like The Death of the Office Desk is Upon Us above an article that suggests the death of the personal desk is upon us, when the reality is rather more about the personalisation of work.

The Wall Street Journal should really not be doing this, because it is the headline that enters the mainstream consciousness more than the nuances of the article. The end result can be laundered ideas that gain a patina of truth through unquestioned repetition; an idea explored in this piece from The British Psychological Society.

The past year has thrown up a number of examples of this, most notably in the idea of the ‘death of the office’. This normally goes hand in hand with an example drawn from a Big tech firm that ignores the details of the working policies they have actually announced, not to mention the fact that a firm like Amazon has recently unveiled its plans to create nearly 3 million sq. ft. of office space at its new US headquarters.

The truth is that people will always want to come together to work. That won’t change. What will change is the way in which that happens and also the places in which it happens. That is why we have argued that this may be something of a new and fascinating era for office design and working culture.

The challenge for organisations is to offer people the technology, spaces and cultures that allow them to work in the right ways and strike the right balances for themselves as individuals and adapt them over time.

Why choice is a crucial element of great workplace design

As Director of research and strategy at spacelab_, a design and architecture studio with a research-driven, human-focussed approach to creating spaces, my work is all about understanding what people want and need, in order to design the very best space for them – and of course for their health.

So, at a time when so many are rethinking what the future of work looks like, what are the key elements to consider when creating workplaces that will support people’s physical and mental wellbeing? In addition to providing spaces for collaboration, our workplaces need to offer people choice.

Great workplaces give people a diverse range of spaces so they can choose where to work from, depending on the task at hand, their personality and preferences, or simply how they’re feeling that day. Choice, and the empowerment this gives people in enabling them to do their best work, is critical to good mental health.

New Survey Says Workers Will Only Come in Half the Time

Another group has come out with a prediction about what the post-pandemic office environment will look like.

A February survey of nearly 200 people from CoreNet Global says workers will spend roughly half of the workweek at the office and the remaining time either in a home office, remote location or co-working space once the pandemic ends.

With fewer workers coming in, companies will need less space. Fifty-four percent of the companies surveyed say the overall corporate footprint is expected to be smaller two years from now. Fourteen percent expect to see a decrease of greater than 30% in space. Another 31% see a reduction of 10% to 30%, while 9% predict a decrease of less than 10%.

But not everyone sees a reduction in space coming. Twenty-seven percent report no increases or decreases, while 18% of the companies project an increase in their footprint over two years.

Still, a large majority of respondents see the role of the office changing. Eighty-five percent say the role of the office in the future will be for teamwork and collaboration as opposed to individual work. Another substantial majority, 68%, say that a 9-to-5 workday pattern is a thing of the past.

Microsoft to Ease Workers Back to the Office Starting Next Week

Microsoft has joined other corporate giants in assessing the best way to bring workers back to the office, a year after the pandemic sent home employees, who had to learn how to be productive on video conference calls while juggling interruptions from families, pets and the doorbell.

The tech giant announced Monday that it would begin allowing more workers back into its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., starting on next Monday, while also acknowledging that work life may never be the same.

In this stage of reopening, which Microsoft described as Step 4 in a six-step “dial,” the Redmond campus will give some 57,000 nonessential employees the choice to work from the office, home or a combination of both. Microsoft will also continue to require employees to wear masks and maintain social distancing.

Microsoft plans to open its office without restrictions only once the virus acts “more like an endemic virus such as the seasonal flu,” Kurt DelBene, an executive vice president, wrote on the company blog. But even then, office life for Microsoft’s 160,000 employees is not likely to look like what it did before the pandemic.

What To Expect When We Return To The Office

As we pass the one year anniversary of the mass movement out of our offices, I surveyed a group of designers and strategists about when and how we will return to the office, it is evident from those discussions that our return to the office will take different forms and may take longer than we currently anticipate.

The survey conducted in late February 2021 included participants located across the US from Boston to Portland to Houston. The participants include individuals from design firms, brokerage companies and other allies with the common thread that all participants are seasoned experts in workplace design and strategy.

Most agreed that the workplace that existed pre-pandemic will shift to accommodate those who have learned to work from home effectively, those who wish to get back to the office and face-to-face collaboration and those that may wish to combine the best if both of these alternatives.

Will workers return to re-imagined offices post-pandemic?

For about a year, many Americans have been forced to work from home due to COVID-19 safety concerns. Now, architects and designers are thinking about the future of the workspace for when workers return. As we look to the future, what can we expect of the buildings and workspaces that workers will inhabit after this pandemic, in terms of safety and more remote working? NewsHour Weekend's Christopher Booker reports.

Office Vacancy Rate Increases Fastest in Tech Hubs

Technology hubs have seen the most significant growth in office vacancy rate over the last 12 months. Austin, San Francisco and Seattle had the highest increase in office vacancy during the pandemic, according to the national office report from CommercialEdge. Austin vacancy increased 720 basis points, while the rate in San Francisco and Seattle grew 550 and 480 basis points, respectively.

Tech companies were able to easily transition to remote work at the beginning of the pandemic, and many have announced plans to permanently adopt some form of remote work. This made it easier for companies in these markets to shed office space. For that reason, sublease supply has also increased. San Francisco had the second highest increase in sublease supply in 2020. The sublease supply grew a staggering 587% in San Francisco last year, with the total supply accounting for 51.8% of the total office vacancy in the market, per research from Cushman & Wakefield.

24 years ago, Maharam changed everything. They’re still tinkering.

Maharam president Tony Manzari tells host Dennis Scully about how COVID is causing another reinvention at his company, the future of sampling, and what the residential design industry can learn from the contract side of the business.

EPISODE NOTES

Started out of a pushcart in the early 1900s, today fabric brand Maharam is a giant of the industry, sending out over 2 million samples a year. It hasn’t all been steady growth—the company underwent a major reinvention in the 1990s that saw employee turnover surge and profits drop. But it paid off, and Maharam was acquired in 2013 by Herman Miller for 156 million dollars.  In this episode of the show, president Tony Manzari tells host Dennis Scully about how COVID is causing another reinvention at Maharam, the future of sampling, and what the residential design industry can learn from the contract side of the business.

Luum Launches Collective Conscious, a Textile Collection Focusing on the ‘New Norm’

Collective Conscious by Suzanne Tick features four textiles that reflect readjustment to a slower, more connected life. Highlighting predominantly domestic innovation and craftsmanship, this collection focuses on enhanced user comfort and wellness. From upholstery to vertical to drapery, purposeful design meets the needs of the time. Inspired by contemporary craft, Collective Conscious evokes textures of artisanal handmade surfaces like hand-wovens, embroideries and woodworking by utilizing renewable, recycled and biodegradable materials. From the simplicity of the grid and the complexity of the weave draft, to the colors emerging in contemporary fashion, we rethink how materiality works for the spaces we occupy. As needs in a space shift and new challenges arise, comfort and tactility remain essential to functional design. Collective Conscious provides performance and multipurpose products in a range of vivid brights, complex neutrals and tonal hues that infuse a space with coordinating color, texture and pattern. From upholstery, to panel, and wrapped wall and drapery, each textile works in tandem for a holistic interior.

Hole-riddled walls: noise-canceling headphones for the office

The secret to quieter rooms and offices may be hiding inside a bottle.

Or really, many bottles. A new prototype sound absorption technique developed through a partnership between the Seattle-based architecture firm NBBJ and acoustics researchers at the University of Washington shows that the shape of empty bottles is highly effective at reducing noise. If embedded inside buildings or wooden panels, the narrow necks and wide empty cavities inside bottles could serve as architectural sound traps.

By tuning these forms to resonate with specific acoustical wavelengths—particularly the low frequencies of human speech—ceiling or wall panels pierced with Swiss cheese-like holes can capture and neutralize noise. Tests of prototypes inside NBBJ’s office measured noise reductions of around 13 decibels, or about the equivalent of wearing noise-canceling headphones. In terms of the perception of noise in the space, that’s a 60% reduction.

“We can’t ignore the human voice. It ties back to a survival mechanism,” says Ryan Mullenix, a partner at NBBJ. “That has a big impact on our executive function, our cognitive control, our emotional self-regulation. In the basic sense, it just stresses us out.”

With people now gradually returning to their offices, the issue is not just theoretical. There may be things people have missed about working in an office, but noise isn’t one of them. And in the modern office environment, the human voice is pervasive. With open floor plans, chatty coworkers and plenty of hard surfaces like desks that reflect sound, the noise of the office is difficult to escape. Increasingly common green buildings are actually making the problem worse. Green buildings perform poorly when it comes to acoustic disturbance, largely because their natural materials tend to be harder and more reflective of sound.

“If we don’t want to understand the half conversation on the phone a few desks away and we want to remain focused, we have to get rid of low frequency noise,” says Tomás Méndez Echenagucia, an assistant professor at the University of Washington College of Built Environments.

Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute Launches Cradle to Cradle Certified Product Standard 4.0

The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute has released Version 4.0 of the Cradle to Cradle Certified® Product Standard, the most ambitious and actionable standard yet for designing and making products today that enable a healthy, equitable, and sustainable tomorrow.

How companies design and make products today has a direct impact on the world we will inhabit tomorrow. For more than a decade, leading brands, designers and manufacturers have relied on the Cradle to Cradle Certified Product Standard to optimize products for immediate and long-term positive impacts.

“Cradle to Cradle Certified has long been regarded as the most trusted and advanced sciencebased standard for designing and manufacturing products that maximize health and wellbeing for people and our planet,” said Institute President and CEO Peter Templeton.

“The fourth version of Cradle to Cradle Certified builds on this legacy by equipping brands, retailers, designers and manufacturers with actionable guidance and best practices for choosing safer materials, driving meaningful innovation, and creating products, systems and business models that have a positive impact on humans and the environment today, and in the future.”

How KWS’s new Berlin office reflects the innovative reality of agriculture today

Although its business is rooted in farming, seed producer KWS wanted to steer clear of rural tropes in its Kinzo-designed Berlin office.

From rural to urban and from rustic to innovative: KWS’s new office in Berlin’s Schöneberg district reflects the company’s journey to become the fourth largest seed producer worldwide based on sales in agricultural crops, an evolution that started in the German town of Einbeck. Although its business is rooted in farming, the company wanted to steer clear of rural tropes in its Kinzo-designed Berlin office. Instead, the space reflects the reality of seed manufacturing today: it happens in high-tech laboratories and involves a tremendous amount of innovation.

In a design concept described as ‘urbanity meets modern agriculture’, Kinzo created a lab-like space that supports modern, agile working methods. Rooms within rooms are dispersed throughout the open space – like scattered seeds, for those looking for more KWS-specific connections – offering different setups for more secluded work. There are phone booths, lounge-like rooms for one-on-one meetings, dining rooms for up to four people and small group spaces for coffee breaks or intimate team meetings. Larger meeting and conference rooms are located in what’s officially known as the ‘laboratory’, an orange-accented space where acoustic glass partitions can be covered with dark-green curtains for privacy. Orange is also the key colour in the communal kitchen, a.k.a. the ‘market place’. Employees gather here for lunch on a daily basis, but it also serves as an all-hands area for larger internal events.

Britain’s Newspaper Offices Were Once All On The Same Street. Now One Publisher Is Getting Rid Of Offices Entirely

When Rupert Murdoch moved the publication of The Times and The Sun away from Fleet Street to new premises in Wapping in 1986, it caused huge controversy and revolutionised the British newspaper industry. British daily newspapers were born on Fleet Street in 1702, and by the early 20th century, every major national and regional paper had its office and printing press on the Midtown street.

In a move just as radical, one of the UK’s largest newspaper publishers isn’t just moving away from print journalism’s spiritual home: It is getting rid of the office entirely.  

Reach, which owns the Daily Mirror, Daily Express and Daily Star, as well as more than 100 regional titles including the Liverpool Echo, told staff on Friday to expect to work from home permanently. It said that during the coronavirus pandemic its staff had said in a survey they could do their jobs just as well working from home, albeit 70% said they missed seeing their colleagues in person.

Reach is reducing its Canary Wharf HQ from two floors to one, and getting rid of a second London office on Lower Thames Street entirely. 

Best of Instagram

The latest job ads from Contract.Careers

©2021 CFN.News

CFN.News - PO BOX 2551, Sarasota, FL 34230