Imagine someone typing at a multidirectional treadmill desk, wearing VR goggles, drinking triple-ozonized spa water, hosting a virtual meeting, all from a one-bedroom apartment.

Got that image? Well good, you’re probably not picturing the office of the future. For the next 10 years, people are still going to think, jabber and poke keyboards in shared physical spaces. But unlike the spaces we’re used to, the office of the future will have an untraditional purpose: to help you accomplish audacious, outer-space things.

Via entrepreneur.com >

Buildings and space that anticipate your needs. Collaboration with robots. Cafes, parks, and airports as the new office.

The workplace is evolving more rapidly than ever, and employers have seen dramatic shifts in where, when, and how employees work. Here are five workplace trends that organizations should know so that their facilities can best support a digital, flexible workforce, according to JLL.

Via facilityexecutive.com >

What type of office design is best for productivity and engagement? Today, this common question tends to have two distinct answers. On the one hand are the tech start-ups, who advocate for open office plans that emphasize chance encounters. Google’s new campus is designed to maximize chance encounters, and Facebook’s new headquarters features the largest open office in the world. Samsung is also exploring the use of more outdoor space to encourage employee conversation. As Scott Birnbaum, vice president of Samsung, told HBR, “The most creative ideas aren’t going to come while sitting in front of your monitor.” Their new building “is really designed to spark not just collaboration but that innovation you see when people collide.”

On the other hand is research about people’s preferences, like this 2013 study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology that, according to its authors, “categorically contradict[s] the industry-accepted wisdom that open-plan layout enhances communication between colleagues and improves occupants.” Another study demonstrated that the noise resulting from open office designs is a huge drain on employee morale.

Via hbr.org >

New sources of information about how our workplaces are performing are a boon to professionals trying to determine the right amount, type and configuration of space will keep employees, CEOs and managers happy—all at once. But it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. All too often, we are buried in superfluous information, or have paid for technologies that seemed useful, but don’t move the strategic needle.

“Investments in workplace monitoring technologies should help achieve business objectives, provide actionable information, or achieve projected cost savings,” says Phil Kirschner, Senior Vice President, Workplace Strategy Americas, JLL. “It’s important to invest in the right technology, at the right time, and at the scale that makes sense given your company’s place in the workplace strategy lifecycle.”

Via jllrealviews.com >

This morning, 77 million Americans got up and went to work in an office. Increasingly, Americans log their 40-plus hours in spaces with an open concept design, unassigned seating, exposed ceilings and maybe a ping pong table. But are choices and creative office really solving a problem?

During the rise of the creative office in the late 2000s, the New York Times reinvigorated discussion of an important concept: decision fatigue. The concept states that having too many choices can have an adverse effect on one's ability to make good decisions.  

Gensler principal Paul Manno says creating good workplaces has always been about offering choice, but this push for collaboration and flexibility hasn't necessarily being thoughtful and has gone too far. Architects and designers can't fill a space with some lounge chairs and sofas and call it choice; they must get smarter, Paul says.

Via bisnow.com >