Meet the H. Hendy Associates team: honorable mention in the Flex-Work category.
Jeep Pringsulaka, Senior Designer
Sara McClung, Senior Designer
Heidi Hendy, Managing Principal
Caezar Chavez, Job Captain
Check out their submission:
This is an actual project for a client.
For years companies have had the ability and technology necessary to effectively deploy a remote workforce, but were met with resistance from leadership and management. Stay-at-home orders have proven the nay sayer wrong as overnight companies took the great leap over the wall of organizational resistance, and many companies now are experiencing spikes in employee productivity, satisfaction and effective team communication due to remote working. The pandemic shutdown has crushed the most conventional business wisdom: that physical workplace was critical for effective management, higher levels of productivity, cultural enhancement and attracting top talent.
As leadership leans forward to press the giant restart button, many are reevaluating organizational structures, processes, digitalization strategies and work programs. Awed by the rapid cadence of the new remote workforce, leaders are challenged to sustain lessons learned from this massive work-from-home experiment and maintain enhanced productivity, reduced operational cost and content workforce. Enter the new generation of workspace: a purpose-driven space designed to support today’s blended workforce of onsite and remote employees.
A best-in-class example is the SAP Innovation Center in Newport Beach. The 16,000-square-foot workspace seamlessly blends the company’s two marquee segments as well as Orange County’s first Blue Bottle Coffee shop, open to the public. The SAP Innovation Center comprises half of the space and is SAP’s first formal office in Southern California uniting the company’s local researchers, engineers, designers and developers under one roof with a first-of-its-kind R&D space to explore, create and invest in emerging technologies and new ideas. HanaHaus constitutes the other half of the space and serves as an innovation hub featuring myriad indoor and outdoor workspaces infused with the latest technology and functional design.
As an industry leader, SAP was an early adopter in implementing the flex-work model which has quickly become the norm for many office projects. As seen in SAP’s space, key components of the flex- work model include: Flexible & Agile: As employees continue to flex in and out, there will likely be 30-50% less people in the office than before. The Innovation Center has fewer dedicated areas, instead opting for more huddle rooms with movable doors and mobile furniture. Everything in HanaHaus is flexible and convertible without construction. The main floor can transform into a public event center in under an hour.
Technology & Innovation: A surge in technology adoption and integration helps to create immersive in-office experiences, improve remote collaboration and ease concerns about shared spaces. Technologies within the SAP space include high-quality sound and video, VR and gaming, and booking and cleaning systems.
Seamless & Intuitive: The physical office should be reimagined and designed to fit the needs of the blended mobile/in-office workforce. Key spaces can be tailored to include private, bookable rooms for focused work; cognitive, creative spaces where teams can drop in and pin up; hubs for leadership, training and onboarding; and areas dedicated to cultural events, entertainment and hospitality. All areas must be plug-and-play to support the need for virtual and in-person collaboration and help build team connections.
Click on an image to see it full size.
To celebrate their win, we connected with the team to see how their idea evolved since it was submitted.
“To bring HanaHaus to life, the design team applied the “design thinking” methodology – a human-centered approach to problem solving and key component of SAP’s DNA. This strategy enabled Hendy to extract key insights that were used to program every inch of the space. Research on user personas and movement patterns revealed 3 essential work modes – deep focus, passive/reading and collaboration – which translated to “journey maps” used to inform the flow, layout and workspaces of each user type. SAP conducted programming on how sales, developers and entrepreneurs utilize the space and worked with Hendy to overlay and modify the space plan. The result: an unconventional coworking environment with a two-story volume open seating area, various conference and focus rooms and on-demand workspaces infused with modern technology and function design. HanaHaus offers workspaces available for hourly and daily rentals designed to foster collaboration, promote learning and nurture a strong sense of community.
The open office is also equipped with acoustic paneling to help soundproof the workspace and mitigate stress caused by harsh sounds and distraction. Workstations and on-demand workspaces feature ergonomic furniture such as height adjustable sit-stand desks to encourage movement and help bolster employee and member health and wellness.”
Comments from the Jury:
I’m seeing lots of different types of ways to work within this environment as well as a very seamless connection between indoor and outdoor work, which is great.
It’s a beautiful space. The ability to have flexibility built in and still make the space look intentional is a very difficult thing to do and I think that they did it very well.
This is great office space and I would love to work there.
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Voting ends September 24th – one vote per person.
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