Expert Insights

The new fresh and nutritious meals served from DIRTT's Greens Cafeteria are a key part of the company's green commitment. In-house restaurants not only reduce DIRTT's carbon footprint because employees don't have to drive elsewhere for lunch, but they also gives staff healthier food options and increases DIRTT's productivity.

Collaboration has enjoyed a long run as a buzzword, but as a result, it's lost some of its impact. It has devolved into a term to describe any type of interaction. The focus should be on designing spaces that support the behaviors and resultant activities that are occurring within the overall physical workspace.

A "property paradox" is taking shape as new CoreNet Global survey data shows a continuing trend of less space per person. The numbers also reveal an uptick in companies’ knowledge worker hiring levels.

Your client buys into your concept and design for a new, innovative work space that will leverage creativity and attract young talent. Yet, statistically, approximately 90 percent of corporate change initiatives fail to achieve their projected goals (as measured by financial performance the following two years). What are we to do with this paradox?

EwingCole used BIM in new ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their communications through the design process with United Therapeutics. So we asked Howard Skoke to tell us about the tools they use and the impacts they're having for EwingCole and its clients.

Gary Miciunas of NELSON, Michael Berger of Partners by Design, Ferdinand Dimailig of Box Studios, Renae Bradshaw of HOK, and Arturo Febry of IA Interior Architects spoke to a crowd of 100 attendees at Work Design Magazine's AIA CES-approved event, "Designing for Employee Interaction" in Chicago.

We want to understand what the food spaces of the future could look like. To do this, we invite submissions for the competition to bring together ideas, concepts, and innovations on food at work. We want to explore how food can further support working practices in the future.

Solid-state lighting improves physical well-being. But what role can architects and designers play in this digital technology, particularly when partnering with manufacturers to create a new modality of light?

"We designed a coffee bar that offers Chemex and pour-over brewing, which is a time-consuming process. So it could take 10 minutes to get a great cup of coffee in these ways, and that's when serendipitous interactions occur. We design for that wait time."

It wasn'tquite as dramatic as the high-flying, pre-recession days, but after years of economic upheaval and the dumbing-down effects of aggressively priced commodity products from Asia, there was evidence of fresh thinking and design-led investment from some of the larger companies.

"Everybody wants a place where they can get people together to collaborate," said Marc Schneiderman of SmithGroup at the inaugural Work Design Talk at Kimball Office in Washington, DC.

What do "innovation" and "collaboration" mean to you? By applying an innovation-readiness framework like the 12 points, we can create deliberate and measurable practices for being creative in the virtual world and physical workplace, alike.