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From the Community Blog/

How to Make Your Workplace a Collaboration Hotspot

Jul 18, 2023 by Alex Dupnik, Senior Associate, Design at Unispace

Collaboration has always been key to business innovation, and as companies compel employees back into the office, they have an opportunity to reassess where and how collaboration happens best. For today’s growing hybrid workforce, yesteryear’s workplace design is no longer an incubator for fresh idea exchange. But tomorrow’s could be if employers listen to new insights from the workforce. As we speak, more than half of U.S. employees are struggling to do their jobs in their current office environments, according to a recent survey outlined in Unispace’s Returning for Good, a Unispace Global Workplace Insights Report. Who can blame them? Offices ...

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A Practical Guide to Furniture Decommissioning

Jul 07, 2023 by Dianne Murata, Principal Designer/Owner of kimiko designs

Hey there fellow furniture nerds and eco-warriors! Ever think about the environmental impact of commercial furniture? As a mom and business owner, I’ve often found myself pondering the legacy we’ll leave behind for our children and the future of our precious planet. I'm not alone. The kimiko designs team has been shaking up the commercial furniture industry for the past two decades, becoming the go-to experts for infusing our passion (bordering on obsession) for furniture with a dash of humor and sass. After all, “we love furniture so you don’t have to”. Over the last few years, we’ve been hearing ...

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Mental Health, Sustainability and AI in the Workplace

Jul 05, 2023 by Lindsey Koren, Director, Communications, ASID

ASID’s 2023 Trends Outlook Report Examines Key Design Trends in 2023 Perhaps at no other time in history have we felt, with such magnitude, the impact of design in our lives. As the landscapes of cities and workplaces are changing, workers are experiencing stress at peak levels, and buyers flex the power of their spending with new demands. Designers have been called upon to better our world in unprecedented ways, and the impact of good design has become immeasurable. From health and wellness to sustainability, aging and artificial intelligence, the design industry is responding to new and shifting priorities in commercial ...

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Gen Z: Intentionality & Authenticity

Jun 22, 2023 by Laura Leung, Designer, IA Interior Architects

It is challenging to predict the precise future of work for Gen Z professionals or how the workplace they inhabit will look, but one thing is certain: they place a high value on intentionality and authenticity—and, significantly, Gen Z will make up a third of the workforce by the end of the decade. Going forward, when considering the workplace for them, intentionality and authenticity will be critical factors that decision-makers and workplace designers need to keep top of mind. Furthermore, the pandemic has underlined the importance of human connection and belonging so, essential to authentic social interactions and vital to ...

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Design Matters: Navigating the Intersection of AI and Human Experience in Architecture and Design

May 19, 2023 by Brittney Ferren, RA, RID, NCIDQ, NCARB, IIDA, A4LE, Senior Associate, PGAL

Ok. I had my first official ‘old’ moment recently. During a recent thesis presentation in our studio by a few of our junior designers, we launched into a discussion about utilizing AI in projects. At first, I thought for sure they were mumbling words of another language entirely! I’ve never been one for analytics, computations, etc., so this world of terminology was WAY over my head! To me, ‘AI’ is some Facebook ‘big brother’ bot or the autofill feature on my Amazon orders. I had never really put together AI and design in my head, ...

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Acoustic Pods as Part of Your Long-Term Strategic Plan

May 12, 2023 by Robert Korpacki, Product Manager, Hushoffice and Mateusz Barczyk, Senior Brand Manager, Hushoffice

The office must become more flexible to meet today’s dynamism, sure to only escalate. Pods will likely become a permanent part of this equation for many teams, as they are effective today and versatile for tomorrow — mobile and user-friendly, they are the flexible backbone of a flexible office. Indeed, pod-based flexible office design addresses many present business challenges: the current shift toward in-office working, unpredictable occupancy fluctuations, growing diversity, and pending inflation. As the gig economy booms, with an increase in freelance, contract, and remote workers, the need for flexible office setups that can cater to different working styles, team ...

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Let’s Reimagine Design, Together

May 02, 2023 by Giulio Bonazzi, Chairman & CEO, Aquafil Group

The approach to sustainable design often feels like a solitary process. Sometimes it feels like a competition among peers to stand out in the market. For others, it’s an overwhelming challenge that feels impossible to solve. The truth is that we are not meant to solve the issue alone. Everyone within the design space, from the designers themselves to the technicians, manufacturers and business leaders who work alongside them, all bring a unique perspective and talent to the table. It will take all of us doing our individual part while collaborating to tie those parts together to reimagine the future of ...

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Being Simply Sustainable with Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG)

Mar 29, 2023 by Paul Pierroz, Principal, Springboard Impact Advisors

In most recent years, business finds increasing shareholder and stakeholder demands for a stronger commitment to corporate responsibility including the adoption of environmental and social policies incorporated into their corporate governance. These expectations are defining corporate success with a measure of corporate values tightly connected to outcomes. Governments and communities realize the power of business to influence change and are leaning into organizations to play a greater role in progressing both environmental and social issues. Under the framework of ESG, business leaders are asked to address these larger societal concerns. ESG connects the success of their strategy to long ...

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Rethinking Office Buildings as Multi-Functional Destinations

Mar 06, 2023 by Steve Sutton, Design Director, Benoy

Just as retailers vie to lure shoppers from making their purchases online to visiting their stores with the promise of real-life experiences, landlords and employers today have inherited a very similar challenge and must now strategize on how to attract workers back to the office. Thus, commercial landlords find themselves in an entirely new domain of a competitive market—and the plot continues to thicken. Decades of quiet evolution of the office environment have achieved lightning-speed level of acceleration in the past couple of years. Since the dawn of 2020’s infamous Q2, workers’ expectations from their workplace took a left turn to ...

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The Workplace is Back in Session

Sep 16, 2022 by Alexis Kim, Principal and Workplace Practice Strategist, SmithGroup

As summer came to an end and I prepared my son to head back to school, my thoughts drifted back to a time when my work was focused on designing schools. No matter if the project was for a higher education or grade school client, even decades ago we spoke of the need to create environments that would better serve learners of all types and styles. The wish was to one day help institutions break away from the traditional “sage-on-the-stage” educational model and embrace an approach that is more engaging – one that offered greater connectivity with students, promoted enhanced ...

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