Squaredot attend the BCO Conference in Amsterdam
11-05-2016
Squaredot directors Kris Krokosz and David Kramer jetted over to Amsterdam to ‘Challenge Everything’ with the rest of the UK corporate property world for the annual BCO Conference.
This year’s conference tried to open a more anarchic conversation around all things ‘Office’. One focused on the people rather than the business transaction described as ‘let and forget’ by at least one speaker.
Squaredot felt the seminars were amongst the most interesting we’ve heard for some time. Our approach to any project is to begin by challenging everything so it is refreshing to hear the wider marketplace opening their minds.
From talks on acoustics to familiar arguments about open plan we wondered if we are alone in thinking that in order to challenge everything and create a truly effective workplace it is vital to first understand the work being done and the people doing it.
Julian Treasure of The Sound Agency may well be right stating ‘Open plan offices can reduce productivity by 66%’, but surely we have realised that ‘open plan’ is not a workplace design. It’s a planning principal.
The key to workplace design is balance. By investigating the work, people, culture and architecture it is possible to challenge a business to translate itself into physical space. Space that will actually make a difference to its people and productivity, by offering them variety and choice in the ways they actually do their work.
It’s not about introvert or extrovert. It’s about identifying the best possible spaces to give people, or in other words, the tools to do their work.
Maybe it’s just semantics but we think there is a big difference between ‘office’ and ‘workplace’.
Office being anonymous, generic, specification driven, speculative space for developers and agents to ‘let and forget’. The opposite being End-User focused, bespoke and crafted spaces, for work. Workplace has little to do with the four walls that surround it and everything to do with the people and activities within it.
