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Living Office
Living Office is a more natural and desirable workplace that fosters greater connection, creativity, productivity and, ultimately, greater prosperity for all.
Why Living Office?
Work has changed. Most offices haven't.
Tomorrow’s offices need to attract, nurture, enable and retain the talent that will drive innovation and execution, and bring an organisation’s strategy to life. Through an optimised variety of settings, a Living Office will give individuals something that cannot be had in any other place: a spiritual connection to work and colleagues; a platform for increased productivity and effectiveness and a more naturally human experience of interaction and creation.
To accommodate the many needs of people doing different work, Living Office proposes a shift from standardised workstations and generic meetings rooms, to a diverse landscape of purposeful settings.
Standardised Landscape
Living Office Landscape
Engine of Prosperity
Shared passion and profit drive better results for individuals and organisations.
In the new landscape of work, a dynamic equilibrium of shared passion and profit delivers greater performance and value for both individuals and organisations. By offering a new vision for management, tools and places, Living Office generates this engine of prosperity that strengthens everyone.
The Office Redefined
Living Office is a place where you want to go to work, not where you have to go to work.
Can a workplace boldly declare your purpose and address your business priorities? Can it say something about who you are to all who pass through its doors? Can it be custom-made to meet the shifting demands of the work being carried out there? Of course it can, but most do not. Most workplaces offer a standardised, generic solution that could just as well suit the next set of tenants. Living Office offers a methodology to create an office where people will want to be, and where everyone can do their best work.
In this working neighbourhood, people can transition easily between focused and collaborative work in the same setting.
These Havens provide (from left to right) a place to converse, concentrate or contemplate.
This Workshop offers the right setting for a variety of creative activities, from sharing content on a screen to having a conversation to build content.
Creating a Living Office
Your people are unique; your office
should be too.
Living Office recognises that each business is different, and we believe that place can act as a powerful instrument to express an organisation’s unique culture and to advance its unique ambitions. That’s why it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Each Living Office is unique, based on the distinctive purpose, character and activities of its inhabitants.
Modes of Work
No matter what kind of work you do, or if you do it individually or together, this is how work gets done. In every workplace around the world, you’ll find people engaged in the following 10 activities.
Converse is a purposeful interaction among a group of colleagues to address a defined topic.
Divide & Conquer happens when team members spread out within a group space to work on their own pieces of a larger project.
Huddle occurs when a team needs to address an urgent issue, or discuss and receive instructions for a plan of action.
Show & Tell is a planned information session for teams of colleagues, with or without their clients.
Warm Up, Cool Down occurs in the time leading up to and immediately following a formally scheduled meeting.
Process & Respond occurs in response to the feedback loop of emails, phone calls and texts that drives work forward.
Contemplate is an opportunity for an individual to pause and reflect on their work, or to ignore it momentarily and seek respite.
Create occurs when a person engages with the content associated with their role and develops deliverables.
Settings
Living Office provides people with 10 distinct workplace settings. Each setting offers a spatial recipe that considers the optimal arrangement of surroundings, tools and furnishings to best support the activities of individuals and groups in ways that are fundamental to all humans.
A Haven is a small shelter where focused work can be done without distraction, or, alternatively, a place to unwind.
A Hive is generally understood as a grouping of workstations and offers a setting for numerous people to engage harmoniously in individual and collaborative work.
A Jump Space consists of highly approachable work points that facilitate work for a distinct and discrete period of time between other activities.
A Clubhouse is a working area that generally belongs to a team assigned to a specific, long-term project.
A Cove is a compact space within proximity to individual work points or common areas that enables people to assemble and engage with each other for a short period of time.
A Meeting Space is designed to support information sharing, whether it’s a single speaker at the head of the room or a group of peers conversing among themselves.
A Workshop is the ideal setting for people to work together to generate new ideas and drive their work forward.
A Plaza acts as the vibrant and dynamic heart of the landscape, a place where people can intuitively find the pulse of the organisation.
Landscapes
Composed from an optimised selection of settings, each Living Office Landscape aims to bring an organisation’s strategy to life. To accomplish this, the landscape should enable and empower its inhabitants by providing choice and fostering community, not unlike a vibrant city.
In this landscape, enclosed private offices have been moved to the interior to allow greater access to natural light and views.
Given prominence in this portion of the landscape, a Clubhouse Setting acts like a self-contained work area, allowing teams to transition easily between individual and group activities.
This landscape enables an intuitive experience of work by providing a diverse mix of settings, customised to support the unique needs of individuals and groups.
Living Beats Dying
A healthy, prosperous organisation thrives on passion, purpose and growth.
Organisations and management are tools designed by humans; a form of technology that must stay up to date and remain relevant. The maximising, profit-driven model of business served well in another era, but now requires updating. Aligning the fundamentals of human life to enterprise would prioritise individual passion and shared purpose; profit would serve as a catalyst, not a means to an end.
Dying Office?
A Living Office can help.
Please contact me with more information about what it takes to create a more natural and desirable workplace.
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