Trends in Corporate Sector Design: A&D Firms Weigh in - Feb 2014

By Jessica Chevalier

Couches, conference tables and bar carts: Mad Men style offices, with their spacious private space for executives and expanses of back-to-back cubicles for underlings, are a thing of the past in the corporate sector. Walls are coming down. Spaces are moving from single- to multi-use. Employees are being offered options for how and where they want to work. And corporations are selecting spaces that can grow with them rather than spaces they will outgrow as their employee rolls lengthen. 

Choice and customization are highly valued in American culture. From frozen yogurt to fashion to flooring, the quantity of available options is expanding, and people value the opportunity to make something their own. That trend has impacted the corporate sector as well. No longer are employees satisfied with being told how they have to work: at a desk, in a cubicle or in an office. Employees want to be able to move about in the workplace, collaborating with colleagues and customizing their experience with varied environments and settings. Employees want the option to work alongside their coworkers in a café-like setting in the morning and retreat into a more private space in the afternoon. 

The same holds true for corporations investing in spaces. Programmability, the ability to adapt a space to one’s specific needs, is highly valued, says Michael Corby, executive vice president of Integrated Architecture in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Corporations don’t want to build or renovate a new space, only to have it less than optimal for their needs within the first months. Rather, they want to be able to adapt the space as needs arise. If every employee has their own cubicle, the addition of new hires may mean that employees are asked to double up, and those individuals asked to share may feel like second-class citizens who, as a result, produce second-class work. However, if a space is more free flowing, sharing becomes the rule rather than the exception, and the addition of a worker or two isn’t as impactful to the work environment. 

This trend affects both how spaces are constructed and what products are specified. Corby reports that the line between furniture and architecture has blurred. Workplace furniture companies like Haworth and Steelcase are getting into more architectural products: walls and door walls. Unlike standard walls, these products are relocatable, offering the option to adapt space to a business’ changing needs.

This drive toward programmability has a significant impact on flooring selections as well. Corby reports that he is seeing many flooring products on the market that fit in with trends towards reprogrammability. These include raised access flooring products, carpet tile and modular vinyl products. Rolled and sheet goods, including broadloom, have seen significant decline in corporate settings, says Corby.

Even corporate setting where privacy is of utmost importance—like law offices—are impacted by this trend. In the past, it was a standard practice for law firms to include three different office sizes, growing larger by rank. Corby is currently working on a law office design that standardizes offices sizes. His design allots less defined space for the individual and more shared space for the team, a zone that is more open plan. Additionally, files and offices were traditionally built into the architecture. Today, however, Corby utilizes systems that can flex, filing systems and workstations that are furniture rather than architecture. In another departure from the norm, Corby’s law office design has no defined lunchroom. Instead, the location will have little oases along the pathways that feel café-like. These can be used as touch down stations for meetings, for individual work or, indeed, for lunching. Corby says that he and his team look at contemporary community planning as a model for office planning.

And while a law office is likely to have more private office space than, say, a tech firm, the nature of that private office space has changed, says Stephanie Boldon, project director and associate at Environetics’ Los Angeles office. “People don’t typically have meeting tables in offices anymore. They may have a guest chair, but they generally have meetings in other locations.” Even in locations that necessitate privacy, the trend is toward contributing greater square footage to shared space and less to private space. 

Will the trend ever ebb toward private, Mad Men style office space again? New Yorker Annie Lee, principal in Environetics, thinks not. “Mad Men offices took a long time to come out, and I don’t believe that we’ll ever go back. But many people have trouble functioning with ever-running benching systems, so today we have quiet areas, phone rooms, lounges, private areas and shared private areas.”

Lee’s colleague, Rodney Stone, the Los Angeles based president of Environetics, agrees, “Maybe in 50 years they will go back to walled offices, but for the immediate future corporate space is evolving. The majority of the space remains open, and this open space is becoming more functional, more user friendly, providing the user with the ability to choose what area they want to work in. We use flooring to help define spaces: quiet areas with carpet, hard surface for more active locations.”

Like most trends, opening up the workspace isn’t only about increasing communication and offering options; it’s also about saving bucks. Constructing permanent walls is costly, as is demolishing and reconstructing them. Choosing movable partitions rather than permanent architecture can save money. There is also a cost to working in a space unsuitable for the population that inhabits it, both in terms of productivity and morale. 

Says Yvignette Tang, a designer at JPC Architects in Bellevue, Washington, “Companies that are leasing space feel that they need to create denser populations. Open work stations yield a smaller footprint and increase productivity and communications.”

CARPET TILE: KING OF CORPORATE 
“Flooring creates a bigger statement as the office opens up,” says Ann Derr, partner at JPC. “Doing something on the floor makes a big statement.” And in most cases, the flooring making that statement is carpet tile. Tang reports that the majority of her clients choose carpet tile because of its functionality and reusability and that, over the past three or four years, the increasing affordability of the product has been a significant boon as well. 

Says Environetics’ Lee, “Carpet tile has evolved; it has changed attitude. Before, the goal was not to show seams, to try to make it look like broadloom. One day, manufacturers decided that the product was beautiful as tile—different colors, blocks, patterns and purposefully showing the lines in some areas—and began accentuating the beauty of the tile. From that moment, the whole industry shifted. With the LEED aspect and the fact that carpet tile is easier to maintain than broadloom, the whole thing coincided and the market shifted. Herringbone, inlays, hexagons: design-wise, you can do so much more with carpet tile.”

All the designers with whom we spoke agree that broadloom has a very small presence in the corporate sector. Corby estimates that broadloom accounts for less than 5% of his specifications. Environetics’ Stone sometimes uses broadloom in private office space and in locations that require a more conservative aesthetic, like bank branches. “And if you want less expensive, broadloom is the way to go,” he adds. 

However, in New York, Lee reports that her Environetics’ projects use almost no broadloom. In fact, she can recall only one corporate specification in the last seven years on which she chose broadloom, which she had serged and bound to make an area rug. 

Tang agrees that the carpet tile market has really made strides over the past three or four years. “We see a lot more leading edge style, creating carpet tile in different patterns and colors. Broadloom is more subtle.” In other words, if you are going to make a statement with soft surface flooring in the corporate environment, carpet tile is the material of choice.

Carpet tile offers another benefit of great worth in today’s open office environments: acoustical value. Says Lee, “Now that the office is more open, the acoustical value of the material plays a larger role. Finishes are functioning for design.” 

While carpet tile continues to command the corporate sector, Corby reports that materials like cork and linoleum are making some headway in the market because they offer acoustic benefits over other hard surface materials and a degree of softness underfoot, in addition to providing maintenance advantages over soft surface flooring. The placement of a material has a significant impact on acoustics, he points out. A woman walking in a high-heeled shoe on porcelain tile, for instance, makes more of an acoustic impact that several employees working in a seating area atop a porcelain floor. It’s all about what is placed where. For a connection zone, Corby reports that he would never consider porcelain, regardless of its durability, but he would consider a hard surface material like cork or linoleum. 

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