9 Ways To Make Your Office Work!
At Footprint Architects we recognise that good office design can have a positive impact on employee wellbeing and productivity. Successful office design can provide an uplifting working environment that can effectively support workplace activities, whilst minimising operational burdens.
1) Robust Feasibility Study
The most important design decisions are those made at the start of a project. From trees to access, heritage to budget, every workplace project or office fit out has its own unique opportunities and constraints. Through a considered feasibility study and masterplanning we can work to explore all of the different options and assess viability to reduce your risk and unlock the hidden potential.
2) Passive Work Space Design
Implementing the simplest low energy, passive design decisions from the outset helps ensure that an office’s energy consumption and carbon emissions are reduced. Footprint Architects adopt a fabric-first approach to all new office buildings that we design.
Enhancing the building fabric and airtightness to LETI or Passivhaus standards is a simple but highly effective measure in reducing energy consumption and in achieving a net zero carbon office in use. This low-tech approach ensures that the workspaces we create are easy to operate, have low running costs, are simple to maintain, and are healthy and comfortable environments to work in.
Our Approach to Passive Office Design
- Use of high levels of insulation to keep the heat in, enabling heating demand to be reduced by as much as 90%
- Maximise airtightness and avoid thermal bridging to meet Passivhaus standards.
- Position windows to maximise heating from the sun in the winter
- Use thermal mass to store and slowly release heat in the winter
- Use thermal mass to keep the heat out in the summer
- Position the building to maximise shading and reduce the need for air conditioning or cooling in the summer
- Orientate the long side of the building to face the south, with minimal east-west facing windows to reduce prevailing wind chill and excessive summer heat gains.
- Use fresh air to naturally ventilate a building
- Utilise existing trees to provide natural shading in the summer months
3) Natural Daylighting
Slogging it out day after day in a drab, artificially lit room without natural ventilation or a window to even glance out of might just send you sprinting to the nearest recruitment agency. We need natural light, it just makes us feel good and research shows that offices with large areas of glazing have lower sickness levels with everyone feeling more laid back and more motivated to power through their workload. We recommend the use of large windows down to floor level and glazed external doors directly from the office spaces to increase natural lighting.
An abundance of natural daylight, with minimal glare, can create an engaging and healthy office environment. The use of natural daylighting can reduce the reliance on artificial lighting, improve employee wellbeing in the workplace, reduce energy consumption and help to achieve net zero carbon in operation.
4) Natural Ventilation
Natural ventilation is also key when it comes to boosting productivity. We advocate providing simple, natural ventilation coupled with high ceilings to absorb stale air.
Office ventilation systems need to be simple to operate and quickly responsive to allow air quality in the workplace to be easily maintained. We also recommend the use of roof lights to provide north light, increase natural ventilation and offer greater privacy for the offices over windows in the facade.
5) Colour
Colour is such an easy and inexpensive way to transform a space during an office fit out and the effect it has on our productivity and wellbeing shouldn’t be underestimated in workplace design. Warm tones such as Yellow or Red, increase optimism and alertness. Cool tones like Green or Blue, calm and keep us focused.
6) Healthy Environment
Offices have a tendency to foster sedentary behaviour. Adding bike sheds and showers or even a gym can encourage more activity and healthier choices which in turn reduces sickness and has a positive impact on employees mental health and wellbeing.
Ergonomic furniture, that allows employees the choice to sit or stand, can foster a healthy and more comfortable office environment.
House plants have become a big interior trend and that trend is finding its way back into modern interior office design as well. Bringing the outside in not only improves air quality but plants have the power to reduce stress, anxiety and fatigue.
7) Dynamic Social Spaces
The best office designs take an approach that’s layered and creative. We’ve seen an increasing trend in modern office fit outs incorporating a ‘neighbourhood’ approach. This transforms a traditional office building into a corporate playground that seemingly blurs the lines between work and leisure. With civic and private spaces, cafes, coworking areas, gyms, gaming or chill out areas and more, you have the opportunity to create something truly aspirational. Our client, LUSH, opted for dynamic and flexible office spaces, view our work for LUSH Design Office
The best office design layouts create a sense of collaboration and creativity by designing in large, open plan spaces. No-one likes to be left out in the cold and this kind of space encourages cosy interaction. Desks placed side by side create no physical barriers for workplace communication.
8) Simplicity and Flexibility
Simplicity is one of the most important qualities of good design, and critical to ensuring that office buildings are good value and simple to use. The easier buildings are to procure, construct, manage, repair, operate and maintain, the more likely they are to operate efficiently and effectively.
Everyone is unique and works differently, so it’s important to design an office that allows multiple working styles. In our work for LUSH, we stepped away from dark corridors and cellular offices, to an open office environment with large communal spaces. Yet we also provided quiet phone booths to allow for 1 to 1 chats or private phone calls. We also considered circulation as part of the space, where people can bump into each other to encourage informal meetings & spontaneous interactions.
9) Branding Opportunity
Modern office design shows that branding isn’t just for customers. Making your workplace a place of pride for everyone means you’ll have a team who are fully engaged with the company’s mission and more committed to their jobs.
We engage with all levels of an organisation. Involving multiple stakeholders within a project, be that the client, the office staff and even the maintenance team. At the Tank Museum in Dorset we developed an Augmented Reality walkthrough, produced in house to allow the client, the museum director, the staff and even the contractor the chance to understand what the spaces would feel like.
