The sensible office and the inspiring office, instinct tells us, occupy very different ends of the design spectrum, and never the twain shall meet. But, contrary to popular opinion, designing a working environment that is both aesthetically pleasing and also practical to work in, maintain and service is not an impossible task. Though, to be honest, there are times I’m not sure that the design industry would agree.
But I genuinely believe that the perceived conflict between aesthetics and practicality is, essentially, a myth. Keeping your FM happy by having an environment that is simultaneously service and maintenance-friendly, inspirational to staff and communicative of your company’s brand identity is not the kind of Holy Grail that some would have you believe. Nor, incidentally, is it dependent on spending vast quantities of cash – another common misconception. Budget affects the scope of what can be done, sure – but it is not a barrier to effective design.
Effective design should satisfy all parties. Aesthetics is about understanding the totality of a design concept. A design is aesthetically pleasing because it has considered all aspects of design from proportion, use of material, quality of product and practicality.
Does practical inherently mean boring? There’s an old adage that, were a FM to design a building it would be a highly efficient workplace, it would comply with all workplace regulations and be very easy to maintain – but it would look like a grey box. This is, firstly, more than a little patronising, but it is also indicative of the gap in understanding of the importance and capability of effective design that exists somewhere between FMs, MDs and designers. A ‘grey box’ is not, in itself, a bad thing. Design is not just about colourful spaces, shapely elements and soft curves. There is no reason why a ‘grey box’ could not be aesthetically pleasing if all the proportions are looked at carefully and the fit-out is completed to a high quality.
Effective design is about understanding business needs and understanding employee needs – and that has to start with an efficient brief process. Getting the client to really think about what they want their workplace to achieve is vital – as is getting a good understanding of what they do, how their personnel need to interact and communicate and how they see the organisation developing.
Just how important the aesthetics and the practicality of the design are to a project need to be quantified at an early stage and the longer-term implications of both must be fully understood. Practicality starts with the detail of the build itself: just how easy is it to build the space you want? And once it is built, is it the type of space that can be easily utilised? For instance, how easy is it to source furniture that works well with curved walls? How easy is it to clean and maintain? How durable are the finishes? These are the kinds of questions that tackle the minutiae of designing an effective space that must – but, amazingly, often aren’t – be asked.
Equally important considerations are those focused on the people who will be using the space on a day-to-day basis and what they will be doing in it. People are far more productive in an environment in which they feel relaxed and comfortable. However, here again, it is about good innovative design. One good example was with a client who, operating in the legal sector, understandably required cellular offices and a degree of staff privacy on the one hand, but from a design and corporate identity point of view, the space needed to be as open and airy as possible. We took that client to see a similar space with similar requirements and showed them how glass, blinds and secondary glazing could solve the problem.
When it comes to cost, you have to factor in longer-term outlay that sits outside the initial design and build to get a true picture. More durable carpets, for example, and high-quality work surfaces are often easier to clean. Total life cost is now a standard business tool and it can be applied just as well to the office space itself.
But what about common design mistakes? There are a few obvious dos and don’ts – putting a light coloured carpet in a heavy traffic area, or forgetting to factor in service ducts or columns – are fairly common. But the worst mistake is not getting good advice from the outset – not getting the communication channels flowing between everyone with a stake hold in seeing the new office work both practically and beautifully.
David Henderson is managing director of Morgan Lovell
This article first appeared in FM World, 2 June 2006
For more on office design and transformation see http://www.morganlovell.com
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