That’s what PSFK pondered recently in a post by Scott Lachut who reports that the PFSK Consulting Team has “noticed that office furniture and equipment is being designed with modularity and flexibility in mind, allowing spaces to be customized in the moment to suit the immediate needs of employees.”

“These designs can shift to accommodate solo work spaces or be expanded into larger arrangements for team meetings, giving workers the option of changing the office environment to match their current work style,” he continues. Examples include Steelcase’s Campfire Screens, which are semi-transparent, corner-shaped dividers that can be used to delineate a temporary “room” in an open area, and Buzzispace’s modular solutions, which the company claims create an “acoustic cocoon” that cuts through chatter and offers privacy in noisy open spaces. There’s even an inflatable semi-circle room from Office in a Bucket that Lachut says, “inflates within eight minutes.”

Lachut suggests several ways these types of innovative furnishings might suit current office reality by, for example, by balancing the need for collaboration-encouraging openness with the need for “speech privacy.” But is anyone actually putting the modular office idea into practice in the real world? Boulder, Colorado-based project management tools company Rally Software is one early adopter. The company recently explained to Inc.com how their R&D division designed their own office. Steve Stolt, a product-line manager in the R&D organization, told Inc about his department’s move to new premises:

The folks in R&D knew exactly what they wanted: flexibility. The tough part about space planning, typically, is dealing with the constraints: walls, power and network hardlines. To solve the walls problem, we decided to have “t-walls” built. These are “T” shaped walls on wheels. They come in a variety of different heights, and some have transparent portions like windows, while others have white boards built in. We chose these because someone had seen something similar at the Stanford d.school. To handle the power and network challenges, we ran power grids on the ceiling. These grids allow us to drop a power line anywhere we need it. We also use these grids to run network hard lines. Our desks and chairs are all fairly portable as well.

On move-in day, our desks, chairs and computers were there, carefully piled in the corner. We also had our t-walls and power grids ready to go. Remember when you built forts as a kid? That’s pretty much what this was like. The R&D teams love the new space.

Interested in more ideas on how offices design is shifting to accommodate the future of work? Check out MIT Technology Review‘s gallery of innovative offices for a more mobile and collaborative workforce.

Could a modular approach work for your office?

Image courtesy of Buzzispace.

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If you buy this argument that many types of public spaces are converging on this coffee-shop-like future, then perhaps the latest development in the evolution of coworking won’t surprise you. If both work spaces and shopping spaces are becoming more like coffee shops, why not have them occupy the same space?

That’s what a handful of design and home furnishing stores are doing, inviting coworkers into their tastefully designed showrooms to work. Konzepp, a concept store in Hong Kong, combines the functions of boutique, events space, cafe and coworking space, while in Texas District Workplace coworking has set up shop in Austin Business Furniture. In Hawaii, The Box Jelly coworking makes its home in furnishings store fishcake.

The concept, as Shareable’s Beth Buczynski points out, is clearly an effort by furniture sellers to understand and market themselves to the growing coworking movement. Buczynski writes:

Every work space, whether it’s a large coworking facility or a home office, needs chairs, desks, tables, lamps, file cabinets, and various other tools of the trade. Office furniture companies want to meet those needs, and several have discovered that coworking is a great way to gain exposure among the independent workforce.

“Over the past several years I’ve had the opportunity to meet with most of the major furniture providers: Haworth, Herman Miller and Steelcase,” said Mark Gilbreath, founder and CEO of LiquidSpace. “They are all quite aware of the coworking movement, so no surprise to see them dipping their toes into the water. It’s a natural thing for them to do as they observe changes in the work behaviors of their major corporate clients (eg steady shift toward mobility) and seek to apply their knowledge of what makes for a great/productive/healthy/high performance space to the new places where work happens.”

Steelcase has taken a number of experimental steps to understand this new world. They’ve operated Workspring in Chicago for 2+ years (not a coworking space, but an incredibly cool collaborative workspace that can be booked for off-site collaborative meetings) and also operate the 654 Crowswell coworking space in Grand Rapids Michigan

Unsurprisingly given the communitarian leanings of Shareable (the hint is in the title), Buzcsynski advocates welcoming retailers to the coworking fold. “Are businesses advancing their own agenda by offering space to coworkers at no charge? Absolutely. But the onus is on the coworking movement to respond in the spirit of collaboration and community. These values minimize competition and nurture the health of small businesses and local economies. If non-coworking businesses understand those goals and want to lend a hand in their own unique way, why exclude them?” she concludes.

But others in the movement are more skeptical about the interest from retailers, suggesting that their participation in the scene could dilute the spirit of community support that coworking strives for. “It is pretty clear that coworking is the afterthought not the focus,” Liz Elam, founder of Link Coworking in Austin and producer of the Global Coworking Unconference Conference, says of these retailers-slash-space providers. “It’s like people working in hotel lobbies. It’s not the primary business and I think you would always feel like a squatter,” she says.

Should coworking fans welcome retailers with open arms or regard them with suspicion?

Image courtesy of Flickr user yutaka-f.

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What is the impact of coworking on larger corporations? How are they responding?

Mark Greiner: Businesses are recognizing the importance of choice to their employees. By providing options in how and where their employees work, they’re noticing increases in workplace productivity and morale. Corporations can’t ignore employees and their individual choices anymore. If they do, it will be at their expense.

Frank Graziano: The importance of meeting with others and collaborating in a very intentional way is also rising. In the future, you’ll likely see more shared spaces, and less square footage dedicated to individual work areas.

How is Steelcase responding to this shift in work patterns?

Graziano: We often say “space matters.” And more and more, you’re starting to hear the heads of large corporations say how important their spaces are. It helps them attract and maintain the best talent.

In the past, we’ve spent quite a lot of time implementing designs to raise efficiency. Now we are also looking at how we can use design to galvanize the culture of an organization. What kinds of shared assets might we put in place that evoke new behaviors on campus and help our employees understand the larger details of the projects they are working on? I would say that we, and many of our customers, are beginning to understand that communal spaces — really well done communal spaces — are central to an organization.

Can you describe some of the types of corporate workspace experiments you’ve seen?

Greiner: One example is right here at Steelcase, where we just remodeled our cafeteria. Now we call it a “WorkCafé.” It’s not just a place to have a healthy meal; it is designed as a productive retreat throughout the day. From a range of settings and postures to a Barista serving cappuccinos; employees have lots of choices.

Graziano: We have the same things that you would have in a coworking space, but, of course, we don’t charge memberships. And the interesting thing is, our employees seem to be selecting this as one of their preferred places to work. It’s become a rich place for fostering interactions across departments.

Why do you think companies are now willing to invest in these shared spaces?

Graziano: Technology is one factor. As corporations move their desktop technology to handheld devices and the cloud, it’s now that much easier for employees to have the independence to work from anywhere. But ironically, with these new freedoms, we are still dependent on ‘place’ to situate our work.

What do you mean?

Greiner: Well, since we can work anywhere, when we do consider where to work we look for a place or space that supports us in achieving a productive outcome.

Graziano: We have to look at how individual devices work and how they can bring content to a group situation. For instance, if five of us are meeting in person, we all can’t look at your iPhone. Collaborative environments require technology that allows each of us to share our individual cloud connection so it can be reviewed by the group.

How would you describe your personal work style?

Greiner: Certainly Frank and I are both highly mobile workers. Even when I’m in Grand Rapids, I’m mobile between the various buildings of the campus, moving from a project room to a more communal space and then to my home base. I start almost every day at one of four cafes in town. I have my breakfast, I read the paper, I do some e-mail, and I plan what I’m going to do for the day. So I often arrive on the corporate campus around mid-morning.

Graziano: We refer to this as being ‘on’ work vs. ‘at’ work.

Steelcase works with hundreds of large companies. Are most of them evolving in the way you’ve described?

Greiner: Absolutely. The pattern used to be that you’d go to the office, sit at your assigned desk, go up three floors for a meeting, walk down to the cafeteria for lunch, go back to your desk, and work there the rest of the day. Now employees have a choice. And as a result we see corporations embracing many new patterns of what we have categorized as alternative work. Within this broad landscape, coworking is becoming a viable option for many.

Don Ball is the co-founder of CoCo, a co-working and collaborative space with locations in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. He will be discussing the implications and applications of co-working for larger organizations at Net:Work on Dec. 8, 2011.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Todd Ehlers.

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In recent months, I’ve increased my usage of video and multi-media presentations and conferencing, both for collaboration with external business contacts and for internal product development.

Not long after starting to use these technologies on a regular basis, I decided I needed a better and more-permanent setup in order to remain productive and comfortable, while also being able to shift quickly and seamlessly from one activity to another. Otherwise, I was constantly rearranging my work space to fit the task at hand and spending as much time setting up for a given activity as I was actually completing it.

The Case for a Dedicated Media Room

Many companies today with distributed workforces are making dedicated “media rooms” an important aspect of communication, one that allows workers separated geographically to engage in dynamic conversations, as if they were in the same room and without having to spend time setting up equipment.

Lew Epstein is a general manager at Steelcase, one company providing such working environments. Steelcase’s “media:scape rooms” are dedicated meeting areas that use furniture and technology to create collaborative work spaces for distributed teams. Epstein says that “teams need to share complex ideas [and] solutions that enable them to connect quickly and globally. They want to share content on their laptop or get up and write or draw on a whiteboard, and they need all the subtleties of face-to-face communication, too. For true collaboration, groups need spaces that nurture the process of collaboration. Work is not defined by what you do at a desk, and organizations are no longer confined within office towers. Teams need comfortable, versatile collaborative spaces to work in.”

Tandberg, now part of Cisco, is another company that provides such solutions for face-to-face communication or, as the company refers to them, “telepresence environments.” While these spaces require considerable investment, they can provide companies with cost savings and create greener organizations by cutting travel.

Creating a Media Room

The options for setting up a media space are as varied as the companies that use them. Overall, you’ll want to make sure your solution provides a seamless way to share information, audio, and video so that your team can easily connect and engage with one another remotely, but here are a few other considerations to make when planning your media room or space:

• Think about how your team currently collaborates and how you might improve remote meetings and presentations.
• Decide if you need a dedicated room is required,  or if whether you can integrate your media space within your current office or meeting area.
• Decide if you’ll be conducting calls with multiple parties at either end or with just one person.
• Think about whether your solution needs to be portable or if it will be set up as a permanent point within your office (some HD telepresence units are now reasonably portable).
• Consider the types of content you will share within your presentations and meetings.

In the end, a dedicated media space allows a distributed workforce to collaborate and share information from anywhere in the world quickly and easily, saving time and money, while increasing the effectiveness of global communication.

Image courtesy Steelcase

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