Flexible space goes corporate

Alexi Marmot has contributed to a Guardian article on co-working spaces. She says: “They are the latest incarnation of serviced offices or office hotelling, selling fully fitted out and equipped space including receptionists, coffee and access to meeting rooms only for the duration over which they are needed. Expensive, inflexible and long leases for corporate offices are no longer essential and indeed seem increasingly questionable, particularly if the occupants in any case don’t like working there”

The article looks at the rise of flexible and shared space, coinciding with the millennial generation entering the workforce. The impact on the traditional property world is also covered as “the concept of flexible space has become firmly entrenched in the corporate world, both for the short-term - when sales reps need meeting spaces for presentations and for longer projects.”

Read the full article here http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/04/the-innovators-digital-nomads-make-office-sharing-a-reality

The Changing Nature of Academic Workspace

200,000 academic staff in UK universities typically work in office space that differs significantly from the rest of the country’s offices. Most academics work, surrounded by books and papers, in their own enclosed individual offices or in small group offices.  By contrast, the majority of office-based employees in the rest of the economy work in open offices shared with many other people, and very few books or files. Is this difference essentially due to the special nature of academic work? Do academics really need individual offices, or should they use shared offices like most other office workers?

This was hotly debated at a recent seminar hosted by AMA Alexi Marmot Associates attended by around 30 academics and estates professionals from sixteen UK universities, where issues of status, academics wish to personalise their workspace and to store many books and papers, the importance of a sense of belonging, the influence of changing student requirements, the role of interdisciplinary, and the importance of consultation when changing academic workspace were discussed, among several other topics. 

A report which summarises the discussion is now available here. 

AMA Involvement in new WWF HQ Featured in Architects' Journal

The new Hopkins-designed UK headquarters of the WWF-UK, celebrated for its green credentials, have just opened. AMA has been involved in the project at the outset.

Hattie Hartman, the Architects' Journals' Sustainability Editor, writes on the AJ website that "the brief for the office space was developed with Alexi Marmot Associates (AMA), which assisted the client with the move of its staff of 300 from its previous premises, a cellular 1960s building in Godalming. Surveys revealed that only 40 per cent of desks were occupied daily, increasing to 60 per cent at peak times."

"AMA developed three occupancy scenarios for the new building with varying degrees of hot desking. An underlying premise - and an important future-proofing strategy - was that the design should meet BCO guidelines. WWF-UK opted for maximum hot desking, which allows for 200 work stations, with an additional 30 spaces for sub-letting. Because people like to ‘belong’, team zones are retained, but staff are free to work anywhere in the building or remotely."

Read the full article here.

Photographer: © Richard Stonehouse 2014
Pictures used with kind permission from WWF-UK

‘Reimagining Academic Workspace’ Debate (2)

AMA hosted a well attended debate titled ‘Reimagining Academic Workspace’ last night. Around thirty academic and estates professionals debated the topic of academic workspace and the possible fate of individual offices in academia.

The discussion revolved around the issue of whether academic offices were likely to take the lead from the private sector, with shared workspace and hot-desking. Several issues were covered: student requirements for a ‘better club’ and 24/7 access, provision of social spaces, workspaces that foster interdisciplinarity, the irregular use of university buildings, academics’ desire to personalise their workspaces and their need for storage, the role of status, and the need for quiet workspaces.

As one discussant put it: “The search for the Holy Grail continues.”

A report on the debate will be posted here soon.

‘Reimagining Academic Workspace’ Debate

On 16 October from 6pm, AMA will be hosting a debate titled ‘Reimagining Academic Workspace’ at the Royal College of General Practitioners. We will be discussing whether academics still need individual offices, or whether academic offices are likely to go the way of corporate workspace, towards shared offices and even hot-desking.

Does academic workspace need to be truly different? What new solutions are emerging? AMA will be delivering three brief presentations each championing a different perspective on the issues in order to start the discussion.

One view, still generally held by many academics, is that their needs are different from other office users. Others, though, think that academic offices are perhaps no different from other offices, so that academic workspace could be more open, collaborative and shared. How can the estates teams and academics best seek the solution suited to the circumstance?