The Future of Work
Architecture can play a crucial role in today’s competitive employment market where even the most cutting-edge companies need to differentiate themselves to attract and retain talent. Here are some key workplace design lessons we learned from our experience creating office and innovation spaces in North America and Europe. A simple equation, great spaces attract great people.
01: Turn a building into a campus
Break open your building. Diversify its uses. Let it engage with its neighborhood and encourage people to enter. While Google, Facebook, and Apple all have their own versions of purpose-built tech campuses, we’re doing it differently. We’re incorporating these elements into spec- and multi-tenant urban office properties. At 25 Kent in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, we punched a hole through the entire building and lined the opening with retail, cafes, restaurants, and light manufacturing. Neighbors, employees, and visitors can use this space equally, allowing the building to become a part of the neighborhood.
02: Mix it up
Rip out those cubicles. A diversity in work environments and employees’ ability to choose what space works best for them are great additions to a workspace. At the Pennovation Center we introduced entrepreneur garages on the ground floor that open directly to the outdoors through large glass roll-up doors. These first floor spaces with a view to the parking lot would have ordinarily been the building’s least desirable spaces, but the garages were first to lease. More than just a witty nod to the legend of the HP Garage in Silicon Valley, they offer a unique space for entrepreneurs to experiment.
03: Create Purpose
Add program to circulation spaces. Additional uses for necessary but underutilized spaces can be the catalyst that transforms a building into a community. A hallway can become a social avenue, a staircase can double as an informal seating zone, and a service rooftop can moonlight as a bar. We capitalize on the well-known dictum that social areas add great value to office buildings because informal run-ins increase creativity and staff satisfaction. At the Pennovation Center we widened a hallway to incorporate a co-working space that leads to a pitch bleacher for budding entrepreneurs to give ad hoc presentations to their peers. This space quickly became an Instagram star.
04: Embrace the power of personality
Make a friend. Beauty is fleeting, but personality is the key to sustaining value. Rather than getting hung up on a fancy curtain wall system or expensive finishes, at Hollwich Kushner we focus on what will connect with occupants at an emotional level to win their love. We focus on experience and design buildings’ identities to be strong and relatable. At Die Macherei we carved a “canyon” between the buildings that contrasts with its public-facing facade to draw people in to experience the new development.
05: Design for change
Make a mess. Offices should not look like museums. By celebrating the internal DNA of a building and expressing its characteristics by displaying its architectural bones, we create spaces that are designed but not too precious so as to rob users of the freedom to make a mess. At the Pennovation Center we used huge ducts hung under the ceiling as a key design element. The ducts, when purposefully combined with inexpensive lighting fixtures and exposed concrete, transformed a simple design move into an impetus for invention. Idea creation overrules architectural preciousness.
About Hollwich Kushner
Hollwich Kushner is a leading architecture firm based in Lower Manhattan and winners of the prestigious MoMA/PS1 Young Architects Program where we built Wendy. We have gone on to design projects at every scale: intimate to awe-inspiring, and everything in between. Hollwich Kushner creates forward-looking buildings that place people first. We are a new kind of architecture firm that believes in entrepreneurship — we founded Architizer.com and were named one the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.
