schneiderism

That headline is a riff on a sentence in a report written by Steve Orfield and cognitive psychologist Jay Brand for the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). The report, titled “Better Sound Solutions” is a comprehensive analysis of the state of open plan office design, especially as it relates to the human factors around acoustics and sound attenuation. The line from the report is:

“We have long been facing a collision course between privacy and space utilization and the economics of space have won the battle so far.”

I don’t think that this statement should surprise anybody. Those of us who have any exposure to the realities of workplace design and the economics of space leasing and acquisition understand that companies are constantly trying to do more with less. The result is an open plan office that is at best dysfunctional and awkward, and at worst so disruptive as to damage overall workplace productivity and very negatively impact employee health and well-being. Much of this revolves around the concept of privacy within the workplace and as it is yet very difficult to present the economic argument for privacy, the situation continues to deteriorate. It is simply much too compelling and easy to make an economic argument based on space/lease costs, one that can be glaring on a cost analysis of a move/remodel.

The report goes on to describe a series of strategies for approaching this problem, and perhaps constructing an effective argument for the economics of designing effective environments, and those that support employee productivity, health and well-being. If you work in this space I suggest you download a PDF of the report and give it a review. I will be posting some of the key points from it over the next few days/weeks. You can download a PDF of the report from Haworth’s website.