TBBJ Magazine Article

The open office environment is dead. Or is it?

By Alexis Muellner – Editor, Tampa Bay Business Journal

Jan 18, 2018

If the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s annual Coolest Office Spaces awards weren’t our own, we’d enter this year.

Last year, we replaced a former cubicle farm with an open design. Our newsroom now enjoys views of the Bay where manager offices once stood. But beyond our office, the total “no walls” concept is waning, a survey of practitioners in office design shows.

“We have reached the height of the open office,” said Jonathan Moore, president of InVision Advisors in Tampa. He’s noticed a return to spaces that mix open and secure areas.

“Collaboration is the magic word these days,” he said. “How do you encourage communication while not distracting?” Whiteboards, often doubling as tinted glass in a conference room, are popular. As laptops increasingly are the primary office device, there is much more communal space, where people don’t have one particular seat to call their own.

There are also creative ways to deal with loudness.

For a Rivergate Tower client in Tampa, Moore said 120-degree desks were installed that can be organized in a serpentine way so people aren’t talking in the same direction, adding acoustic panels above.

Also prevalent are the comforts of home.

“I hate to use this word but I’m going to anyway,” said Lauren Menendez, account executive at CI Group’s Tampa office: “resi-mercial.” Whether it's the space, or design or furniture, there is a shift to products in commercial spaces that have a residential feel.

“Employers are trying to encourage their staffs to be at work and not necessarily leave at 5:00 every day,” she said.

That’s also about wooing millennials. Building owners, commercial brokers and building managers are upgrading class-A offices with coffee bars, beer taps and fitness areas, adding amenities to differentiate and improve marketability, Menendez said.

At Tampa’s Create+Co, the firm is less about following trends and more about digging into what clients do, how they problem solve, who they are aesthetically and how management leads. Then it shapes what is needed in a new design, said Founder Kristina York.

“When we dive a little deeper, we’re able to uncover features to enable clients to be more effective, whether it's technology in specific places, or just the way the team interacts,” she said.

The firm has forged partnerships with support businesses like Pep Rally (graphics and art) and furniture dealers.

“We like to take the furniture apart and put it back together and retool things a bit,” she said.

There is still interest in office toys, games or breakaway spaces (meetings over ping pong are a thing). Create+Co just finished a buildout for global money transfer firm TransferWise where it created themed rooms (Florida, London). The company also holds game nights and craft sessions designed to give employees a break and a chance to connect and recharge.

For the full article and photos visit https://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/news/2018/01/18/the-open-office-environment-is-dead-or-is-it.html