Contract - May 2015 - 118

FEATURE

Culture
by

Design

Lessons From Today's
Tech Workplaces

By Sascha Wagner, IIDA

T

oday's cutting-edge ofﬁce interiors
for technology companies-open,
creative, and amenity-rich-seem
to be universally envied. This new
paradigm perhaps even signals the future for
traditional ﬁelds, like banking or law. Before
accepting the tech ofﬁce trends as the de facto
basis for every future workplace, it is worth
pursuing which features provide meaningful
enhancements to well-being, culture, and
productivity and which are just passing fads.

How tech companies really work
To understand the way tech spaces work at both
a functional and cultural level, we ﬁrst need to
look at the drivers that have gotten us to this
point in ofﬁce design. Everything changed
with the smartphone. Having a pocket-size
supercomputer liberated the workforce from
desks and ofﬁce buildings. For tech-enabled
workers, and indeed for most of the ﬁrst-world
population, the problem is no longer getting
access to information or connectivity; it is
ﬁltering massive amounts of interactions.
Other drivers for tech workspaces are
new collaborative and information-sharing
models, including open-source product
development, coworking, virtual or augmented
reality, and rapid prototyping-all of which are
inﬂuencing the pace of innovation and the way
teams need to work now: fast, smart, connected,
and collaborative.
The design of built spaces has already been
inﬂuenced by Millennials' preference for
democratic team structures, so it's not surprising
that the individual workspace is less of a status
symbol. Mark Zuckerberg famously sits in the
118

open among Facebook engineers, and many
other tech CEOs don't have assigned desks.
Tech companies also use different ways to
measure performance. Netﬂix, for example,
empowers employees to largely manage their
own time, provided they meet their job
responsibilities. It's what you produce,
not where you are, that matters.
Effects on the built environment
Workspaces need to reﬂect the priorities of those
within the workforce-engaging them with
meaningful encounters, motivating them by
creating a sense of belonging, and encouraging
their personal development-and tech
companies currently seem to understand this
better than others. Obviously, not every
organization wants to work like a startup, but
many of today's tech spaces can teach us a lot
about creating a positive culture at work.
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Contract - May 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Contract - May 2015

Contents
Editorial
Industry News
Columnist: Structuring the Stakeholder Engagement Process to Drive Better Design
Editors’ Picks From Salone Internazionale del Mobile and Euroluce
Product Focus: Overarching Principle
Product Focus: New to Market
2015 Official NeoCon Produt Review
72andSunny
JWT
Uber
FCB Chicago
PRS for Music
Havas/Arnold Worldwide
Culture by Design
Designers Select: Workplace
Sources
Ad Index
Exhibition: The Hive Pulses and Glows at the 2015 World Expo in Milan
Contract - May 2015 - Intro
Contract - May 2015 - Cover1
Contract - May 2015 - Cover2
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Contract - May 2015 - Columnist: Structuring the Stakeholder Engagement Process to Drive Better Design
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Contract - May 2015 - Editors’ Picks From Salone Internazionale del Mobile and Euroluce
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Contract - May 2015 - Product Focus: Overarching Principle
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Contract - May 2015 - Product Focus: New to Market
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Contract - May 2015 - 2015 Official NeoCon Produt Review
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Contract - May 2015 - 72andSunny
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Contract - May 2015 - JWT
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Contract - May 2015 - Uber
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Contract - May 2015 - FCB Chicago
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Contract - May 2015 - PRS for Music
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Contract - May 2015 - Havas/Arnold Worldwide
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Contract - May 2015 - Culture by Design
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Contract - May 2015 - Designers Select: Workplace
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Contract - May 2015 - Sources
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Contract - May 2015 - Ad Index
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Contract - May 2015 - Exhibition: The Hive Pulses and Glows at the 2015 World Expo in Milan
Contract - May 2015 - Cover3
Contract - May 2015 - Cover4
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