This conference, which has been going for 11 years now (why didn\u2019t I know about this before!?) http:\/\/www.workplacetrends.co.uk\/<\/a>\u00a0 is at the cutting edge of workplace design, architectural work and consultancy. There were delegates from all over the world and from a whole variety of organisations\u2026.Cambridge Architectural Research, Credit Suisse, Hassell, Leesman\u00a0Index, Herman Miller, Google, Steelcase and so on\u2026.!<\/p>\n The amazing Frank Duffy kicked off the day with an overview of architectural workplace change over the past 5 decades\u2026the US office landscape, the shift from the individual office to collaborative working, technology and how the computer\u00a0has completely changed the way we work and where we work, globalisation and its impact on how we develop space, urbanisation and the big debate \u2013 are office spaces obsolete?<\/p>\n The rest of the day included some great presentations\u2026from case studies of innovative work spaces in Australia, to academic research on work space and productivity, to trends in property development in London and how this shapes the future of the office build\u2026<\/p>\n Broadly, for me, there were 5 key issues that emerged from this conference and raised questions in my mind \u2013 given work space is my area of academic research, the ideas here touched on some personal topics of interest!<\/p>\n 1. There was a lot of cross-over here with the Learning Spaces conference I had just been to!\u2026in fact I met Caroline Paradise from IBI Nightingale here too! In particular, we heard the same sorts of themes here in London as we did in South Wales\u2026how do we cope with increasing numbers of employees\/ students and the same\/ less space?\u2026flexible and collaborative working spaces\u2026the impact of technology\u2026and the little things matter. In fact, one speaker noted that we should be looking to universities for inspiration in terms of the future of our offices, given HE institutions are having to deal with an increasingly diverse population who work in increasingly diverse ways\u2026<\/p>\n 2. I LOVED the entertaining debate we had after lunch! \u201cOffices don\u2019t work: They\u2019re a waste of space!\u201d \u2013 Paul Morrell (Paul Morrell Consulting) and Paul Finch (Architects Journal). This is a debate we should all\u00a0have if we are really and truly interested in the future of space and the nature of work. Get together at lunch with your colleagues and thrash it out! 3. \u00a0I still found that the core threads of what was discussed here was \u2018functional\u2019 and \u2018physical\u2019. There was still that age-old debate about productivity and when pushed, it was about what the\u00a0CFO would say when you said you wanted to change the work space.\u00a0Although I believe that there is a place for research and\u00a0design that\u00a0uses \u2018efficiency\u2019 and \u2018productivity\u2019 as its foundation, where was the emotional stuff?! There were glimmers of this, I admit\u2026\u00a0hints at the \u2018people\u2019 side of things, how do you cope when people don\u2019t like change, how do you get people to collaborate in certain spaces\u2026.but it was being \u2018measured\u2019 (there were lots of statistics and graphs!) and people wanted \u2018proof\u2019 and \u2018truth\u2019 that it worked! It\u2019s a question of where you come from, but arguably there is a space (forgive the pun!) for other sorts of research \u2013 research that embraces complexity, doesn\u2019t look for the \u2018holy grail\u2019 of work space and \u2018how to\u00a0make people happy with their desks\u2019 and that genuinely, collaboratively works with everyday users of space to understand what IS meaningful to people and where they work!\u2026research like mine 4. There was a fab presentation by Ian Clarke \u2013 a polar explorer who has explored the 7 summits and travelled to the edges of remote spaces all over the world. There was something about this presentation \u2013 apart from the fact that it was completely awe-inspiring! It made me think about what we could and should learn from people who see space differently \u2013 and not from an \u2018office\u2019 planning\/ architectural perspective. Ian\u2019s talk included important\u00a0ideas about trust, pride, people, power and being alone\u2026<\/p>\n 5. This conference was about the office. When we talked about \u2018workplace\u2019, we were talking about the office\u2026and yes, there was the debate around where we actually \u2018work\u2019 nowadays and technology and the future of work meaning we would work at home more\u2026on the train\u2026in cafes and so on\u2026.but! In workplace research we still focus, broadly, on the corporate world. I know I have my own agenda going on here\u2026but what about other workers and their workplace?! What about hairdressers, what about taxi drivers, what about refuse collectors, what about teachers in schools, what about body workers, what about nurses in hospitals\u2026what about all those that don\u2019t work in offices? These are areas that,\u00a0in my view, are ripe for research \u2013 there\u2019s more to space\u00a0than the office, there\u2019s more to\u00a0space than office workers. We\u2019ve still got a way to go before we really understand the\u00a0future of workplace trends\u2026<\/p>\n Harriet Shortt<\/p>\n P.S. Apologies again to those of you who have seen this on my blog too www.harrietshortt.wordpress.com<\/a> …again, it was perhaps another one worth sharing! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Dr Harriet Shortt Another part of my week last week was spent at the Workplace Trends Conference 2013, held at the Royal College of General Practitioners. This\u00a0is one of the few non-academic conferences I have been to and it\u00a0was recommended by a friend of mine, Steve Brewer, at Burtt-Jones and Brewer, a great Workplace … Continue reading “Workplace Trends 2013…what’s new in work space?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[272,47,274,273,275,270,88,271,269],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bristol-business-school","category-bristol-leadership-and-change-centre-2","tag-architecture","tag-dr-harriet-shortt","tag-learning-spaces","tag-office-spaces","tag-productivity","tag-royal-college-of-general-practitioners","tag-workplace","tag-workplace-design","tag-workplace-trends-conference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/leadership-and-change\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/leadership-and-change\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/leadership-and-change\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/leadership-and-change\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/leadership-and-change\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/leadership-and-change\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":761,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/leadership-and-change\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions\/761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/leadership-and-change\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/leadership-and-change\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/leadership-and-change\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/leadership-and-change\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\":)\"](\"http:\/\/s0.wp.com\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/icon_smile.gif?m=1129645325g\"){kind=icon}
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