The merging of home and work life, new technology needs, corporate wellness, and an increasingly mobile workforce are shifting workplace culture as we know it.

The office of the future is here, and it isn’t just a place to meet the bottom line. It’s a home away from home, a center for innovation, and a visual representation of organizational identity.

How do you design a space that meets today’s needs while capturing the personality of your organization? How do you also ensure a healthy and comfortable user experience?

Create spaces that inspire collaboration, cultivate creativity, and facilitate the use of mobile technology. Also, ensure workspaces adapt to the humans that use them — not the other way around.

Industry Trends

Inspiring Innovation

Gensler’s U.S. Workplace Survey found that innovators have better designed workspaces. They also spend more time away from their desks in collaborative areas.
 

Water Cooler Optional

According to a recent article about coworking spaces from the Harvard Business Review, even if workers didn’t socialize, “they still felt a strong sense of identity with the community.” Why? It might be that those surveyed were content knowing they could socialize if they wanted to.
 

Variety and a Sense of Comfort

People appear to thrive in well-designed environments that also offer a good work experience — part of which involves a variety of workspace types and a culture that supports being yourself at work.

Scalability

Designers are coming up with inventive ways to accommodate smaller spaces and a work culture where offices are reducing their full-time desk capacity. Hoteling is now popular, as is benching — which creates a “touch-down” space that can be designed for individual workers and small meetings.

Workspace Customization

Designers are now looking into how color and texture affect workers and are using both to create a more inspired and personalized work environment.

Making People Feel at "Home"

Don’t be surprised if you see a lounge chair. People spend more time in the office than at home, so now companies are bringing the comforts of home to the workplace.

Flexibility

Modular systems are being requested to reduce on furniture costs in the event of a restructuring or move. There are configurable options for flooring, furnishings and walls.

Diffrient Occasional

Each Diffrient Occasional offers long-lasting support and comfort in all positions. Its minimal design blends perfectly into the modern office landscape. For more, visit humanscale.com/Occasional.

Executive Side Chair

The sleekly designed Diffrient Occasional will seamlessly blend into any executive office or workspace and can be customized to match the finish of our mesh task chairs.
 

Collaboration

Easy to move and stackable up to five chairs, the Occasional chair is the perfect seating solution for multipurpose and collaborative spaces.
 

Conference Chair

Each Occasional’s contoured seat molds to the curves of the body, providing the long-term comfort and support needed for meetings and conferences.