The demands on any material and the standards of quality are challenging in places where people meet up every day.

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Office design is about more than creating an environment that provides all the furniture and equipment to support the various types of work tasks. Great office design goes beyond the physical, practical concerns and takes into account the psychological and emotional well-being of the people who will be using the space.

Every organization has its own unique culture. You could describe it as ‘personality.’ Great office design recognizes and celebrates those factors that make you different from your competitors. Often it’s these, sometimes very subtle, defining characteristics that attract your best client and vendor partnerships! It’s also what attracts and retains top talent and helps build team spirit within the organization. Take some time to work with your team to define in words and images what your culture looks and feels like.

The debate about open-plan versus private space has been lively over the past few years. But who says it has to be all or nothing? There is a multitude of ways of accommodating both concepts within your office. To make better, more efficient use of space, office designers aim at creating a good balance that achieves that goal without making employees feel like nomads. It’s true that the way we work has become much more flexible. It’s not practical in many instances to have a single workstation ‘belonging’ to a single employee. Some employees only require a ‘touch down’ space. Some tasks require individual space, while others must be done in a collaborative setting. The key is to re-think space as ‘we’ space, not ‘me’ space, giving people the freedom to work where the task is best done rather than being limited to a single desk within the office. It’s very possible to have a layout that provides both focused work zones and teamwork zones. Think in terms of ‘quiet’ and ‘noisy’ zones. Noisy zones are ideal to stimulate conversation and collaboration so necessary to brainstorming. Quiet zones are ideal for those times when you need to focus and concentrate with minimal distraction.