Space Use

Among all the questions about the post-COVID workplace, a common realization is taking hold: Organizations must be especially mindful of employee needs in their return-to-office planning. The pandemic upended not just the professional but also the personal side of workers’ lives. One of the things that distinguishes this new era is the much larger role empathy and understanding will play in the design process, says John Campbell, president of the architecture firm FCA. The new workplace will feature a variety of recalibrated space types that are more purposeful, employee driven, and less unitized. 

Collecting “big data” is always a good first step for benchmarking, but the data will benefit facility design only if there is an equally strong system for applying it to make informed decisions. Using a variety of technology tools, Flad Architects of Madison, Wis., has developed what they call a data warehouse, a central place where everyone within their firm can store and evaluate data to use when benchmarking space metrics across all projects in all sectors. Both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods are used to conduct space utilization studies including new sensor technologies that provide a high level of accuracy.

You had a few of those big lecture classes in college—rows of students sitting in tiers, facing an instructor with an overhead projector or maybe a PowerPoint presentation. But recent studies show that students learn better and achieve more when they actively engage in their learning rather than passively listen to a lecture. Higher ed students will likely continue to spend about half their time in lecture halls or large-format classrooms designed for 75, 150, or even 250 people, so universities need to adapt these spaces with improved audiovisual systems and more room per student.

Even before the COVID pandemic, many companies were looking to optimize space and decrease costs. Unum Group, an insurer with international operations, has taken a multi-pronged approach: reducing its on-campus footprint by creating one-size-fits-all work spaces, moving to flex-for-all seating, switching nearly half of its long-term off-campus leases to coworking rentals, and developing a Modo® Labs app for space utilization and company communication. The app offers real-time access to concierge services, online food ordering, and organizational information. In the United Kingdom, employees can also use the app to make seat reservations and ensure they have a desk when coming to the office.

Agile product development using scrum teams of nine to 12 people continues to be a popular approach for quickly delivering tangible project results in a fast-changing marketplace. Originally established in the late 1990s as a nimble project management framework for rapidly creating new software products, it has since become prevalent in a wide range of other sectors, including scientific research, architecture, telecommunications, media, finance, and emerging technologies.

Funding for life sciences is booming, causing a space demand surge in already tight markets across North America. Companies that are ramping up production or spinning out of university labs often lease space in new or in-progress buildings but can have trouble finding the perfect fit. Commercial building inventory, both built and under construction, consists mainly of office space with systems that are incompatible with modern research missions. Outside of a few biotech-focused cities—Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle, for example—it’s hard to find a developer that understands lab space needs, so a life sciences company might hire an architect to work with developers on a redesign. Space considerations include zoning constraints, floor-to-floor heights, minimum floor plate, and electrical capacity.

While the global pandemic changed many fundamental elements of daily life—including travel, education, and the economy—its impact on the workplace will perhaps prove to be the most disruptive and long-lasting. Research conducted by MillerKnoll reveals how years of remote working, empty real estate, workforce redistribution, and limited social interaction have profoundly changed workplace expectations and organizational strategies for employees and employers alike. The research study, called The Case for a Thriving Workplace, indicates a massive shift in future planning approaches to workspace design and organizational structure that are more human, holistic, interactive, and flexible.

Stony Brook University’s Renaissance School of Medicine in Stony Brook, N.Y., has increased its capacity for ultra-low-temperature freezer storage, a need that became critical nationwide in early 2021 when the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine required that level of storage, limiting which hospitals and pharmacies could offer it. Stony Brook’s new 560,000-sf Medical and Research Translation facility contains a low-temp walk-in (LTW) Freezer Farm suite with eight minus-80-degree-Celsius permanent storage chambers and a minus-20-degree-Celsius storage corridor with a combined capacity of over 1.8 million samples. This is the equivalent storage of 80 traditional point-of-use (POU) stand-alone freezer units.

The Bakar BioEnginuity Hub (BBH), a newly opened life science incubator in Woo Hon Fai Hall on the University of California Berkeley campus, sets a new standard for adaptive reuse of historically significant buildings. Originally completed in 1970, the 94,000-sf cast-in-place concrete building was designed by famed San Francisco architect Mario Ciampi as the home of the Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive. Considered an iconic example of mid-century brutalist architecture, the building was found to have significant seismic vulnerabilities after a campus-wide assessment was conducted in 1997. Despite installing temporary reinforcement bracing that improved the building’s seismic rating from “very poor” to “poor,” the museum ultimately moved to a new location in 2014, leaving the massive complex vacant until a decision was made in 2018 to transform it into a life science research incubator that also preserved the building’s historic legacy. While the bold adaptive reuse goal was laudable and widely supported, the architectural engineering and mechanical challenges of retrofitting the historic building to support the needs of a modern flexible life sciences lab were unprecedented.

While creating generic/flexible lab spaces that can be adapted to a variety of different research needs continues to be the preferred approach—especially in higher education buildings—there is also a growing need for highly specialized lab and support facilities designed for very specific types of research. As a result, facility designers are increasingly tasked with balancing the demand for both open generic/flexible labs and specialized lab spaces in a single building with the added challenge of improving energy efficiency, sustainability, and operating costs.

The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is using data science to improve existing space efficiencies while fulfilling departmental growth and retention goals, reducing leased space, and fueling master planning efforts. Data analytics has become a fundamental tool since facilities staff undertook an extensive data collection and analysis project and applied what they learned to develop space assignment rules and processes.

2021 was another unprecedented year, with rapidly changing capital project priorities. New directions in science funding, the current and future realities of in-person and hybrid learning and work environments, and what it now takes to recruit and retain workers, students, and faculty were items of highest interest. Here is the top ten list of Tradeline articles that your peers found particularly helpful in navigating 2021 and preparing for 2022 and beyond.

An aggressive workplace transformation to an open floorplate with no private offices, implemented across 1 million-plus sf in three locations, allowed Unum Group to consolidate about 40 percent of its worldwide real estate portfolio, turning the vacated space into $53 million in sub-leasing revenue over the next 10 years. Despite the consolidation, the refurbished office buildings are equipped with a raft of appealing amenities, from coffee bars, micromarkets, and cafeterias to fitness centers, quiet rooms, and gaming areas.

Faculty in higher education often spend less than 20 percent of their workday at their assigned desks, so why do they still have them? It is a question that academic administrators are asking, as they look for ways to provide building occupants with the spaces they need to do their work and the autonomy to select the right space for the right task, all within an increasingly constrained campus footprint. Corporate offices have been making the transition to unassigned seating for years now, and despite trepidation, there are signs that academia may be following suit: In a recent survey of 88 U.S. colleges and universities (conducted by the Society for College and University Planning and brightspot, a Buro Happold company), about 62 percent of respondents said they are pursuing more flexible or unassigned workspaces for administrative staff, and 54 percent are planning to do so for academic work facilities, as well.

Occupancy restrictions are being lifted across the country, and companies and institutions are anxious to get back to business. But it’s clear that for many, the workplace will never look the same. After a year-and-a-half of maintaining only a virtual presence in the office, classroom, and to some extent even the lab, employees want to retain some of the autonomy and flexibility they discovered while working remotely. And employers, who have learned that much of the corporate and academic mission can be fulfilled from anywhere without sacrificing productivity, want to make better use of their space. One likely scenario going forward is a hybrid workplace—a combination of remote and in-person activity. In a recent Tradeline survey of 155 individuals at 115 organizations nationwide, 76 percent of the respondents named hybrid workplaces as their top space planning and management priority.