Macquarie Investment Bank, Sydney - Clive Wilkinson Architects

Using different shaped, coloured, and sized rooms for meetings and working means that the monotony of the workplace is avoided by experience of variation.

Interpolis Office Tilburg - Erik Veldhoen

This office space for Interpolis in Tilburg creates unique meeting rooms and work areas. After monitoring the work which went on in the company, Eric Veldhoen realised that less than a third of employees time was spent working at their individual desks. Therefore in this design there is only a very small area dedicated to private desk work (and for this reason the office only takes up half the space used by a similarly sized company) 
Members of staff are not allocated a particular space to work in but can choose which of the many and varied spaces would be most suitable for them to carry out their work.
There is a "clubhouse" area which consists of 10 unique meeting spaces, each designed by a different architect, which are flexible for different uses.
After this new design was put in place the company reported an increase in productivity by 20%.

Google Office Zurich - Camenzind Evolution

This office for Google in Zurich shows how an office space need not be serious and drab. Google is an extremely successful company - and perhaps keeping its staff happy and creative within working environments like this is a factor of its success. 

Reflective Stage

After a while with no entries here I will now start blogging for the reflective stage of the MA. I was pleased with the feedback from the exploratory stage so I'll keep working hard and hope for an equally positive outcome for this next stage!
In a meeting with our heads of year we discussed how I would move my project on and I made the decision that I would concentrate on the workplace (particularly office space) as the location for my project - not restaurants as I had decided at the end of the exploratory project (I decided that restaurants had been done to death...) so I have prepared a questionnaire to send to members of staff at the uni for some feedback on their office space:
1. What is the best feature of your current workplace?
2. What is the worst feature of your current workplace?
3. What are the main things you would change about your current workplace?
4. Would you like the opportunity to personalise your individual space within the workplace?
5. Would you prefer a separate area for eating/socialising or do you prefer to remain at your workstation?
I will report the answers once I have them!
In the mean time I will start looking at examples of office spaces which are inspiring to me.

Colour indicative work out

Another idea using changing colour to show the passing of time - in this example the colours also act to help produce the desired activity - orange is stimulating so gets you started with your work out, red is more stimulating so promotes more physical activity, green helps concentration and then fades to blue for the warm down.

Survey Results

I plotted the results in two different forms:
+The first set of graphs take the colour as the starting point and shows how many of each of the feelings were collected for that colour.
+The second set of graphs takes the feelings as the starting point and shows which colours were most picked for that feeling.

I feel like the second way of plotting is the easiest to read, although the first way is good for showing peaks and lows for the colours individually.

Survey

Tomorrow I will carry out a survey on my fellow students by asking them to indicate which colours induce particular emotions or physical feelings.
I made a "voting box" with 13 compartments into which participants will place their slips of paper depending on which colour they feel most creates the emotion or feeling written on the paper.

 Each participant will be given a bundle of slips of paper with the following feelings and emotions written on them:

Physically Active

Mentally Active

Restful

Soothing

Hungry for healthy food

Hungry for comfort food

Hungry for sweet food

Thirsty

Optimistic

Depressed

Sociable

Private / Introvert

Anxiety

Comfort

Warm

Cold

When I have carried out the survey I will put the results into graphs.