Smart Building Research

Chances are, the problem isn’t a lack of conference rooms, but poor conference room utilization. Assuming a 30% conference room utilization, that means a single empty room is costing your organization over $11,419 per year. There are several reasons why conference rooms sit empty while employees complain they can’t find a place to meet. Another […]

The need to block out distractions, to add private spaces to existing floorplans and to do so quickly has led to the proliferation of pods. What they’re finding is – adding a pod to the office isn’t like adding a couch or a chair, it requires different questions on the front end and new protocols […]

High-tech was the last major architecture style of the 20th century. Piano and Rogers’ proposal had beaten 680 other competition entries, but even more remarkably it was actually built, going on to become one of the great buildings of the final decades of the 20th century and embody many of the ideals of high-tech architecture. […]

Because occupants are demanding health and wellness strategies, and because they dovetail nicely with sustainability, the financial justification argument is becoming much stronger. That’s the elevator pitch for justifying investments in health and wellness strategies for buildings. Still, tying specific financial outcomes to health and wellness strategies in buildings can be tricky. Nor can you […]

The pods that Spanish practice SelgasCano has built to form garden studios in Second Home’s first US campus resemble a group of huge yellow lily pads from above. The Second Home Hollywood campus comprises sixty curvilinear offices with yellow rooftops are built on the site of a former car park, alongside the former Anne Banning […]

Microsoft tested out a four-day work week in its Japan offices and found as a result employees were not only happier – but significantly more productive. The shortened weeks led to more efficient meetings, happier workers and boosted productivity by a staggering 40%, the company concluded at the end of the trial. As part of […]

From a smart forest in Mexico to a Nevada desert city powered by blockchain, a wave of smart cities are being proposed in North America. Jeffrey Berns, who made a fortune selling cryptocurrency last year, has bought a large parcel of Nevada’s desert with the aim of turning it into a smart city powered by […]

Troubled co-working operator WeWork has structured some leases under LLCs that are not guaranteed by its holding company, which will leave those landlords holding the bag for the free rent and TIs they provided to help get the spaces up and running. The landlords will also be left with vacant spaces, which may be backfilled […]

Building on our January 2017 report on automation, McKinsey Global Institute’s latest report, Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation, assesses the number and types of jobs that might be created under different scenarios through 2030 and compares that to the jobs that could be lost to automation. Globally, we estimate […]

Modern Workplace Learning is an approach that aims to bridge that gap. It does require a new learning mindset that views learning at work very differently. So a continuous learning environment is not a platform but a workplace where everyone is constantly acquiring new knowledge and skills in many different ways – both planned and […]