Dividers are good; cubicles are evil. The sofa is back in business. Natural is sexy. Ceilings are staying raw.
Desk drawers? Check. Lockers? Check. Extra pods for overflow? Increasingly, designers are working storage options into office style. Yes, it's utilitarian, but incorporating shelves, cubbies, or bins can allow an architect a lot of flexibility in shape, style, and color. Vitra Citizen in Weil am Rhein, Germany, included flexible fabric bins for storage into its office design.
Consider it taking cubby holes one step further. Glass-paneled pods are taking the place of cubicles in newly designed offices, as is – gasp – no assigned desk space at all. At Vitra Citizen, workers can choose to sit anywhere for the day, or for the hour. Individual brightly colored nooks allow ducking away with one's laptop. And the stacked-up, layered box look at Pallotta Teamworks in Los Angeles perfectly embodies the trend Marc Kushner refers to as "boxes within boxes."
Despite the proliferation of cube-like solo spaces, a lot of office architecture is moving toward open-feeling central areas. Multi-purpose areas – part lounge, part conference-room, part café – are simple to create. And they can morph into more private spaces when a little seclusion is needed. Check out what architects from FLATarchitects created for the Nije Gritenije foundation: 20 workstations divided by flexible walls in a design that "can be customized and completed by the users."
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For the complete article from inc.com visit: http://www.inc.com/ss/worlds-coolest-offices-2010/new-rules-of-office-design#4
