26
Dec

The demise of Open-Concept Office

With tech companies such as Google and Facebook spearheading the open concept office, many other companies took inspiration from them and took the idea into their own offices.

The open-themed office is filled with plenty of space for communal workplace and glass-walls in replacement of partition. Giving off a unobscured view of the office, making the space constrained offices in Singapore seem bigger.

The openness also brightens and break away from the traditional vibe of what a office gives off – private and unapproachable. Not to mention the added benefit of being cost-efficient in creating the office.

However, a 2018 study by Harvard Business School found that open offices in contrast, “reduce face-to-face interaction by about 70% and increase email and messaging by roughly 50%”.

Shattering the notion that they make workers collaborative. 

Translating this statistics into work place productivity, what it means is that even though the intention of a open-plan office is to increase interaction and discussions, it has instead backfired as spaces are “too open” now.

Imagine you doing your work and every so often, someone walks by your desk or conducts a discussion near your work desk. Pretty sure that would break one’s focus.

Fast forward into 2019, companies are starting to see the impracticality of such a layout. But simultaneously, a space is still needed to facilitate discussions without feeling too confined. Therefore, a new type of concept has bore fruit out of this problem.

What is it? Stay tuned to our next issue of our newsletter to find out more! We hope this issue of our design and build Singapore series has been informative. Till next time!

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