LEO A DALY named a winner in 2021 Next Work Environment Competition

FACT, the team’s innovative workplace design concept, receives honorable mention in Office Building, Collaboration and Flex-Work categories

LEO A DALY’s submission to Work Design’s 2021 Next Work Environment Competition has been named a winner in three categories. FACT, an innovative new workplace design framework developed by three members of LEO A DALY’s Workplace practice, was selected as honorable mention in the categories of Office Building, Collaboration and Flex-Work categories. The design team included:

• Kristina Crawley, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP – vice president, global commercial practice leader
• Daniel Yudchitz, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP – associate, director of design
• Andrew Ransavage – associate, computer animation specialist

Read on to learn about the submission:

Fix-Activate-Calibrate-Tune (FACT): an innovative workplace design concept

When disruption is constant, design solutions must be pivot points, not end points. This is the key insight behind Fix-Activate-Calibrate-Tune (FACT), a workplace design framework focused on future management. In brief, FACT is a strategy for designing workplace environments that evolve continuously throughout their lifespan.

Change: the meta-trend

The last five years have been marked by constant social, technological and economic change. FACT is a meta-response to this meta-trend. THE PANDEMIC is a “point of no return” for many preexisting workplace trends, calling into question the validity of a consolidated, static office. HYBRIDITY has emerged as a post-vaccine strategy for retaining the workplace’s role in innovation and company culture. WELLNESS concerns are now transforming design trends and attitudes toward the workplace. TECHNOLOGY has introduced new ways of collaborating and challenged traditional notions of workplace planning and utilization. SOCIAL JUSTICE awareness has introduced new priorities for companies, creating a platform for change that will affect the future workplace. THE GENERATION GAP has created volatility in how office space is organized and used. Design elements valued by decision-makers today may lose relevance tomorrow.

Why come to work?

FACT begins by asking a fundamental question: “Why do we come to work?” Any effort to reinvent the workplace must at least provide unique value over the home office. In answer to this question, FACT offers three categories of space for use as programmable areas:

• LIVING ROOM – In a post-vaccine world, company cultures must be rebuilt. Living-Room-type spaces fill that need, providing common platforms for social and professional connectivity.
• LAB – In-person collaboration outperforms virtual connection when it comes to innovation. Lab-type spaces enable the energy and camaraderie needed to tackle creative challenges as a team.
• OFFICE – Privacy, confidentiality, and heads-down focus remain crucial and often unavailable in a home-office setting. Office-type spaces facilitate intense creative focus, task-driven work, and sensitive conversations.

The “continuum of flexibility” in innovative workplace design

FACT distributes these programmable area types across a Continuum of Flexibility comprised of Fixed, Calibration and Tunable elements. FIXED elements, like MEP systems and heavy equipment, cannot be easily moved, but set the stage for the flexibility that surrounds them. CALIBRATION elements, like demountable walls, workstations, casework, Zoom pods, and tech installations, are semi-fixed for ease of renovation. TUNABLE elements, like furniture, deployable toolboxes, fabric dividers, dynamic acoustic fixtures and digital displays, can be easily reconfigured by the user – daily, hourly, on a whim.

Living Room, Lab and Office spaces are deployed along the continuum, not as individual rooms, but as swappable pieces of an overall mosaic of space. Their proportions are chosen during initial planning, but their tactical expression and specific use remain fluid throughout the life of the space.

Why FACT is an innovative workplace design concept

FACT formalizes a spatial strategy for dealing with change. For owners, it offers a comprehensible method of planning, programming and reallocating space over time. For employees, FACT provides a compelling reason to return to the office, a healthy environment while there, and an asset for connection, innovation and execution.

For more from our Workplace design practice, check out our Workplace page.