How Steelcase makes offices a destination with Signature Spaces

The new workplace is a destination, not a duty. It is there to create a sense of purpose and serve multiple purposes. The traditional open plan office with ranks of identical desks, the occasional, badly positioned break-out space and a messy kitchen area isn't going to inspire or serve the new purpose and productivity-focused hybrid worker.

‘If people make the effort to come into the office, they’ll expect a better work experience – where, like at home, they are comfortable and have greater control over their environment,’ says Gale Moutrey, Steelcase's vice president, Workplace Innovation. Steelcase's Signature Spaces are task-specific, customisable settings, carefully designed and curated to promote high-performance and holistic wellbeing.

The elegant Lounge Space is perfect for relaxed and informal meetings or a quick stand-up catch-up while the Open Collaboration area is ideal for more focused, if not downright intense design sprint reviews, brainstorming and other high-level collective thinking. It also offers visual and acoustic privacy within an open plan office as well as team storage.

The Project Room is a larger and more multi-modal space, allowing for easy toggling between informal overviews, hybrid meetings and even work-bench modelling and prototyping. Personal Spaces offer peace, privacy and the total environment control required for deep work while the Duo Studio is perfect for one-on-one exchanges, interviews, reviews and hybrid work.

For many of us the next few years will be an experiment in making hybrid working really work. It will be a learning curve but linking Steelcase's Signature Spaces together could be the key to creating the flexible, new neighbourhood-model workplace that creates professional community and common purpose.

© Architonic