Living Office
The heart of Living Office is the belief that improving people’s experience at work is fundamental to an organization’s success.
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Isaac Newton, 1675In bringing you Living Office, Raven Studio is standing on the shoulders of design giant, Herman Miller.
A thought-leader in commercial office design since the 1960’s, Herman Miller’s intense research into how people work led to the creation of Living Office. Fuelled by workshops, proprietary technology and objective design criteria, Living Office is a rigorous design methodology for generating a high-performing office design.
Living Office reinforces the role of the workplace as an essential tool for helping organizations succeed. The workplace is where an organization expresses its culture, and provides people with meaningful connections to their work and their colleagues.
These connections unleash people’s potential – a person who enjoys their work space and who feels that their needs are being met, can do their best work.
Regardless of the rate of change or the power of all our newfangled technology, all value starts and ends with people. People define the problems, imagine the ideas, define the solutions and deliver the interactions that make anything in our world what it is.
Herman Miller, 2016The result of the Living Office process is a space plan that reflects your organization’s unique character and supports your people’s unique needs. No two Living Offices will be alike because no two organizations are the same.
Most office designs are firmly rooted in the pre-internet age.
A time when management was hierarchical, work was process-driven and technology was mammoth and stationary. An era when the office was the only place where work was done, because it was the place to access the tools of work.
Work has changed. Management structures are more flexible and collaborative. Technology allows work to happen almost everywhere.
But strangely, office design has remained largely unchanged.
Rigid cubicle structures ringed by private offices denoting rank. Meeting rooms with tables that clearly establish a hierarchy. Little room for spontaneous interaction. These are the hallmarks of current office design, much as they were 50 years ago.
With Living Office, there is an overt recognition that the office no longer has a monopoly on being the place where work can happen. With mobile technology, the role of the office has switched to being a place where camaraderie and collaboration happen – intangibles that were previously considered secondary to work.
A Living Office design for your company means a shift away from seeing space as pure cost and toward an understanding that your space can be a powerful asset for expressing your mission and enabling the idea-generation and collaboration that will move your organization forward.
