Beyond The Cube

“Good ideas don’t necessarily happen in cubes,” Brendalen says. “Employers recognize that work areas are more than four walls and a horizontal surface. So in designing office space, we take advantage of the building’s geometry or leftover space to create places where people can get together by chance or by invitation.”

At the same time, designers are keen on giving these communal or gathering areas “a different personality” than the other workspaces, says Sharry Cooper, a principal and interior designer for Architectural Alliance. Break rooms might include art-glass accents, furniture grouped as in a living room, rich or vibrant colors, and uplifting  textures and patterns. “For a long time, we’ve been hearing company owners say that they want to be the employer of choice,” Cooper says. “So we strive to come up with creative ideas of how to make the work environment functional yet stimulating.”

For large corporations that may occupy whole buildings, the open-office environment doesn’t stop at the elevator or staircase. It extends from the workstation throughout the building, which corporations are turning into small towns. Imagine your workstation as your house, Carl says, which you exit onto a corridor or street. White boards display the latest innovation or idea, like billboards. As you walk by such hubs as huddle rooms or break areas, you stop and talk to people, exchanging information.

You leave your floor, or neighborhood, and head to Main Street, where the corporation has provided such storefronts as a bank, coffee shop, dry cleaner, deli and cafeteria, convenience store, daycare, and wellness center. Many of these amenities are available at the General Mills headquarters in Golden Valley, where “it was important that the company provide its employees with a town center and a sense of place,” Carl says. At the Wells Fargo Home Mortgage office in Minneapolis, providing a coffee shop, convenience store that has photo finishing and dry cleaning services, a deli, and, of course, a bank “offers employees who are starved for time the opportunity to take care of daily necessities, and thus find more balance in their lives,” Deeg says.

However, employees still need “a little slice of territory” they can privatize and call their own, Carl says. Multiple variations on the cube include workstations that are kits of parts, which allow employees to select their preferences in storage units, desk heights and sizes, and panel heights, colors, and materials.

In the administration offices of the new Minneapolis Central Library, Cooper says, freestanding desks feature work surfaces on adjustable-height legs that electronically move from a sit to stand position, thus promoting healthy ergonomics for the user throughout the workday. Such technological innovations as individually controlled task lighting and below-the-floor heating and cooling systems allow employees to customize their workstations for personal comfort.