Yesterday, Jon Mitchell of ReadWriteWeb wrote about how the Palo Alto City Library is turning vacant rooms into coworking spaces for remote workers and advertising them using LiquidSpace. Can this model boost flagging local economies elsewhere? Some remote workers love coworking because it blends a quiet, isolated workspace with the...
Workers whose environment includes plants and art are 15 percent more productive than those who work in spartan spaces, and the Senescent Desk by Love Hulten blends Mother Nature's touch with minimalist modernity. This untreated wood desk boasts a self-sufficient garden complete with a water tank, fans and...
Open-plan offices may encourage collaboration and improve communication, but they may also create barriers to productivity, according to a piece in today's Wall Street Journal. As of 2010, 68 percent of U.S. workspaces had an open-seating or open-plan design, which ditches secluded offices or traditional cubicles in...
The newly opened Google London L4 office design reinforces the tech giant's culture of fostering creativity and inspiration in spades. The fourth-floor office holds a band rehearsal room, a movie theater, an indoor park, a coffee lab packed with dozens of java blends, a game room and meeting...
The Missing Link headquarters in South Africa recently got a makeover that the team aptly describes as "organized chaos." There's an indoor treehouse made from a 6-ton tree (it died of natural causes), vibrant graffiti murals by Nic Hooper, a slide and a fireman's...
Most brick-and-mortar workspaces don't actively incentivize employees to stay away, but the Plantronics office design enables and encourages telecommuting. The wireless headset manufacturer's Santa Cruz, Calif. headquarters has enough workspaces for between 60 percent and 70 percent of its employees, and there isn't an...
