Frontiers of ABW
For a commercial real estate services company, a thorough understanding of workplace drivers and strategies is critical for business. CBRE engaged Siren Design to shape a progressive space for their own new office at PLQ – a novel testing ground for activity-based working.
CBRE’s new office at Tower 3, Paya Lebar Quarter (PLQ) was designed around a problem statement: How do you really bring teams together in an activity-based work (ABW) environment, while also catering to a spectrum of needs with a diverse setting? “Often you see activity-based working spoken about but not really delivered,” says Peter Andrew, Executive Director, Workplace Strategies Asia Pacific at CBRE. “Instead you see rows of identical desks, some ability to come and go from a collaborative area, and possibly some support for focused work. It’s actually hot desking.”
He was determined to support diversity and deep collaboration for CBRE’s Singapore workforce, and test methodologies for how to most effectively bring teams together despite the environment being highly flexible. This meant far more than simply placing breakout or collaboration spaces in available corners of the floor plate. What was needed was a whole new organisational approach. CBRE found good alignment with Siren Design in terms of an experimental perspective, and so began a process of redefining the CBRE workplace with a philosophy of ‘office as lab’.
The resulting non-orthogonal geometry of the back-of-house area makes for a fascinating floor plan and an experience of some intensity for the first-time visitor. But there is pivotal strategy within what appears to be random. The plan was developed with what Andrew calls a ‘totem and ripple’ concept. In a sea of unassigned desks, the totem is a central identifying point for each team – an easily identifiable home base with a permanent place for the team leader’s personal assistant. Team members and their leader gather at the totem and ripple out from it, sitting within reach and eventually mixing with the ripples of other teams. A mixture of workstation types (fixed-heights and sit-to-stand) creates an even greater sense of diversity.
Explains Penny Sloane, Singapore Managing Director at Siren Design, “This strategy enables each team to grow or shrink without the need to change the footprint of the floor plate. You get a sharing economy within the ripple.” The irregular geometry allows for the positioning of huddle rooms, phone rooms, and small and large meeting spaces in the mix, and for changing vantage points – which helps to promote a feeling of spaciousness despite the density of the plan. “The irregular geometry also breaks up any rigid sense of hierarchy,” says Andrew.
“One of the methods I often see being used in other workplaces is the clumping of support spaces in large clusters, too far away from where people sit,” he adds. “I call that ‘large grain’. We instead talk about ‘next-to space’. Bringing those spaces closer to people has a huge impact on their ability to quickly flip from doing one thing to another, and to take noise away from the work point.” The interspersed placement of enclosed rooms also creates the feeling of working in a more intimate setting.
Another benefit of the irregular geometry was the ability to play with the shape of meeting rooms. Many of those at CBRE are fivesided ‘stretch’ meeting rooms – a strategy used by CBRE to optimise the use of the floor area by allowing space for stools and standing in addition to sitting at a fixed number of chairs.
Deep, focused work is catered to with several strategies. “Twenty-five per cent of seats are dubbed ‘private seats’, meaning someone can’t look over your shoulder,” says Andrew. To prevent the monopolisation of phone rooms, a library was developed where quiet work can be done over long periods of time. Phone booths within the library bring greater convenience by preventing the need to pack up one’s belongings.
Casual or boisterous collaborative work finds its way to the cafécoworking area in the front of house, where healthy food options are on offer as part of a focus on wellness. Elements such as numerous hydration points, natural light, end-of-trip facilities, diverse work settings, acoustic control and plants (artificial if placed overhead but natural at human height) support the wellness goals. But equally important, suggests Andrew, is the psychological comfort that comes with the feeling of human behaviour being supported in a way that’s conducive to performance.