Calculate Recommended Office Space with the Formaspace Open Office Calculator

Hard charging venture capital funded tech startups and high-growth software companies have helped firmly establish the trend toward open offices. Is an open office design the right approach for you and your employees? What do you need to know to perform proper spacing planning for open office designs? Take advantage of our free online open office space calculator (https://formaspace.com/office-workspace-calculator/) to find out how much space you could save with an open office design concept.

Open Offices Have Become an Established Trend in Office Design Space Planning

Once the exclusive domain of avant-garde architecture studios and boutique advertising agencies located in historic loft conversions, the open office concept has taken root across much of the tech sector — making it the de rigueur approach to office design, whether you are in Silicon Valley, Brooklyn or London – or any of the many tech hot spots found across the globe.

As we discovered during our visit to the 2016 NeoCon East office furniture show (https://formaspace.com/articles/formaspace-news/neocon-ea...), the trend toward open offices with an industrial look — characterized by natural concrete floors, exposed brick surfaces, heavy metal posts and railings, and natural wood surfaces on tables, walls, and floors — has found favor with an ever wider mainstream audience of companies not traditionally associated with the design and tech community.

Apple's widely anticipated new 2.7 million square foot 'spaceship' headquarters (now officially named Apple Park) is set for employee move-in during April 2017. It has been reported to feature seven employee cafes (the largest with seating for 3,000 people), a 100,000 sq. ft. wellness/fitness center, a 30 acre enclosed outdoor courtyard, as well as a subterranean commuter bus station — all powered by 100% renewable energy.

Are Open Offices the Right Choice for You and Your Employees?

If you're not familiar with the ins and outs of open office design and the industrial-look aesthetic, we've prepared a concise guide — called "Ideas for Your Industrial Office Design (https://formaspace.com/articles/office-furniture/industri...)" — that provides a little background on the history of open office design and why companies like Google, Twitter, and Capital One (all Formaspace customers) are enthusiastic converts to the open office design aesthetic.

Not only do these tech companies relish how their choice of bold, open office designs support their company brands as cool, modern places to work, they also recognize how the choice of open office designs can serve as an effective recruiting tool for younger millennium generation workers — particularly the highly-sought-after, tech-savvy ones — who often prefer to work in an open office environment with the look and feel of a Starbucks coffee house (and not in what they perceive to be old-fashioned, impersonal "cubicle farms").

However, the sentiment that open office designs are always "better" is not universally shared across different generations of workers or even different industry sectors.

In our article Are You Happy Working in an Open Workspace?, we look at the pros and cons of open workspace designs, which can lead some employees to complain about the lack of privacy, the increased number of interruptions, and the high levels of noise.

Understanding both sides of these issues is critical for making the right choices as you try to balance the health, happiness, and productivity needs of your current and future workforce as well as the bottom line for your business.

Space Planning for Open Offices is Different Than for Traditional Office Layouts

If you have not worked in or been involved in the planning of an open office, there are some key differences and assumptions you should be aware of when making renovation or expansion plans compared to what you might customarily expect when performing space planning for traditional office layouts based on cubicles or private offices.

In other words, it's much easier to plan for traditional office layouts: the number of cubicles or traditional offices required corresponds to the size of your current or projected workforce.

In contrast, flexibility is one of the hallmarks of open office design. There isn't an automatic one-to-one correspondence between the number of current or potential employees and the amount of space you need in an open office design.

For example, if you are growing fast, you can try to temporarily squeeze in a few more employees by crowding people closer together in an open office.

But how many employees exactly are we talking about?

Read more ... https://formaspace.com/articles/office-furniture/calculate-your-next-open-office-space/?utm_source=openpr&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=article-022817

Formaspace advances the spirit of discovery and creation through the design and manufacture of custom business furniture. Our furniture marries form to function with flexible solutions for clients in the laboratory, industrial, and office environments.

Formaspace serves over 80% of the Fortune 500, as well as universities, governments, small businesses, and individuals.

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This release was published on openPR.