It’s all well and good to extol the virtues of the “new workspace”—open layouts, flexible seating, standing desks, collaboration areas—but as with any building, it is difficult to pinpoint precisely what will or won’t work until people use it. In February, HOK moved into its new Toronto office designed by the firm itself, a process that, from conception to completion, allowed the team to experience the methodologies of their practice firsthand.
For their new digs, HOK selected the 22nd floor of a 1971 downtown tower with 360-degree views overlooking City Hall. The existing space was in good condition, but had been stripped bare, so the firm had flexibility to create a new space inside the shell. “We pretty much took ourselves through the same process as we would with clients,” said vice president Lisa Fulford-Roy. “How can we best support our employees? What functionality do we need the space to have? How can we create a positive, collaborative, close-knit culture?”
After surveying their staff and holding many meetings, Q&A sessions, and designing multiple iterations, the solution was an open, circular 1,485-square-meter office with ample nooks and spaces for working privately and a unique, flexible desk system for the locations 110 employees. Desks previously took up the bulk of their old office, so to create more room in the new one, approximately 30 employees who aren’t in the office on a daily basis, have “agile desks,” or non-dedicated seating. The remaining desks are slightly smaller than the previous ones and grouped together, with open standing desks at the end of each row. Integrated technology throughout makes it simple to pick up and move around the office as needed. As a result, even though the new office is slightly smaller than the previous one, and they’ve added new staff in the past six months, the office feels spacious.
