Workplace of the Future
*A project undertaken by Rob Beacock in his role as a Director at / Consultant to tp bennett
In 2011 the British Council for Offices (BCO) sought entries to a national competition to design a concept for the ‘Workplace of the Future’, set on the fictitious island of Riduna. We won the competition at the BCO Conference in Geneva with a pitch to deconstruct the archetypal office building, throw away the bits that don’t work, and reassemble the bits that do across the island landscape to create a workplace community.
We used technology to encourage face-to-face meetings rather than replace them. We took desk space and made it virtual to enable ‘anywhere working’. We took ‘ancillary spaces’ and replaced them with Remote Collaboration Units, scattered across Riduna and connected to the dynamic booking system ‘Macrosoft Lookout’, which tracked meeting attendees via GPS and selected the most convenient RCU when the time came.
‘Central support facilities’ became the Old Town - the centre of the island community - and ‘primary circulation’ became the streets and squares that wound through and sat between our workplace, traversed by bicycles, automated self-drive electric cars and rollerskates. Riduna’s energy was sustainably generated and stored, and the off-grid RCU’s were supplied with power by the fleet of electric cars, which had bi-directional chargers.
Client: British Council for Offices
Location: Riduna, UK
Discipline: Architecture
Sector: Workplace
Size: 60,750 sqm
Status: Competition Closed (Winner)
Awards:
BCO Workplace of the Future Competition Winner (2011)