Companies are taking extra precaution as they begin phases to reopen. Fast Company tackles the question of what companies should do about office dining.
Larry Kline, Principal and Managing Director of our Miami studio, is taking a long-term approach by transforming the studio’s garage rooftop into an alfresco shaded dining space, allowing employees to safely eat together while social distancing in the open air.
Joe Connell, Principal of our Chicago studio discusses with Employee Benefit News (EBN) about the challenges of returning back to the workplace.
“There’s a lot of issues that come into play about the design of the office,” Joe tells EBN. “Once you’re in the office, that’s the easy part because we can work out the distancing and protocols. But the hard part is making our lives bend to getting to work and making sure that the home life is covered while we are working. So much of this is becoming dependent on what our commute looks like, how much flexibility or agility we have in our family or household.”
Carolyn BaRoss, Firmwide Healthcare Interiors Design Director discusses convergence in healthcare and workplace design and the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Really, it’s about combining the best of all these different design disciplines and typologies to create spaces that are good for us holistically. Spaces where we enjoy spending time, where we are inspired by our surroundings and where we can seamlessly employ good hygiene to promote public health,” says Carolyn.
As offices being to reopen, we have created The Roadmap for Return, a comprehensive guide for our clients on how to safely transition back to the office. Lisa Pool, Principal and Planning and Strategies Practice Leader, says one of our key recommendations is to look critically at the space and to reinforce physical distancing with visual cues. This includes staggering workstations and work hours to limit the number of people in a given space.
In a discussion with WIRED UK, Linzi Cassels, Principal and Interior Design Director of our London studio, recommended clients to plan a phased return to work based on office capacity and re-organizing circulation routes to promote physical distancing and implementing cleaning protocols.
