Spacecraft — The Workplace Design Podcast

Kay Sargent is a Senior Principal and Director of Workplace at HOK. With 35 years of experience, She is a recognized expert on workplace design and strategy issues. She is an award-winning designer who has worked with several Fortune 500 companies to optimize their global real estate portfolios and create innovative work environments. As director of HOK’s WorkPlace team, a practice that supports organizations undertaking multiple projects in various locations, and a member of HOK’s Board of Directors, Kay is responsible for helping clients redefine how, when and where their people work, working in tandem to support a holistic design approach that integrates an organization’s people, processes and technology.

Kay is considered an industry thought leaders on workplace. She has authored multiple white papers and articles on a variety of design related topics including wellbeing; next gen workforce; technologies impact on the workplace; space fusion and the rise of the human factor.

We love her call to arms at the end of the interview, something we can't take too lightly in the current climate."Everybody is saying 'what is the future of work?'. We have the world’s attention if all we do is address the things that are immediately at hand, and we ignore the things that weren’t working before, and we ignore the things that are on the horizon. This absolutely will be our Kodak moment, and our industry will be in a world of hurt. But we have the options and the ability to see that to embrace the change and to make some fundamental pivotal shifts in the way we work in the way we deliver space and the way we think about it, that we may not have again, for a long time.

"So I implore everybody to think big to think beyond just the immediate crisis at hand, don’t be reactive, but really, truly address all of those things that we need to be to move us forward as an industry." 

We’re pleased to announce the return of Spacecraft with Series 3 of the podcast, we had a little pause with everything currently happening while we established what the future holds with workplace.  We did have a couple of great recordings in the bag which I feel are still relevant and really interesting. The first of these is Shane Kelly a Principal at TP Bennett. 
 
Shane has been with TP Bennett for over 16 years now and remarks at how much change he’s seen across the business and workplace design as a whole. Shane makes some interesting observations on how businesses who worked remote realised the importance of place and interaction — which is something we’re all feeling right now.

With International Women's Day this weekend, who better to talk to than Nicola Rutt of HawkinsBrown. At the time on writing Nicola was recently shortlisted for the W Award (formerly Women in Architecture Award) and for the MJ Long Prize for her and her team’s incredible work on Here East.

With a passion for the creative re-use of buildings, Nicola specialises in bringing underused, unloved properties back to life with a focus on designing spaces that bring people together and foster innovation.

In this episode, we talk about the pros and cons of refurbishing existing industrial structures, rather than starting from scratch, how to go about working on such large-scale projects, how to inject identity into a building which lacks one, and how to create an environment which will hopefully end up being ‘cool’ – without trying to force it.

See the show notes or head to them.co.uk/podcast for all episodes

Rosie Haslem from Spacelab joins us for this episode to discuss their unique approach to design. We learn how they use virtual reality to engage their clients, checking in with them throughout the process, and changing as necessary. We hear how their work redesigning the workplace of British fashion brand Boden led to 50% fewer emails and a ‘life-changing’ result. And we gain insight into their current work creating sensors to match occupancy with energy use, and empower users to manage their spaces effectively for years to come.

See the show notes or head to them.co.uk/podcast for all episodes

It turns out you get personality-based workspace design. In this episode, we discuss how personality can be used to design spaces. We’ve known for some time that personality affects a great deal of things, including how we perceive our environments. But this thinking, and research from the fields of psychology and medicine, hasn’t often been fully applied to the workplace.

Architect Giuseppe and Psychologist Nikita do just that. They enjoy helping companies create workspaces which allow their team to do their best work, with the least amount of effort.
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Duncan Gunn of GUNN Associates joined us for this episode of the podcast. Here at Them Design, we’ve known and worked with Duncan for around three years now. We’ve helped him brand and launch GUNN Associates, and watching their growth and success over the last couple of years has been really rewarding. 

In this episode, he shares several of the projects they’ve been working on, from university spaces, to a company headquarters. We learn about Duncan’s customer first, problem-solving approach, where clients often come away with something they didn't expect but was better than they thought they could achieve. We also discuss Sticky Campus thinking, what it is, where it comes from, and how it can be applied to workplace design.

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I've seen Catherine speak at a number of events and I'm always captivated by her creativity, her passion and her outlook on life. Her work has evolved from an artist, into founding and leading award-winning placemaking agency ProduceUK. As expected, she nailed the podcast with some great insights, including how she first became interested in placemaking, what it means to her, and some predictions for the future of the industry.

Jane Clay joins the Spacecraft podcast as we kick off our partnership with Women in Office Design, a networking group for women across the office design and furniture industry. As well as discussing the importance of this group, we talk to Jane about her career, and of course, all things workspace. We chat about the big changes in workplace design, and projects such as Government Digital Service, Microsoft’s London and Dublin offices, and British Land’s flexible Storey workspaces. 

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Leading workplace designer Deepak Parmar from MCM joined us for this Spacecraft episode. We discussed what workplace design can learn from retail in terms of experience-led design, and how the co-working trend has influenced expectations when it comes to workplaces. Deepak shares insights from some of the projects he’s worked on, including Condé Nast Digital Hub in a Grade II listed building in central London, and a new project for Nationwide where the aim is to excel in terms of inclusivity and accessibility.

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In this episode, we talk to Richard Russell of Innerspace Cheshire, a company providing sustainable materials for commercial interiors. Richard is well known for his knowledge and passion for all things moss. We learn about different moss varieties and preserving techniques and talk about the meaning and importance of biophilia in today’s workplaces. Sustainability is key to Richard’s work and he talks about the ways in which he strives to ensure his business is the most sustainable it can be. Richard also shares some of his favourite projects, and talks about his pioneering work producing preserved plant walls.

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