Consider a standard office environment, the kind of workplace that the vast majority of information workers have worked out of for several decades. You know what it looks like. There is a large open area with a grid of tall cubicle workstations from a major manufacturer in neutral colors. Ergonometric chairs. Glass-fronted private offices look into the cubicle area. There is a formal reception area and an adjacent large formal meeting room. These are some likely impressions that would probably graze the far edges of the minds of most people as they walked unaware through this typical office space:

• This is a neat and well ordered traditional organization.
• This is an organization that prefers tried and true solutions—they don’t want people to rock the boat.
• The hierarchy of status of workers is important to this organization and it is expressed by a hierarchy of sizes and types of assigned workstations.
• The long rows of cubicle boxes suggest a human factory. These workers are here to work and produce; this is not a place for creative approaches to assigned work tasks.
• The tall fabric-covered walls around the cubicles prevent workers from seeing each other while working; cubicle workers are intended to work independently with minimal interaction with each other.

This messaging is, for the most part, perfectly in line with how most organizations were run 30 years ago and how many still are. But many modern organizations have much different values; there can be a dysfunction created when a cutting edge organization works out of traditional office space. An organization may tell their employees they need to communicate with each other more often and encourage them to work collaboratively but they can’t get a flow of change going. Why? Because the employees are getting conflicting messages. What can be done about it? Changing the workplace to send the message you want people to sense will help. Some ideas for workplaces that give better messages:

• When there is an abundance of ways throughout the workspace areas that employees can freely interact with and put their own mark on the space (lots of whiteboard wall space, blackboard wall space, pin-up wall space, easily moveable furniture), the environment messages that this organization respects their employees, values their ideas and wants to know about them.
• When there is a flexibility to the  messages that this organization is flexible and embraces new ideas.
• Lowering or eliminating cubicle walls so that people can easily see and talk with each other and/or providing casual places for touch-down meetings messages that this organization values employee communication with each other and collaboration.
• Designing into the workspace sustainable natural materials and finishes (wood, Plyboo, Kirei, seagrass carpet) messages that this organization is serious about caring about the environment
• Bringing unusual modern art throughout the workplace messages that the organization is creative and/or edgy
• Bringing funky accessories into a workplace (i.e., hanging old beach cruiser bikes or canoes from the ceiling) messages that the organization values fun and/or creativity
• Choosing a very modern aesthetic for design and furnishings messages that the organization is committed to being modern and/or cutting edge.

Branding a workplace is very different from the subtle, symbolic messaging of a workplace environment. It is finding ways to use your office design as a marketing tool; there is usually nothing very subtle about it. It can be as simple as using your logo colors in the office color scheme to incorporating logos in a few key areas to turning a wall area into a museum quality display graphically touting the history of your organization and/or your products and/or your mission statement. Square, the new credit card company started by Jack Dorsey, had their architects, A+O, insert tasteful logo squares throughout their new workspace. They are cut from wood as part of wall art, they form tables, there are even squares formed by the upper window mullions of the exterior glass. Talented designers are key to making people sense the branding as a well-designed, natural fit in the space design.

Messages. The obvious ones and the ones that affect us under our radar. It is critical to carefully consider what messages your workspace is now telling your employees and clients and what messages you would rather they were taking in.

The Hub is a coworking space, event space, and toolset for changemakers. The Hub is located in Berkeley and 36 international locations across 5 continents. Hub San Francisco is the newest and largest Hub space in the world. Teri Flynn was the architect.

The HUB San Francisco was designed to become a hothouse for creating and nurturing the ideas that can change the world for the better; a platform for innovation. This physical building space is intended to be energizing and inspiring for it’s users; a canvas for thought and work.

The final design was a product of specific direction from our members as to how they work best dancing with the constraints and possibilities found in a historic building.  As when you use a found object in an art piece to create new meaning; this space in the Chronicle building was our 8600 s.f. found object. We peeled back the layers of former constructions and discovered we were truly in the heart of the Chronicle Building. There are two floors of office above us and two floors of basement below us; all of the building’s energy systems for air, power, water and communication criss-cross over and through our space. We purposefully exposed these pipes, conduits, ducts and wiring as a symbol of the energy and work activity which now fills these rooms. Our members working and collaborating and inventing below will cause a different, powerful thought energy to coarse through the space.

Originally this was a factory environment where newspapers printed on the basement presses were assembled, stacked and continuously moved in and out.  By uncovering pieces of those original factory finishes and making them part of the Hub, we attempt to reclaim the energy of workers past as we create a new kind of factory for a new kind of working place.