From data to space: the software that turns needs into m² and work settings
Anyone can run a survey. The value is in reading the data: proprietary software, over twenty years and 2.7 million m² designed.
Insight
The workspace as a strategic asset.
The workspace is not a commodity to be reduced to a cost, but an asset through which you can grow your company: from cost to value, from square metres to a lever for the growth of people and results. The data, method and tools ARCHIlabs uses – from desk sharing ratio to activity based working – to turn space into value.
Space is not neutral:
it enables or hinders, retains or drives away.
A team's typical day: profiling needs
Understand before drawing. How surveys and interviews reveal real needs, expressed and latent.
In production too, space is not neutral
Space design is not just about offices. On the factory floor too it enables or hinders, attracts or drives away.
Offices and production, integrated
The office building and the production hall are not two separate worlds: they should be designed as a single organism.
Industrial architecture: the production building as a project
Built around production, sustainable and intelligent. An industrial building can be designed, not just put up.
Designing a home starting from the people who will live in it
The same people-first method as the office, applied to living, with quality before yield.
The neighbourhood before the house
A house changes the street and the neighbourhood: designing from the context and the shared spaces that build community.
Attracting and retaining people who work in production
Finding and keeping people is harder and harder. The quality of space is a concrete lever, and it shows.
The production site as image
The factory communicates who you are before you even speak: façade, entrance and representative spaces tell the company's story.
Why ARCHIlabs?
A method with a way of thinking, and a track record few teams can claim.
Who is the client of a project?
The client goes beyond the commissioning party: the people who will inhabit the space, the context, the environment and future generations.
From analysis to handover: a single point of contact
One person responsible from the first data point to the construction site: the value of following the whole project without handovers.
Our track record
From the origin with Hewlett Packard in 1998 to 25 EMEA countries and 2.7 million m²: a history that becomes method.
The questions we get asked most often
Costs, timing, where to start, turnkey: answers to the most frequent questions, with links to the in-depth articles.
How to design a new office: where to start
A map of the method, from analysis to layout, to bring order to the confusion of starting from scratch.
Who leads an office renovation: space planner, interior decorator or general contractor?
Pros and cons of each figure, to make an informed choice – including where a space planner is more than you need.
How much space do you really need? The BOMA method
Measuring office efficiency objectively: the BOMA standard and what it says about the value of a space.
How much space per person in the office
Why there is no single value of m² per person: how it is really calculated, with BOMA and work profiles.
Desk sharing ratio: how it is calculated (and what it really means)
Reducing desks without creating chaos: the ratio is the key number, but there is no single one. It depends on the work profile.
Desk sharing: where it works and where it doesn't
Where desk sharing works and where it doesn't: it depends on work profiles and actual presence, and it should be measured before deciding.
Layout optimisation with method
Not by feel: how a layout is optimised with measurable criteria and a repeatable method.
Activity based working: designing the office by activity
From assigned space to space by activity. What ABW is and how Community Based Design is our evolution of it.
How the use of office space has changed
From single offices to desk sharing: the evolution of the workspace over the last thirty years, in numbers.
Open space: yes or no
Where open space works and where it fails: HR's strategic question, with an open/enclosed balance.
From open space to Community Based Design
Workspace models read on two axes – me/we, personal/shared – and what they mean for the company.
Space that enables behaviours
Not just productivity: how the organisation of space shapes the way people work and meet.
How much it costs to renovate an office
What the cost of a renovation really depends on: the drivers and how to estimate it with method.
How long it takes to renovate an office (and what makes it slip)
Real timelines and causes of delay, from those who actually run construction sites.
Invisible markups: where the margin hides in an office contract
How the traditional general contractor's markup really works – and why knowing it protects you.
From space planning to design & build, open book
Architecture and space planning, the core of our work. From there, design & build: integrated design and delivery, open book.
Open book vs fixed price: how you really pay for a renovation
Fixed price or open book: how the contract is structured changes how much you understand of what you pay.
Turnkey: what it really means (and what it costs you)
What “turnkey” really means: the advantages and what is worth checking before signing.
How to choose (and contract) a supplier
Criteria and clauses for choosing and contracting whoever delivers the works, with open book transparency.
What happens on site: the phases of a fit-out
Process transparency: the construction site demystified, phase by phase.
Renovating the office while you work in it: construction with the business running
Renovating without stopping the company: how a construction site is coordinated while the business keeps running.
Office renovation: refurbish in place or relocate
When it pays to stay and renovate, when it pays to move: the criteria for deciding without regrets.
What to look at before choosing (and what almost everyone ignores)
The decisive factors assessed too late – and the ones nobody looks at that change everything.
The office check-up: what happens after handover
The project doesn't end at handover. After a year the survey is repeated, actual use is compared with the model and the space is fine-tuned.
When the office doesn't work: the warning signs
The signs of a space that underperforms – and how a diagnosis turns them into concrete interventions.
Beautiful but useless offices: design vs real work
When aesthetics betray function: designing for the people who work there, not for the photo.
Quality of space: how it is really measured
The indicators for measuring an office – from BOMA to environmental comfort – and the periodic check-up that maintains its quality.
Acoustics and silence in the office
The real problem is often not noise: how silence is designed, with measurement.
Lighting and light: comfort and design
Light as the direction of the space: visual comfort, wellbeing and technical design.
Stress and space: how space raises or lowers the pressure
What studies and design practice say: the spatial conditions that raise or lower stress.
Biophilic design: greenery in the office, beyond the trend
When greenery is design and when it is decoration: what really works.
Partition walls: subdivision changes the way people work
Opening up or closing off is not a detail: how subdivision affects concentration and collaboration.
The invisible details: what makes a well-made office
The choices you don't notice but you feel: what separates a good office from an ordinary one.
The office as experience and place of meaning
Beyond the desk: space as an experience that gives meaning to work and to meeting.
Corporate identity in space
How space tells who you are: translating values and culture into places, not slogans.
Circular design and materials
Materials, reuse and end of life: what designing with a circular approach means, in concrete terms.
ESG in the workspace
How space enters ESG criteria: environment, people, governance, with data.
Sustainable office and LEED: what it really means
Beyond the label: what it seriously means, grounded in a LEED Gold certified project.
Smart working and distributed work: designing for distributed work
How space changes when work is distributed: presence, hubs, support areas.
Smart working policies
Translating the smart working policy into a space consistent with the choices made.
Rethinking the office in a growth phase
When headcount grows, space has to keep up: how to design flexibility without waste.
Organisational wellbeing
Space is a concrete lever of wellbeing: light, acoustics, air and the ability to find the right place.
Employee engagement
A well-kept space designed around how people work is one of the concrete signals that feed engagement.
Emotional intelligence
Space can support listening, relationships and wellbeing: how design helps teams be and work better together.
Working as a team
Designed proximity is a concrete lever that holds a team together.
Resistance to change
The way a space project is run can reduce the uncertainty that generates resistance.
01
Survey
Interviews and questionnaires on the typical day, expressed and latent needs.
Listening
02
Scenarios and renders
The configurations of the future office made visible before the decision.
Showing
03
Pilot area
A real space to visit and use: materials, light, acoustics.
Trying
04
Rollout
Change arrives as a shared outcome, not as an announcement.
Adopting
Every piece of feedback goes back into the project: those who contributed recognise themselves in the result
Communicating change
A space planning project produces the most effective materials for communicating organisational change.
Corporate training
The training space determines attention, teaching formats and the possibility of hybrid training.
Facilitation
The room where a workshop takes place enables or hinders every methodology, before the facilitator even speaks.
Rules in the office
When every activity has its place, the right behaviour becomes spontaneous and many written rules become superfluous.
How to organise office spaces
Starting from how people work: work zones, sizing with BOMA and the choices that make the difference.
Office furniture or design: what you really need
Looking for office furniture is a good start. When it is enough and when the spaces need to be designed.