Every space planning project starts from a concrete question: how does this team really work? The answer is not found in the org chart, in the plan of the existing office or in management's expectations. It is found in the typical day – the raw data that captures the real distribution of activities, and that makes every subsequent design choice measurable.
Profile of a typical day: activities distributed in proportional sectors on the dial of the hours. Silhouettes: Riccardo Minelli, ARCHIlabs.
The snapshot: what the team does
Through interviews and surveys we reconstruct, team by team, the distribution of activities across the day: how much individual focus, how much structured collaboration and how much informal, how many calls, how much time off site. We do not ask "what do you need", but "what do you do, when, with whom". That difference produces data that can hold up a project. The result is a work profile for each business function – a quantitative footprint that tells the space planner how many places are needed, of what type and in what proportion.
TEAMS
- AFC ADMINISTRATION
- HR
- STRATEGIC CREATIVE
- SALES
- STAFF
- PRODUCTION
Mapping of the company's teams on two axes (me/us × remote/on site): each team is a bubble, sized and positioned on the survey data.
The comparison with management: what it should do
The typical day captures how work happens today. The next step is to decide its direction: we bring the data back to management and compare it with the company's objectives. It is this comparison that turns "how work happens" into "how work should happen". The direction sets the model to aim for – more collaboration, more protected focus, more presence or more flexibility – and the space project starts from that target model.
From model to project: desk sharing, work setting, layout
Three calculations translate the model into space. The first is the desk sharing ratio: if a team spends on average 60% of the day away from the workstation, you do not need as many desks as people. The second is the mix of work settings – which support areas are needed, how many and of what size. The third is the overall layout, which in an ABW or Community Based Design logic enables behaviours instead of merely hosting them. Skipping the survey phase means sizing on assumptions: you end up with empty workstations, rooms booked but unused, noisy open spaces designed for silence. Those calculations are made by a proprietary software built over more than twenty years of design work: it is the tool that carries team profiles all the way to the precise sizing of square metres and work settings.