Spatial office designing getting more and more efficient<\/p>\n
Rikza Abdullah, Contributor, Jakarta<\/p>\n
Planning for an office is of high concern for companies as not
\nonly does it function as a place for work and business, but it
\nalso is a status symbol.<\/p>\n
Some of them, therefore, have large open offices in high-rises
\nto assure their prestige, while others opt for smaller open
\noffices to economize on expenditures.<\/p>\n
But developments in technology and the higher concerns of
\nefficiency and productivity have induced companies to operate
\nsmaller offices with an effective spatial design, layout and
\nmanagement.<\/p>\n
\"A new trend is that offices are getting smaller and people
\ndon't want to spend a lot of money on them. So the sizes of
\noffices are shrinking and becoming much more efficient,\" Thomas
\nB. Elliott, the director of design for the architectural and
\ndesigning company, PT Paramita Adirama Istasatya, said in Jakarta
\non Wednesday.<\/p>\n
He said offices should not necessarily be very large as
\nemployees go outside offices a lot. The number of desks in
\noffices, therefore, don't need to be the same as the number of
\nemployees. Two or three people can use the same desk.<\/p>\n
While colleagues are doing a marketing job outside, one
\nemployee might just come in and sit at someone's desk and use the
\ncomputer at it for a few hours and then somebody else could use
\nit later, he said.<\/p>\n
\"Or perhaps, some people come to the office only one day or
\ntwo days out of the week, so the desks can be used flexibly,\" he
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
The office of PT IBM Indonesia at the Landmark building on Jl.
\nJ. Sudirman in South Jakarta is a good example of the flexible
\nuse of desks.<\/p>\n
Ariantini Yatim, the communications specialist for IBM
\nIndonesia, said on Thursday that her company, under its flexible
\npolicy on working, allowed its employees in charge of sales,
\nmarketing and services to carry out their jobs anywhere -- inside
\nor outside the office.<\/p>\n
Her company, she said, provided some 30 desks that could be
\nused by about 150 employees in charge of sales, marketing and
\nservice, who took turns and worked in shifts. In total, the
\ncompany employs 270 people in Jakarta.<\/p>\n
\"The aim of the flexible policy on working is to support the
\nmobility of the employees and to help improve their
\nproductivity,\" Ariantini told The Jakarta Post. \"The fact that we
\ncan reduce the space that we rent for our office from four floors
\nto merely two and a half is just a natural consequence of the
\npolicy.\"<\/p>\n
To support the \"tele-working\" of employees, IBM Indonesia has
\nfacilitated them each with a computer notebook that can be hooked
\nup to the company's database in Jakarta and a special telephone
\nline at their homes. If any of them needs to do some work at the
\noffice, he or she makes a reservation at a determined computer
\ndesk top, which would recognize his or her table and pass
\nmessages on to his or her computer, she said.<\/p>\n
Elliott said the concept for offices' need for meeting rooms
\nhas also changed.<\/p>\n
\"Because a large number of staff members spend most of their
\ntime outside the office, the need to bring everybody to a large
\nspace is changing and the number of meeting rooms, therefore, is
\ngoing down,\" he told the Post.<\/p>\n
He said even though some staff members worked inside the
\noffice while others worked outside, communication could be made
\nthrough cellular phones, which, besides being used for making
\ncalls, now also functions as an e-mail center. Discussions with
\nmore than two people could be done through teleconferencing and
\nface-to-face interaction through videophones.<\/p>\n
Having eye-to-eye contact would be good when people wanted to
\nmake a final deal, he said. Ariantini said meeting rooms at her
\noffice were generally small and were used just for the discussion
\nof confidential matters.<\/p>\n
Discussions on nonconfidential matters were usually made at
\nwork places and that was practically easy because everybody,
\nincluding managers and directors, sat in the same open space,
\nwhich was divided only by a low cubical partition.<\/p>\n
On lighting, companies also have a tendency to obtain as much
\nnatural light as possible to reduce costs.<\/p>\n
\"Lighting has a new dimension now. With a lot of the natural
\nlight coming into the room, electric light, which increases heat,
\nis becoming unnecessary and the power needed for air-conditioners
\ncan be reduced,\" Elliott said.<\/p>\n
He said developers used low transmission glass as the \"skin\"
\nfor office buildings, to allow more light into the rooms.
\nSome developers, particularly those in Europe, put \"eyebrows\" on
\nthe glass wall to reduce the impact of direct sunlight. The
\neyebrows could reflect sunlight to the ceiling of the office,
\nthereby softening its impact on the eyes, he said.<\/p>\n
Also related to lighting is the typical arrangement of floor
\nplanning with managers' offices positioned against the glass
\nwall, while the staff members' have open work places inside.<\/p>\n
This arrangement can be seen at most offices in Jakarta. The
\nfloors of the Ministry of Industry and Trade's building on Jl.
\nGatot Subroto, for example, generally have managers' offices on
\nthe far side. IBM Indonesia's president director's office is also
\nlocated against the window, even though its walls are made of
\nsolid material, which natural light cannot penetrate.<\/p>\n
\"What people are talking about now is the reverse,\" Elliott
\nsaid. \"The open offices with a low partition for the staff are
\nnear the windows, while managers' closed offices with walls made
\nout of glass are near the core of the building.\"<\/p>\n
Because natural light can go into the room, including the
\nmanagers' offices, everybody's spirit is much better and
\nproductivity is high, he added.<\/p>\n
In rooms where natural light cannot filter in, ambient light
\nwas preferable when people work with computers, he said.<\/p>\n
He said the office layout arrangement at shop-houses was more
\ndifficult than those in high-rise buildings because their rooms
\nwere generally long with a window at one end.<\/p>\n
If that was the case, high partitions should be avoided as
\nmuch as possible, so that natural light could reach the other end
\nof the rooms, he said.<\/p>\n
On the arrangement of the floor, Elliott advised that offices
\nshould use carpet tiles. Carpet tiles offered many advantages,
\nincluding reducing an echo and the easy job of cleaning any part
\nthat gets dirty.<\/p>",
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