Case Study: Collision theory

The design of the Boston Consulting Group’s new office in New York City aims to maximise the number of unplanned collisions. Cathy Hayward reports from the Big Apple on how the theory works in practice

Accidental meetings used to be just that. People bumping into other at the watercooler or coffee machine as they went to top up their caffeine or hydration levels.

The new set-up for the Boston Consulting Group sees a concierge station rather than the traditional reception desk and area

But now organisations as diverse as advertising agencies and professional services firms are designing in impromptu interaction between employees, believing this is the key to boosting the efficient exchange of information, connectedness and creativity – and therefore profitability.

The Boston Consulting Group is the latest to commission architects to create casual interaction. Its new office at 10 Hudson Yards, which brings together more than 600 people from the firm’s previous two spaces in Park Avenue and Park Avenue South, is a place ‘to make personal connections with colleagues’, says Ross Love, BCG’s managing partner for New York. ‘We wanted to create a significantly higher level of unplanned collisions to transform our office culture.’

The building’s interiors are deliberately non-corporate

The new office, which opened late last year, is also future proofed for expansion. The 59,000 sq m of space across six upper floors at levels 42-47 has a capacity to hold more than 1,000 people.

From the start, BCG wanted to create a workplace that emphasised serendipitous interaction and connectedness, Love says. ‘The more efficient we can be in exchanging information, the more challenging and insightful we can be in thinking about each other’s issues.’ The design is a conduit to drive organisational change at BCG New York and beyond.

BCG hired architecture practice Gensler to help achieve four key goals: collaboration and connectivity, a wide variety of flexible spaces, seamless technology, and a compelling experience for employees and guests.

To encourage the first the office features a large, centrally located cafe (named after the High Line park directly below), offering free breakfasts, lunches, and barista-made beverages. Landing zones feature communal seating and comfortable chairs around all the main staircases, while a neighbourhood seating system promotes small-group affiliation and ideas sharing, organised by practice, area or function. Overall there is a wide variety of room types and flexible spaces to support different work styles and uses. Activity-based working in action.

The IT infrastructure also supports the collaborative concept. Softphones instead of traditional hardware-based handsets allow staff to work in various environments within the space. A mobile app enables people to reserve rooms, workstations, and lockers, as well as connecting with colleagues, mobile badges, and mobile FollowMe printing, while there are state-of-the-art video and audio capabilities in all conference rooms, accessible by laptop or iPhone calendar with one click, to provide instant access to high-quality videoconferencing and voice calls. A 8m x 2m laser phosphor display screen creates a touch enabled digital canvas for communication, collaboration, and entertainment.

Breathtaking views of the city and the Hudson River are made possible through floor-to-ceiling windows

Efficiency gains

Through the design of highly collaborative spaces, the move has cut the floor space per person by 32 per cent while almost doubling the proportion of seats in collaborative spaces to more than 50 per cent. Senior consultant and staff offices are convertible so that they can be booked when not being used. And selecting an emerging rather than an established city district also had an impact on the cost. BCG is among the first tenants to move into Hudson Yards, the largest private property development in American history, joining Coach, L’Oréal USA, SAP, and VaynerMedia in the first building to open.

The efficiency gains don’t stop there. The design enables performance rises as a result of frequent informal interactions, enhancing speed in decision making, employee focus, and creativity. At the same time, fewer formal meetings, shorter time to finish tasks, less idle time, and shorter workdays boost productivity.

In advance of the move, BCG engaged Humanyze to capture employee interaction patterns and movements throughout existing workspaces. A group of volunteers wore sensors developed at the MIT Media Lab to quantify where people spent time and how they moved around, and to map the knowledge and influence network. The data was then analysed at an aggregate level to determine the ‘collision coefficient’, as Love calls it.

The building wages the war for talent with amenities that include lounges on each floor, with bright non-corporate colours and eclectic choice of furnishings

The firm also engaged other leading experts, including Leesman, whose benchmarking tool collects workplace effectiveness data to support organisations in the development of workplace strategies, and UnWork and the Cordless Group around the future of work, emerging technology, and workplace design.

The office is deliberately non-corporate. Light, bright, visually open, eclectic, it is designed to promote health and wellness in multiple ways – with sit/stand desks in 75 per cent of the open seating, ergonomic furniture, treadmill workstations, healthful food and drink options, and internal stairs connecting every floor – another collision opportunity. It also successfully wages the war for talent with amenities such as concierge services (instead of a traditional reception), lounges and pantries on every floor, wellness/mother’s rooms with fridges and sinks, shower/changing rooms, gender-neutral bathrooms, and panoramic views of the city and Hudson River through floor-to-ceiling windows.

All of this is already having a noticeable impact on employees’ ways of working, Love says. And setting the company on a collision course with higher productivity and profitability.