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WHEN YOU'RE DRUNK IN the dark of Earl's Court, surrounded by 2000 of your peers who are silently mocking your failure to convert Silver Nomination into Yellow Pencil, it's sometimes [...]

The vision of a new product or service must be backed up by a process to develop it and get it to market, as shown by the finalists of the […]

The UK has moved into the premier league in developing working environments that foster innovation and creativity. From the patronising paternalism of Port Sunlight to the modern miseries of sick-building […]

PolyGram International entertainment and music concern has just relocated into an office in St James's Square, London, UK. The building looks very drab from the outside, but the interior has been transformed by Jestic & Whiles. The 4650 sq mt building also houses around 22 units of PolyGram, and the interior design allows each organisation to customise the decor to match its own identity.

Japanese employees have a work ethic very different from that of their western caricature. Employees do not have to work hard, as there is overstaffing, yet they are expected to work long hours. Management attitudes towards workers are more positive but having the same job for life means that the older employees become too conservative and lose their individuality. Long hours spent at the office limits their home life and explains the importance given by management to the interior design of their offices.

The traditional working environment is changing and office designers and manufacturers need to take key ideas and technologies into account. New ideas being developed in Europe, Japan, and the US include cableless communications, such as microwaves and infra-red

It was no surprise that Sir Terence Conran the man first lionised and then tyrannised by the City, should take his design consultancy interests with him when he finally quit […]

Modern management this century has been characterised by the way the product at the core of business life rises and falls in the esteem of executives depending on what alternative […]

A study looking into how the office environment affected users found they were less concerned about the internal design of a building. The ability to communicate with other workers, the level of noise and privacy were seen as more important. One major problem faced by designers is deciding who are their main clients in a building which may be used by many different types of people. Others point out if offices suit the people who work in them they are more likely to stay with the company. Some companies are reverting to using cellular office design rather than open plan which can be unpopular.

Designers of office furniture in the UK are responding to new trends in working patterns, with employees becoming much more flexible in their working arrangements and traditional office hierarchies breaking down. Intercraft, part of the Skandinavisk Group, has the Work range, which can be configured to be used in private offices, team spaces and club environments. Colebrook Bosson & Saunders' CPU Cradle allows the CPU to be housed below the desk, while Hot Ice Design's Smart Box is a collapsible file box to move papers between different work locations.

Changes to the office environment as companies adopt new technologies and change their working practices has presented a problem for producers of office furniture. Office furniture manufacturers are uncertain whether to design new products to suit short-term changes or develop new designs to fit in with the predicted office environment of the future. Office furniture manufacturers need to invest new funds into developing furniture to suit future requirements. Some companies have stopped workers having their own desk or office space which has made furniture design less important.

Office furniture manufacturers are facing new challenges arising from changes in workplace practices. Property cost pressures, new social trends and technological advances mean that companies have become flatter and less hierarchical, and are moving away from conventional ways of using space. A growing amount of work is also being carried out away from the office. New ways of working include hot desking, hoteling and homeworking. Some office furniture producers are responding to such changes by offering more flexible furniture which can be reconfigured to suit changing needs.

Craft based domestic furniture remains popular even though a whole new technological infrastructure could redefine living and working patterns, with intelligent homes and offices, and teleworking. The increase in homeworking will require domestic furniture to be more flexible accommodating frequent changes of use. Domestic furniture designs will also be affected by ecological issues and increasing government regulations.

Kenneth Grange is the design consultant for Kenwood, a food preparation appliance manufacturer, and he designed the Kenwood Chef in 1958. He has designed more than 100 products for Kenwood, incuding food processors, coffee makers and kettles, with his team at Pentagram, and further products are in the pipeline. At Kenwood, a 56 million pounds sterling management buyout from Thorn EMI was undertaken in 1989, and Kenwood's sales are now strongly international with 65% of them outside the UK.

The Cranbook Academy of Art's design department has attracted international attention and has been called the American Bauhaus and the world's 'most dangerous design school'. The department is run by Michael and Katherine McCoy, who have based the course around 'product semantics', a design language for objects. The McCoys teach that cultural messages and meanings can be integrated into physical products so that the products become more obvious, accessible and understandable to people. The significance of Cranbrook may be that it inspires a general spirit of exploration.

The issue of designing rooms for people with mental disabilities has become more prominent since hospitals are closing and patients returned to the community under care programmes. Rooms can be designed using colour and space to help calm and soothe those with mental problems. Wolodymyr Radysh, an architect at Camphill Trust is involved in designing an environment for mentally disturbed people at Blackthorn Medical Centre.