The Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre has won a major research grant from the Designing for the 21st Century programme, a joint initiative between the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
Centre director Jeremy Myerson is Principal Investigator and research fellow Jo-Anne Bichard is Co-Investigator on the two-year ‘Welcoming Workplace’ study, which looks at ways to rethink office design to enable growing numbers of older people to participate in the 21st century knowledge economy. The project was from January 2007 to December 2008.
In the early years of the 21st century, there are a growing number of older workers who will not retire from the office workplace but will remain at work for longer, many of them on a consultancy, special-project or part-time basis.
Several factors are driving this trend: a shortfall in pension funds; a management emphasis on retaining knowledge and experience built up over years; age and disability discrimination legislation offering more protection for older workers; and, above all, the plain demographic facts of ageing (one or two adults in the European Union will be over 50 by 2020).
At the same time as the age balance of the workforce is changing, the type of work we do in offices is changing too. Today, much of the repetitive process work that once occupied vast numbers of office workers is done by computers.
This project addresses ways in which the office environment can be redesigned to offer greater levels of comfort, choice and flexibility in the new age of the older knowledge worker.
Innovations in lighting, furniture, acoustics and spatial design will tested at key offices sites in the UK, Europe and Japan through design interventions and user observations. A book, conference, exhibition and design guidance will result from the study.
