Different trends inform corporate, education, healthcare and hospitality design projects, but during a “Voice of the Customer” panel discussion at the recent BIFMA 360º leadership conference, design representatives from each sector found common ground: Great spaces put people first, regardless of whether they are working, learning, healing or relaxing. Every project begins with the human using the space.
For panelist Kim Sauvageau, global workplace experience architect at Shell, that means creating spaces that work for employees in 70 countries around the world. The offices she designs must take into account all of its 80,000 employees and the cultural norms that are vastly different, people that work differently and spaces that work from Denver to Dubai.
She starts any project by putting herself into the shoes of those working in any one of those locations. “You walk through somebody’s day and all of a sudden you’ve experienced the hurdle that you never saw before. I found that it was a really effective method to see something through somebody else’s perspective,” said Sauvageau. “Within Shell, we have a really high level of international mobility and therefore, we can’t assume that what works in one location works for everybody. We need to support that full spectrum.”
The panel discussion, moderated by officeinsight Publisher Bob Beck, brought together Sauvageau and some of the best designers from each market sector. Sauvageau was joined by Walter Jones, former senior vice president of campus transformation at MetroHealth, Melissa Marriott, senior facilities planner at the University of Illinois and Laurie Woliung, senior director of global design at Marriott.
Led by Beck, the four discussed some of the common design problems each faces and a few of the challenges unique to the sector in which they design.
Diversity of place is important to Marriott and its 160 million Bonvoy (loyalty program) members as well, said Woliung. Marriott is trying to think about its customers in every stage of their lives, which is why the company has launched so many brands and acquired Starwood.
“We have diversified even further. We just launched our Ritz-Carlton Yacht — the first launch was in October and we have three more coming. We also are dipping our toe into economy (brands) and we just acquired City Express Hotels in South America, which adds about 17,000 rooms to our portfolio. It’s an area that we have not dabbled in before,” she said. “We also just announced Marriott Corporate Apartments, which is a luxury product for people who are desiring an extended stay of longer than a few weeks. We found that our extended stay products did very well during the pandemic. A lot of people were going there and they were going maybe from business to leisure.”
For Jones, who was responsible for designing and building a new Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, many difficult decisions were made attempting to future-proof the building. Parkland Health first opened its doors in 1894 and is now one of the largest public hospital systems in the country. The hospital averages more than 1 million outpatient visits annually, which makes it one of the busiest in the country.
The new 2.8 million-square-foot Parkland campus is nearly twice the size of the old hospital and was designed to meet the ever-changing needs of Dallas County, one of the largest, fastest-growing regions in the country.
Jones used Parkland as an example of the long design process that goes into a hospital, which makes it difficult to design for the latest technology. When the last Parkland Hospital was built in 1954, Jones said it was originally designed without air conditioning, which a few years after construction had to be added. When the latest Parkland was being designed in 2003, smart phones were still the stuff of science fiction. When it opened in 2015, they were everywhere.
“So the problem is that the time to build a replacement facility is long and the technology that you want to incorporate into it changes and then it changes and then it changes again and it changes again and then it changes again. So by the time you finish the building, whatever you thought you were going to need has gone through 10 generations and evolved into something that may be completely different. As a designer, you have no excuse after spending $1 billion to say that you’ve completed the building and it’s incapable of incorporating that latest technology or wifi,” he said.
Meeting the diverse needs of students has changed how university campuses are being developed, according to Ms. Marriott. The University of Illinois is trying to meet the students where they are and create diverse learning environments that match how they learn best with the right facilities to support them. While virtual classrooms play a role, students still very much want hands-on learning.
“I’ve seen a trend toward more and more diverse campuses,” she said. “You see the sorts of changes in learning happening that we’re seeing in the commercial sector — toward hybrid work. Some people want to be in the classroom, some want to be in their dorm room, some need a lot of distraction others need a quiet space. So we’re really developing all of the spaces on our campuses to play all of these roles.”
All of the panelists mentioned the importance of creating experiential spaces. These spaces are more than simply places to be — they are spaces to experience. That, of course, makes a designer’s job much more difficult and in many ways, more interesting.
For Marriott, that means listening to its guests. The hotelier does that through a platform called Guest Voice. Guest Voice is a feedback program that offers a short, simple guest satisfaction survey to allow travelers to provide their input directly to the property. In addition, Guest Voice triangulates social media feedback with survey responses to uncover deeper feedback and insights, giving Marriott properties the tools they need to take actions that will directly improve guest satisfaction scores.
“Years ago, I think Marriott just marched on and said, ‘This is the way we do it because this is the way we’ve always done it.’ We found that probably isn’t working anymore. So we rely heavily on our guests and our Guest Voice platform to hear what they’re saying and then deliver what they want most.”
The University of Illinois is listening to its “customers” as well, said Marriott. Its customers range from 8-year-olds on campus for summer camps to 98-year-old alumni on campus for a Saturday football game. They must impress not only the 18-year-olds on a campus visit, but their 50-something parents who might be footing the bill.
“We’re doing things to really encompass the whole person and not just our students,” she said. “There are many different generations using our campuses and buildings and we always have that in mind when we are designing spaces. All the people that work there are important stakeholders as well.”
Culture has become an important consideration for corporate design as well, said Sauvageau. Workers want to come into the office for more than just professional collaboration. Since the pandemic, they also want to come to the office to connect and be part of Shell’s corporate culture.
“People want to feel like they belong somewhere,” she said. “For us, it means that we’re offering a much wider range of flexibility and choice of places where people can work.”
Flexibility, multi-use spaces, future-proof buildings — these are the topics that reach across every sector and will inform design for years to come.