TiVo, a manufacturer of innovative set-top television recorders, retained IA to provide full scope design and furniture services for its 127,000-square-foot Silicon Valley headquarters. The project transformed four floors that began as cold shells in two buildings. IA's team worked closely with TiVo executives to develop a "Hollywood-meets-Silicon-Valley" scheme for the facility.

Corporate real estate management by definition is business- and metrics-driven through benchmarking, operating ratios, strategic plans, balanced scorecards, key transactions and other quantitative focuses.

But there is a softer side to corporate real estate.

It can be found - ironically - in the built environment and the workplace.

For sure, the built environment is not exactly intangible, yet it holds the intangible that few other pieces of our industry offer: the aesthetics of corporate real estate.

Do we under-appreciate the artful side of our industry in favor of metrics? Obviously, there are many on the architectural side of the industry - a well-represented segment within the CoreNet Global membership - who say yes.

"A great way to move CoreNet Global's 'polarity' to the right (creative side of the brain) would be to recognize the aesthetic nature of what we do ... the design of our work environment," suggests David Mourning, wondering if it can be measured from a purely aesthetic viewpoint.

Mourning, CEO of San Francisco-based IA Interior Architects, is quick to point out there are plenty of corporate real estate people who also embrace the "polarity" point, the idea that companies can think and act in both a left- and right-brained manner, at once creatively and quantitatively.

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover Results-based workplace design implies quality. But it's not always the case. Photo courtesy of IA "Because work space is a very personal, emotional issue," observes Susan Mitchell Ketzes (HOK), "the aspects of hierarchy, generational differences, identity, culture and behavior collide with guidelines and standards, asset management, cost reduction, hope, disappointment, and unfulfilled expectations creating a powerful tide that has carried many organizations along with it - for better or for worse." "There is a risk element with design, that it is often seen as superficial," cautions Despina Katsikakis (DEGW), who offers a fashion-related analogy. "It can be quite misleading because if you actually think of buildings suddenly changing their skins like Armani dresses, even the most exquisite Armani outer skin cannot save old fashioned office planning concepts from inevitable obsolescence. Suddenly there are a lot of star architects; suddenly this is great design. But is it really fundamentally challenging what the building is all about, what it's for, or is it a new application on an old concept?" One emerging practice is that companies are showing a preference for the quality of interiors over the exterior building. Like in Los Angeles, where companies are taking old industrial sheds in cheap base buildings but focusing on dramatic interiors creating a sense of place, culture and brand. "So there are two extremes," according to Katsikakis. "Somewhere between is the ultimate design challenge we face: what are places for work, for entertaining, retailing - all these boundaries are blurring. That's why the design of the city and public places will be one of the most important factors of the future." – Richard Kadzis

The head of facilities for iStar Financial, Ed Baron, is one of them, Mourning offers. "Design is important to iStar," Mourning recounts Baron telling Design Magazine. "Why? We use the design of our offices for recruitment and retention. We also find our people are more productive now."

Mourning adds Cisco System's Mark Golan to the list. Golan is currently chair-elect of CoreNet Global. As VP of Workplace and Worldwide Real Estate for Cisco, he oversees the "Cisco Connected Workplace" initiative, a 2005 Global Innovator's Award finalist. "What Cisco does is all about the work environment and driving collaboration in the workplace," Mourning recently told to the Northern California Chapter. "It's all about the collaborative work environment."

The design of a building, a landscape, a campus or some other workplace development, then, becomes an incredibly important tool for companies for several reasons:

• Certainly, an appealing office design or headquarters can be a reflection of a company's brand and image
• Increasingly, where people work is becoming a critical recruitment and retention tool for companies to find and keep one of the most important assets of the corporate enterprise: that of the knowledge worker
• And without a doubt, how people work can be shaped as much by their physical environment, and can profoundly influence their productivity. Even in this era of dispersed work models, people still need a place they can go to touch base, to stay connected.

People need to interact, according to Despina Katsikakis, chairman of DEGW. The global design firm specializes in research, strategy and design - interestingly - around work and learning. "More companies are looking at distributed and networked solutions. I would argue that place is more important as the (key) enabler for face-to-face interaction, and as a way of capturing corporate culture and values."

"Interior design ... must be acknowledged as the enabler of client culture, brand and business in a physical context," echoes NBBJ's London-based principal, Edmund Caddy III.

"High performance workplaces are developed based on the nature of work performed in an organization, its strategic goals and aspirations, its ways of communicating, and its 'cultural DNA,'" notes Susan Mitchell-Ketzes, Director of HOK's Advanced Strategies Group. "Technology for maximum connectivity any time, any place is another essential aspect of today's smart workplace and provides flexibility for key knowledge workers."

Photo courtesy of Mithun

CoreNet Global's CoRE 2010 research series found that knowledge workers are one of the keys to enterprise success now and in the coming years; in part, because of the recognition of the importance of intellectual or human capital. Talent is viewed as a strategic corporate asset.

The quality of the workplace for the knowledge worker is a key factor in retaining that talent, which will be in shorter supply in the future as the CoRE 2010/Gallup Survey shows.

"Finding the balance between 'we' space and 'me' space is challenging but critical for supporting people in doing concentrative, analytical work," advises Mitchell-Ketzes. "Technology for maximum connectivity any time, any place is another essential aspect of today's smart workplace and provides flexibility for key knowledge workers."

If real estate is actually becoming an enterprise driver, then it will also have to influence more than a set of support services. It will have to shape companies' ability to attract and retain talent, to innovate, to synergize with other drivers like HR and IT, to support location and other business decisions, and to impact business results.

The key point is that while they may well transcend metrics, aesthetics can also incorporate them, but at a higher enterprise level. One could argue that art can be measured.

"The majority of the industry emphasis is on efficiency," observes Katsikakis. "Efficiency is the easiest (workplace factor) to measure but least important to business performance." Business results should be the focus, she asserts. "If you're able to use design to drive productivity and the kind of messages the organization uses to give expression, then you're actually impacting business performance in much more fundamental way, which is a positive trait. It's really about getting something that links directly into business results."

Either way, a balance needs to be struck, Caddy counters. "I worry when corporate real estate management feels a need to focus less on the quantitative in order to raise awareness of the qualitative. Interior design cannot be viewed simply as an aesthetic or even functional physical response to specific core business drivers and challenges. Aesthetic, not to mention 'spiritual', quality and experiences are the hallmarks of enlightened sensitive design borne, in most cases, within the context of challenging constraints that are evidenced in all projects."

Expanding on the need for balance, Mitchell-Ketzes imparts the view that "workplace design and furniture systems need to respond to all these challenges in order to leverage business results most powerfully over time."

Then, can the art of corporate real estate be measured? "The challenge we face, which should not be minimized, is delivering a holistic response that addresses all qualitative and quantitative issues in harmony," emphasizes Caddy. "It is about recognizing that there is 'poetry' in great design when it delivers balance and inspiration, when it enables and excites."

Katsikakis concludes: "Somewhere between is the ultimate design challenge . . . The changing nature of work is creating economic, social and environmental impact."