News archive

 

2010

 

AMA completed its work on The John Harvard Library, Southwark. The Culture minister Margaret Hodge has described the newly opened facilities as a "stunning exemplar of the sort of practice we would like to see mirrored right across the country of a very welcoming environment, fantastic layout, good facilities for children and great facilities for people to learn" 1st December, 2009, London, Community website SE1. David Jenkin presented this work at IFLA on Saturday 14th August in Gothenberg, Sweden.

AMA's Guide to Successful Interaction has been designed to highlight the key importance of interaction spaces in workplace design, and draws on the research findings to emerge from WorkWare CONNECT, a tool launched by AMA in 2009.

You can now determine how well your building is performing by using AMA's new Building Assessment and Rapid Diagnostic (BARD). This tool allows you to quickly benchmark your responses against our database by answering 13 simple questions. We will also identify actions for improvement where your building is underperforming.

A summary of our research on 'Future Health' carried out for CABE was launched on the 17th November. The summary and the full report are available on the CABE website.

AMA has recently published AMA-ZED: School design from A-Z. This tool has been designed to help generate ideas about school aspirations and the way in which school buildings and grounds can help to deliver an educational vision. Pupils, teachers, governors, parents, local education officers, PFI teams and designers can all use the A-Z in defining their aspirations for their school and its community. The booklet can be used as a workshop tool to engage stakeholders in defining what is needed for educational facilities in the whole community, in just one school, or even in a single room. The booklet also works as a creative teaching tool to elicit pupils’ desires and creative solutions for their ideal learning environments.

2009

The Buildings and Social Science network met on 12th November in London and heard Chris Spencer (Sheffield University) speak about recent trends in environmental psychology, and Andrew Gemmel discuss BRE methods, tools and approaches to social research. You can visit BASS net to join this group.

Nigel Oseland presented on 'Inspiring Innovation through Interaction' at Workplace Trends on 15th October 2009 at Kings Place, London. He also spoke on 'Implementing Flexible Working in a Downturn: A Practical Guide', at Corenet on 21st September 2009, in Brussels.

 

Nigel and Alexi both spoke on 'Creating Environments for Successful Interaction', at IFMA World Workplace on 8th October 2009, in Orlando, Florida.

Recent talks by Alexi Marmot have included: New learning spaces: knowing what works at the Society for College and University Planning conference in Portland, Oregon, Evidence based facilties management: future research agenda at Euro FM in Amsterdam in June 2009, Changing Spaces at the Art Libraries Society annual conference in July 2009, Purse and planet: Savings by innovative FM, space allocation and building operations at the FM Event in Wales in April 2009 and Space development and learning at Cardiff School of Art and Design and Innovative educational space - horizon scanning at Kings College, London in March 2009.

Our last Buildings and Social Science (BASS) meeting took place on 19th May 2009. BASS is a network of social scientists working within consulting and architectural practices, involved in designing workplaces. BASS promotes the role of the social scientist in creating better workplaces and provides a forum to share our knowledge, theories, methods and case studies.

 

In March 2009 AMA presented WorkWare^CONNECT to a group of public sector clients, including representatives of local and central government and other agencies.

 

2008

Nigel Oseland published the article Mind Games in On Office, the workplace design magazine. In it he explores the impacts of psychological needs on workplace design by looking at core theories of psychology.

AMA successfully completed its workplace study for the new Campus for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington. The new office campus is being built in the heart of the city at 500 Fifth Avenue North. It will be the foundation’s long-term home and is being designed to reflect their work in global health and learning. The goal has been to create an effective workspace that embodies the foundation’s mission and aspirations and also is compatible with its urban setting.

AMA hosted the second WorkWare CONNECT event in London in November 2008.

The value of post occupancy evaluation in creating successful bulidings is discussed by Nigel Oseland in CoreNet Global's Workplace Community Newsletter in October 2008. He gives an overview of how AMA's WorkWare toolkit can be used for post occupancy evaluation and shares some of AMA's satisfaction and utilisation findings.

AMA designers worked with the British Council for School Environments (BCSE) together with contractors and educational suppliers on the transformation of a primary school in Ealing as part of National School Environment week. The 'makeover' saw three key areas of Southfield Primary School transformed in a five day project to show how educational spaces can be changed to provide improved learning and teaching opportunities for pupils and staff. The 'makeover' was featured on BBC Breakfast.

Joanna Eley completed post occupancy evaluations of one hundred recently completed SureStart nurseries on behalf of CABE and the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Joanna has also written guidance on achieving design quality in fire and rescue service buildings for the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Nigel Oseland made a presentation on ‘How to create office buildings that really work’ at the SCRI (Salford Centre for Research Innovation) forum on 26 June 2008. The forum discussed the need to understand the activities which go on inside and around our buildings.

Building on the success of last year's learning conference, AMA sponsored the second conference, held at the Royal College of Surgeons on 18 June 2008. This year's theme was Designing and Managing Sustainable Learning Environments. The conference provided estate managers and designers with an overview of the key requirements for sustainable educational facilities. The unique element of the event is the combination of all stages of the education process (schools, academies, FE, HE) into one day.

Nigel Oseland chaired the successful 2008 Workplace Trends conference in London.

Alexi Marmot authored an article for Essential FM Report on FM and business performance, illustrating the value to businesses of well managed facilities, and highlighting the consequences of failing to ensure that buildings, and all their associated operations, run smoothly.

Nigel Oseland, primary author of the new British Council for Offices Guide to Post-Occupancy Evaluation, hosted a workshop on the guide and the benefits of POE at the BCO Annual Conference in Brussels on 4-6 June 2008. The guide, published in November 2007, can be purchased at the BCO website.

AMA’s new French office, managed by Pamela Kovachich and located in Nice, opened in March 2008. This step across the channel is an opportunity to roll out AMA's philosophy and methods through mainland Europe.

AMA's education experience in linking space to learning has led to recent invitations to Alexi Marmot to advise a major international school in Copenhagen, and the NIACE National Institute of Adult Continuing Education inquiry into the future of lifelong learning.

Alexi Marmot gave a paper on post occupancy service issues at the Architects' Journal Low Carbon Offices conference in March 2008. She showed that only by designers actively addressing operational issues and user behaviour can low carbon buildings be delivered successfully.

Nigel Oseland attended MIPIM at Cannes in March along with 35,000 delegates. Nigel was invited to a joint BCO and Architects Journal lunch where sustainability was discussed by a panel of property experts; their views were published in the Architects' Journal (24 March 2008).