Hyphn Offices – Portland
Hyphn and GBD Architects collaborated to the Hyphn team’s hybrid work environment in Portland, Oregon.
In April 2021, as pandemic restrictions started to lift, the Hyphn team began the task of planning and designing a new headquarters and design studio that would underpin our re-envisioned approach to the future of work. To be successful, it was important to include the voice of every employee across all Hyphn’s disciplines to learn what works best for them individually and within their teams so that we could synthesize a workplace strategy that accommodates everyone. We understand that comfort, flexibility and variety are crucial for our team members to curate their personal work experience each day, and that frictionless, elegant technology is non-negotiable.
To equitably accommodate workstyles and needs in an open-office environment, we carefully considered the different types of privacy–acoustical, visual and territorial–and we created spaces where the levels of privacy can be adjusted by the individual user. There are no assigned desks, and employees move as needed to select their preferred work posture, technology access, proximity to teammates, views and level of privacy based on their tasks and activities for that day. Active sound masking targets specific frequencies, such as those correlated with spoken word, to reduce conversations’ radius of travel and the associated distraction to non-participants. Acoustically-insulated phone booths and tech-integrated work pods provide spaces for ad-hoc meetings. These solutions helped us right-size our space and increase efficiency by eliminating the 1:1 desk ratio, and improve employee satisfaction by supporting a variety of work styles.
Underpinning any effective hybrid work environment is accessible, intuitive technology. In concert with a thoughtfully-designed, fully-integrated conference platform, our “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) model ensures that all meeting participants can fully engage, whether in-room or remote. Seven conference rooms are equipped with precision microphones, speakers and cameras, calibrated for each environment. Room schedulers provide a quick indication of available rooms, and one-touch conferencing functionality has led to a marked reduction in wasted time setting up for meetings.
Hyphn’s hybrid policy defines a target for employees to be in the office at least two days per week, yet we have 44% of our employees who choose to come into the office for three or more days a week.
Design: Hyphn and GBD Architects
Contractor: Scalable
Photography: Eckert and Eckert Photography
