Continental Office Studio Blog

Our latest designers discussion focused on the infusion of nature into office environments. We wanted to know why biophilic design, which centers around bringing the outside indoors, is a rising trend in the workplace and how keeping healthy at work impacts performance and drives productivity.

Over the past decade, polished concrete has been slowly disrupting the commercial floors industry and for good reason. Namely, it’s aesthetically pleasing, sustainable, and easy to maintain. It’s at least a $300 million industry today.

63 million individuals volunteer annually in the United States, totaling more than 8.7 billion hours of time. We’re proud to give back to the communities we serve, not just with money and resources, but also talent and time. We surveyed several of our associates to find out why giving back is important to them.

Relocating a business is no small task — and the movers you hire can make all the difference in how smoothly it’s executed. How do you choose the best movers to hire? What should you look for in a moving company? Step one is that you have to know what to avoid.

It’s been more than 150 years since Huntington Bank was founded in Columbus, Ohio.

There are two philosophies when it comes to floor maintenance. The first is to maintain floors on a regular basis. The second is reactionary – when floors start to look less than ideal, a cleaning crew is rushed in to get it back to tip-top shape only to watch its condition begin to deteriorate again. The truth is, proactively maintaining floors is always better than reacting to wear and tear or worse, a catastrophe. When you have a scheduled maintenance program in place, whether it's quarterly, monthly, or even weekly, you’ll actually save more time and money and be better off in the long run.

Millennials and Gen Z are the two youngest generations in the workforce. With the oldest Gen Zers beginning to join Millennials in the workplace, it’s important to acknowledge the working styles of each group, what’s important to them in a working environment, and what kind of work culture will get them to stay.

Ergonomics means “fitting the job to the worker.” It’s the science and practice of designing jobs and workplaces to closely match the capabilities and limitations of the human body. Ergonomics helps to decrease muscle fatigue and discomfort, increase quality of work and life, and, perhaps most importantly, reduce the number and severity of injuries.

This startup company in Columbus, Ohio wanted a loft-like feel in their industrial space. By keeping as much of the building’s timber structure as exposed as possible and bringing in lots of natural light, they were able to keep alive what initially drew them to the space.

The implementation of workplace safety measures is often reactionary. If someone slips or falls, a company might begin to consider different flooring options. If a shelf or desk topples over, a conversation about proper spacing and weight distribution might be initiated. But for those companies with ample years of experience handling safety precautions, these are things that are thought about long before a design goes into place.