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Hybrid space making: Rethinking the bank branch experience for the digital age
Corporate Real Estate Journal,
7
(3),
256-266
(2018)
Abstract
As digital technology disrupts financial services globally, how should banks go about planning the next generation of bank branches? In the age of online banking, what are the new hybrid strategies that will draw customers in, improve working conditions for employees, connect with local communities and optimise the property portfolio? This paper describes a research project conducted by the UniCredit banking group in partnership with Unwired and the Royal College of Art to explore the hybrid bank branch network of the future. The study develops three frameworks — architectural, people, and digital — and proposes a model with three levels of hybridity. Its findings have broad implications for new ways of working and interaction in financial services.
Keywords: workplace; ethnography; branch network; hybrid spaces; digital real state; innovation; connectivity; financial services
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Klaus Sandbiller joined UniCredit in 2008. He is responsible for the Group’s real estate portfolio, transactions and projects at UniCredit. He works all over Europe on group-wide workplace transformation programmes, innovative branch concepts and design as well as new UniCredit head-office projects in major European cities. Previously, he held managerial positions at HVB and A. T. Kearney management consultants, where he ran multiple projects in the financial services industry for a wide range of international clients. Klaus holds a degree in economics and a PhD in business administration.
Jeremy Myerson is an academic and author specialising in workplace design and innovation. He is Director of the WORKTECH Academy, a global knowledge network exploring the future of work and workplace, and holds the Helen Hamlyn Chair of Design at the Royal College of Art. He is also a Visiting Fellow in the Oxford Institute for Population Ageing, University of Oxford. In 1999 he cofounded the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design — the Royal College of Art’s largest centre for design research — which he directed for 16 years. The author of more than 20 books in the field, his most recent titles include Time & Motion: Redefining Working Life (2014) and Life of Work (2015). He has worked closely on research with UniCredit through the RCA and WORKTECH Academy.
