Meeting overview

Some offices are being reconfigured to have ‘contactless pathways’ and colour-coded carpet to maintain social distance. Other businesses are investing in the latest tech which enables remote working to be as engaging and collaborative as sharing a physical space. We will discuss what innovations are currently being implemented and what the working arrangements are going to look like long term.

In March 2020, Scott Brownrigg took the decision to divert the entire focus of their Design Research Unit towards exploring how to minimise the spread of contagions through architectural design. Here, CEO Darren Comber explores how this research has informed Scott Brownrigg’s approach to the office, and his vision of the future as workspaces continue to change in response to Covid-19.

Meetin VR takes long-distance collaboration to the next level through Virtual Reality. Companies are now able to have professional meetings in virtual environments at any time, from anywhere. Maximizing the capabilities of VR, Meetin VR combines the flexibility of online meetings with the interactivity of in-person meetings, enabling people to get together in fully customizable virtual workspaces where they can talk, interact, and feel as if they are sharing the same space. Users are able to share and review media together (360 content, images, videos) and have access to tools to enhance creative collaboration, making it easier than ever for companies to brainstorm, sketch and prototype ideas together.

Speaker

Darren Comber is the Chief Executive at Scott Brownrigg with responsibility for the overall Leadership, practice strategy and overall design direction of the practice. Based in Covent Garden, Darren is involved with many sectors and principally leads the business space team, recently being involved with schemes in Central London, the regions and internationally with a primary focus on Moscow and the CIS region, Singapore and more recently USA with a new office opened in New York in 2018 together with Crown Consulting which is a new entity formed as Scott Brownrigg + Crown.

Sustainability is a key focus and Darren chaired the unit on sustainability at the British Council for Offices Conference in Paris in 2005 and has recently judged the sustainability category for the Property Week Awards for the past 5 years. He has won many awards in this field and has also been an OAS judge.

Darren is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Darren was a guest speaker at Offices Next Moscow and regularly contributes to thought leadership articles to communicate the value of architecture and the built environment.

Speaker

Cristian-Emanuel Anton, CEO @ Meetin VR

Chair

Susan is Chair of Caresourcer.com and sits on the Boards of Uber UK, The Rank Group plc (Chair of the Safer Gambling Committee) and Affinity Water Ltd. (Chair of Remuneration Committee). Susan is also a Director of Chapter Zero, an organisation dedicated to providing education, insight and support on climate change to Non-Executive Board Directors and Chairs. Susan is also actively involved in several start-ups in property and medical technology.

Prior to this plural life, Susan was Managing Director of British Gas Residential Services, a £1.8bn revenue division, leading the Service and Repair, Central Heating Installations, Electrical Services, and Dyno-Rod business units. Susan joined British Gas from the Acromas Group where she was Chief Executive of the Travel Division, responsible for Saga Holidays, Hotels, Cruises, the AA Travel division and Titan Travel. Previously, she held senior roles at Royal Caribbean International, Avis Europe, PepsiCo International, McKinsey & Co, and Saatchi & Saatchi living in over 7 countries worldwide.

She was chair of LuxuryBARED.com and until recently the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) and Wizz Air plc. Susan has held several non-executive directorships, including Courtaulds plc, Royal & Sun Alliance plc, Transcom, First Choice Ltd., S.C Johnson, Whitbread plc. Susan was also a member of the advisory Board of the LUISS Business School in Rome.

Susan has a BA from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (S.A.I.S.) in Washington DC. She is fluent in German and Italian.

Susan lives near London with her husband and two sons and loves being in the outdoors, enjoys mixing sailing, travel and photography, and has realized a passion in designing jewellery.

This meeting is open to Innovation Partnership members and partners. If you wish to apply to join please email hello@innovationpartnership.co.uk