We had modest goals when we first took on the “ideas competition” to design the office building of the future. All we wanted was to use the tight deadline–the discipline and structure that comes with a competition–to organize our ideas about the future of office buildings. In the beginning we saw this as a way to engage in an internal debate about a myriad of related topics. We began as we always do, asking many questions. This time, though, we went beyond our usual inquiry: Will there even be office buildings in the future? How will people want and need to work in an office 15 or 20 years from now? What impact will technology have on design and engineering? But we never once asked, “What will it look like?”
As principals, we calculate the risk against the rewards for our architecture practice. Naively, we guessed that this project would involve a few weeks of work for those staff members who weren’t fully employed on other projects. Our economic risk would be minimal. Our reward would be a 10-minute presentation to show our developer clients, inspiring their thinking about office buildings. With no clear vision of what could happen, we nevertheless pushed our team to reach for something beyond what they already knew. If we were going to enter this competition, then we were in it to win. Go big or go home.
The effect on the office was profound. We took the opportunity to look over the horizon, unfettered by the normal project restrictions and, in the process, energized everyone. Suddenly they all wanted to get involved. We engaged the best engineers to contribute their ideas. We decided to do a video (which we’d never done before). Most importantly, we would allow ourselves to dream. Suddenly the risk expanded far beyond a monetary risk. Now we were taking an emotional risk as well, pouring our hearts and minds into a collaborative effort and then, perhaps, ending up being disappointed with the outcome. When we announced to the office, over champagne, that we had been named one of four winners nationally, everyone cheered!
Alternative Workplace Strategies, Collaborative Environments, Co-working, Mobile Working, Virtual Officing or Flex Work space. I thought I was up-to-date on all my industry buzzwords until recently when a designer asked me if I had any information or studies on Agile Facility Management. Caught a little off guard, I told her I would check with my team and see what I could find.
I ended up turning to the Internet for more information, and learned it is not a new phrase as it relates to computer programmers and writing code. The primary struggle with their environment is the ability to bring groups of people together quickly for problem solving. These teams may be brought together for a day or more then a month, and require huge expanses of whiteboards, flip charts and other accessories, but the environment must also provide space for programmers to do heads down work. The methodology associated with these teams and management style is being adapted as a means to the general work environment.
Today, a company’s ability to react to social and economic shifts means that the traditional work environment must make adjustments. In recent years, with the growth of more sustainable environments, panel heights are being reduced or eliminated, which can take away the traditional storage an overhead provides. Office footprints and the reshaping and agility of the office environment are also changing rapidly with the acceptance of work-from-home and telecommuting policies.
I’m working with a client who is looking at a 60/20/20 split in office personnel: 60 percent work in a dedicated space within the office, 20 percent work entirely off site and the remaining 20 percent work in and out of the office. It’s a cultural shift in the way people work and it allows employees to have a better work life balance. Additionally, it enables an organization to capitalize on the strengths of their employees while allowing flexibility.
A common solution for this type of environment is benching, which can help organizations save on real estate costs and accommodate more people into a space. Be aware, these are fixed elements that don’t allow the facility to adapt to an individual or group of individuals that may need additional surface space to enable them to work more effectively. Some organizations or designers may suggest assigning mobile pedestals to each worker that could be housed in a central “parking” area, which sounds like an easy solution until you do the math. If a typical floor plan allows for a density of 150 people and 60 percent of them work in the office full time, than 90 of those spaces are occupied on a regular basis. Plus, if an average of 20 percent visit the office two to three days per week, than the space would need to constantly house 120 mobile pedestals somewhere on the floor. If each pedestal took up 15” x 24” of floor space the space would be using 312 square feet of dedicated floor space only to accommodate pedestals. This is not an efficient use of space.
In Europe, some companies provide employees with a personal, lockable storage space to keep office essentials; however, given the same scenario above, if we used the designated floor space per storage unit but stacked the lockers four units high, the useable floor space would decrease 78 square feet. (more…)
We have a wicked problem.
As a society we waste an awful lot of materials. Consider, for instance, the sheer volume of packaging that hits the recycling bin after we open cheap consumer electronics and then replace them in rapid succession, and discard easily. Yes, we can recycle, but we’re still using a lot of raw materials when we don’t need to. This, of course, is an unsustainable system.
There are many new ways of looking at this problem and to solve it. These may include better recycling practices, minimal packaging, designing longer-lasting products, and things we haven’t thought of yet. This is what Dr. Kyle Whyte, professor of philosophy at Michigan State University, calls a wicked problem. Many companies are working hard to solve these wicked problems. Yet we still live in a largely unsustainable world. So where’s the disconnect?
Jathan Sadowski, a graduate student of ethics and sustainability at Arizona State University provides an insight: While he sees students showing interest in sustainability, he says that they have trouble connecting the abstract social, environmental, and economic factors that contribute to an understanding of the concept as a whole. Few students become industrial designers because they want to save the whales. Yet industrial designers are poised to reduce waste, make better use of resources, and extend product life. It’s a wonder that few do. Many get into design because they care about objects or buildings or graphics, but not always because they want to make those things sustainable. So how can we convince them?
About a month ago the Tulane School of Architecture announced that Maurice Cox had been appointed associate dean of community engagement. The title is an altogether apt one for Cox, who has spent almost two decades forging ties between design education, the political realm, and the public. Long associated with the architecture school at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, Cox served a handful of terms as city councilman and was elected mayor in 2002. He is a former design director of the National Endowment for the Arts, a Loeb fellow at Harvard, and is one of the co-founders of the SEED (Social, Economic, Environmental, Design) Network, an organization dedicated to public-interest architecture. I spoke to Cox, prior to the arrival of Hurricane Isaac, about his new job and new city.
Martin C. Pedersen: You were firmly established in Charlottesville. Why move to New Orleans?
Maurice Cox: Ken [Schwartz, dean of the Tulane School of Architecture] had been trying to get me to come here in some capacity since he got here. We were always searching for what would make it an attractive opportunity. For me it was interesting to see [Tulane] president Scott Cowen change the university mission and build it structurally into the learning of students across campus. It was part of the attraction of this school to have a university wide mission that intersects with the school of architecture’s mission, and with the fate of the city. And I suspect that it’s a major reason why their enrollment is expanding. Students understand that this city has aspirations and that the university’s mission intersects with those aspirations. They also know they’re going to be in the most unique American laboratory the next three, four or five years. That’s what attracted me. Ken said, “I need someone in my leadership circle who can put all of these disparate pieces together and tell a coherent story.”
MCP: Outline for me your purview. What will you oversee?
MC: Ken combined two appointments. One is the associate dean of community engagement and the other is director of the Tulane City Center. The associate dean is responsible for finding a framework by which our real estate program, preservation program, and architectural program can create synergies. What we’re trying to do is use the center to bring them together.
Photo by Architecture for Humanity
Watching torrents of brown water cascade down the hill, filled with garbage and visibly eroding the rocky landscape, we were dramatically reminded of the importance of modern storm sewers. This humble piece of infrastructure, generally hidden from view, goes unnoticed during the course of our everyday lives in the United States, but on a hillside slum in urban Haiti during the rainy reason, there is nothing more important. From the perspective of public health, this regular deluge in the informal settlement of Villa Rosa is devastating, spreading disease, soaking possessions, and sometimes sweeping away entire buildings.
Photo by Architecture for Humanity
On March 22, 2012, in celebration of the United Nations’ World Water Day, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s (SOM) City Design Practice launched the Great Lakes Century Vision video. The goal of the video, produced in collaboration with the award-winning design firm Thirst, was to broadcast and garner international support for a bold 100-year vision for the environmental and economic renewal of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence region.
Economic and industrial models are crumbling. Economists everywhere seem incapable of predicting or solving problems facing Western countries. The reality is that universities of economics, recently recognized by the Shanghai ranking for the quality of their research, have not turned out the “finders”, who alongside researchers, are expected to provide solutions to calm the stormy seas that lie ahead.
Moreover, the exact and objective science that is technology, which once put its trust in humanity-based progress, has gone so far in its quest for the “knowledge of things” that it has managed to spread panic by objectifying progress and the end of the world. GMOs, genetic decoding, atoms, etc. so many topics on which the all-knowing powers-that-be astound and threaten us with the best and worst of scenarios.
Globalization, internationalization, the intermingling of populations and cultures challenge our cultural references of value and meaning. Morals take a backseat to the law as our notions of right and wrong, freedom, justice, respect of nature, others and oursleves, manners, etc. are thrown out of whack as a result of different cultural approaches. These shifting contexts are particularly favorable to design.
