Nothing stands in the way of progress. The celebrated decisions of a couple decades ago are today’s eyesore, an obstacle to a bright and shiny future. Around this reality has grown the fascinating industry of building demolition. There are a number of ways to remove a building structure from the landscape. Some involve timed explosions, others are a matter of removing structure a piece at a time and carting it away, like large-scale surgery. It is impressive to watch buildings that in many cases took years to complete be edited out of modernity in a fraction of that time. Demolition is a very powerful tool for urban planning, and it allows the erasure of ideas that, with their brick and concrete, were probably thought to be permanent. I came across the video below of a Japanese demolition crew demolishing a building floor by floor, like the Japanese toy Daruma-otoshi. This video has been posted on quite a few sites, but it is what got me thinking about this post:
A few more videos of building demolition, but by precision implosion. The second video below should be noted for its smart, incisive commentary:
I came across the image above, taken by James Follows on June 20, 2008, this morning at theatlantic.com. I have been following the progress of the OMA team’s CCTV tower in Beijing for the last few months as it has been an incredibly interesting project to see come together. I said before that the construction of this tower is at least as interesting as the design itself.
This picture of the CCTV tower blanketed in the thick smog of Beijing is quite a contrast to the other crisp, clear images I have shown here. Sadly, this will be how people experience this structure a good part of the time, at least those times that there is a lack of the strong, but infrequent, northerly wind that can clear the air of the city. In the brief dispatch from James Follows at The Atlantic, he points out that the Olympics are less than two months away. This pollution is creating a serious image problem for the city of Beijing, especially given the enormous emphasis the Chinese government has put on hosting the Olympics this year, and the symbolism of hosting this event to the rest of the world.
As evidenced from the graph above (via The Oil Drum), it goes to China. 50% of the cement produced last year was produced and ultimately used by China, which equates to 1.3 gigatons of cement. China only exported 33 million tons of cement out of that 1.3 gigatons. Just as an FYI, a gigaton is one billion tons. India was a distant second at .3 gigatons. With the growth and expansion of the nascent infrastructure that has been underway in China, especially in preparation for the Olympics, this probably is not too surprising, but the enormous gap between China and the entire rest of the world is definitely noteworthy. Additionally, something startling that I learned is that each ton of cement produced also produces a ton of the greenhouse gas CO2. In 2007 cement consumption in China produced 1.3 gigatons of CO2, which I’m guessing is a helluva lot of CO2 to be produced by one industry in one nation.
Putting these numbers into context, and perhaps as an explanation for the relatively small production of cement in the United States, is the reality that we invested in and built up our infrastructure during the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s. That effort also required massive amounts of cement, tonnages that I am guessing are comparable to China’s recent production totals. With our infrastructure largely in place the requirement for massive quantities of cement in the U.S. just is not there, relative to the demand for cement in support of growth in China. That is, until the escalation in the crumbling of our streets, highways, bridges and interstates begins to necessitate more comprehensive replacement and expansion, something that certainly seems to be gaining more momentum nationwide as our national infrastructure moves into its sixth decade of intense use.
I very highly recommend subscribing to The Oil Drum if you have any interest in energy policy, peak oil, and the social, political, and economic implications of our dependence on foreign oil. The coverage on this blog is comprehensive and the writing is excellent.
As construction crews rush to complete the CCTV tower in Beijing the systems for using the building’s surface as a broadcast medium are beginning to be tested. It was intended from the beginning with the original concept presented by OMA that the skin of the tower would be active and dynamic. This video gives us an idea of what that will be like.
For some, that is an incredibly inflammatory statement. As inflammatory as saying that the workplace of the future is not about real estate, which it’s not. That is because the workplace that many of us already operate in is boundless, and is defined by where we are at any given moment. The workplace of now is our home, hotel room, car, airport lounge, coffee shop… wherever we are. The workplace of now is not a desk, chair and filing cabinet. It is our laptop, mobile phone, and other tools that support us in our tasks wherever we are. This is not a new development, but one that has been in motion, and gaining momentum, for over a decade. There are individuals in the workforce now who have never worked another way. This change has been driven by innovations in the ways in which we communicate, in connectivity, and in how we do business. The “virtuality” of business is not something that can be overstated, really, as so many tasks that required meeting in person twenty years ago are now completed without the involved parties ever needing to occupy the same geographical location, or ever actually talk to each other. That certainly devalues the importance of an office with regards to the effectiveness of business process. Or does it?
There is pressure on the office to change in ways that support this boundless workplace. The reality is that the office is not going away, and it shouldn’t as there are many circumstances where we need to work together in the same place, but how we use the physical space of an office environment is changing and evolving rapidly. As such, the ways that our organizations think about the office needs to change and begin leveraging notions of flexibility, adaptability, and customization to task. The physical office is an important node in our network for bringing us together for interactions that cannot be bested virtually, but this is very different than the typical archetype on which most offices have been built, which is the idea of warehousing workers to make operational control more efficient. Our work is increasingly defying the effectiveness of this archetype, and as a result we are experiencing productivity levels in the United States that are staggering. Organizations are learning that we can share a “mission and vision” without actually having to be in the same place at the same time. Some companies are way ahead in their thinking with regards to the boundless workplace, others are stubborn in the face of this change. The reality, though, is that there are many, many factors driving everyone to begin working in this manner and at some point the entire traditional 1950’s corporate office metaphor is going to collapse and be called out as an obstacle to effectiveness, productivity, and employee health and wellness.
That’s the point of the headline for this post. The office today is in so many ways defined by the furniture that fills it. This doesn’t really work anymore, and the office we increasingly require is one that supports business process, and that meets the requirements of being an effective node, one of many, for the ways in which we do business. There will be furniture in this office, it just won’t be defined by it.
It would seem that I am very much not alone in my utter fascination with the design and construction of the CCTV tower going up in Beijing. I recently came across a mother load of incredible images on Flickr that are expansive in capturing the progress of building the tower, and beautiful in the quality of the photography. Last night these images cost me close to two hours of sleep.
Having recently discussed the Beijing National Stadium it seems only fitting to also take a look at its immediate neighbor, the Beijing National Aquatics Center. This building is the manifestation of the winning designs presented by the team of Australian architecture firm PTW, Arup, and the China State Construction and Engineering Corporation (CSCEC). It is made up of a steel space frame fitted with polymer pillows allowing more light penetration than traditional glass while providing a potential 30% reduction in energy costs.
The rendering below shows the Water Cube next to the also very recognizable Beijing National Stadium, or “Bird’s Nest”.
It is a gorgeous building, and for the Olympics will hold 17,000 people for the swimming, diving and synchronized swimming events. After the Olympics it will be converted into a community recreational center. The facade can be lit and animated, adding another level of dynamism to an already dynamic design.
I found the following video via toomanytribbles, a favorite blog of mine by an expat living in Beijing:
That would be 44,000 tons of steel and the equivalent of $423 million in construction cost. The Beijing National Stadium (pictured above in a gorgeous photo by toomanytribbles), often referred to as Herzog & de Meuron’s “Bird’s Nest”, is essentially completed after four years of very high profile construction. Though Herzog & de Meuron are usually given credit for the design, credit in fact goes to the incredibly effective team made up of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, ArupSport, and the Chinese Architecture Design and Research Group in collaboration with the team from Herzog & de Meuron. Regardless, this is an incredible project to have pulled off.
It’s a stunning structure. The massive yet delicate quality of the steel skeleton seems to defy the enormous scale of the building. The image below is a detail of the steel super structure while under construction:
I love this image below with the light glinting off of the steel at night:
The author of toomanytribbles, a blog that I follow and really enjoy, lives in Beijing and periodically posts her progress photos of the looming CCTV tower (posted about here previously) designed by Rem Koolhaas and the team at OMA. She just posted a set of beautiful photos on flickr that I highly suggest viewing. The CCTV tower is impressive as a design, but I find myself even more intrigued by watching it be constructed.
Jean Nouvel was recently awarded one of the most prestigious prizes in architecture… the Pritzker Prize. I cannot say that I found this surprising given the sheer volume of high profile projects his firm, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, have been awarded over the past decade. The work of his studio is incredibly creative, innovative, and impressive and despite the niggling issues around functionality and usability (damn those people!) I continue to marvel each time I experience this:
Rumor has it that after presenting the building design concept with the giant cantilever to the Guthrie Theater client team, somebody quipped about the expense of building something so novel, something so seemingly frivolous, to which Nouvel replied:
“If you remove the cantilever you might as well cut off my arm.”
rumored quote from Jean Nouvel
He then threatened to walk away from the project. I so want to believe that is true. Suffice it to say, the cantilever was built and it is impressive. Every time I see this structure in person, though, I cannot help but think of this:
Which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty cool thing to come to mind in relation to a high profile theatrical arts building in Minneapolis.
In honor of Jean Nouvel winning the Pritzker I offer the following Quote of The Moment, which is incredibly appropriate given the dizzying pace of materials exploration in architecture today:
“My work deals with what is happening now. I like to use the techniques and materials we are capable of today.”
This is an absolutely gorgeous rendering of the Federal Building in San Francisco designed by Thom Mayne and his team at Morphosis. Mayne is now navigating the LEED certification process for this project. Originally, the building was on track to obtain a minimum of LEED Silver certification. The interesting thing is that it seems LEED certification, the US Green Building Council, and Thom Mayne are not on the same page as some of the technologies employed for this project are, as Mayne asserts, so absolutely cutting edge they are not actually yet part of the LEED certification process. Upwards of 70% of the building is temperature moderated through natural ventilation, and this was achieved through incredibly complex modeling of the interior environments and how air should naturally move through them, and controlled though a custom window wall that regulates internal air temperature, thermal mass storage, and passive and active sunshading. While LEED addresses items like bicycle racks and construction materials recycling, the thermal comfort and air quality regulated by Mayne’s system do not impact certification in a substantive way.
Like any high profile project, it is not without some controversy. To my mind, this project highlights some of the drawbacks of the USGBC’s point based LEED certification program. It would seem that sometimes designing sustainably and designing “LEED” are not the same thing.
I have been closely following the progress of OMA’s project with Chinese Central Television (CCTV). The initial design presented an iconic tension, but also seemed to be dangerously monolithic. The writer of toomanytribbles, a blog that I thoroughly enjoy and subscribe to, was recently in China and snapped several gorgeous images from which she produced a cool video of the CCTV tower under construction and in the context of the neighboring buildings. Seeing this building take shape in its environment is exciting, and reassures me that OMA knows what the hell they are doing. This is a very, very cool building. I cannot wait to see the interior environments. Here is a rendering of the building design:
This post would be a continuation on my theme about thoughts on the future building culture, at least for my immediate team. You can read related posts here, though you have to scroll down for some of the more inflammatory ones. In any event, our team has been deep into investigations of business model and approach as it relates to the built environment, and one organization and one person continues to surface as a vanguard and a contrarian, and consistently at the heart of the examples we provide to each other. Pictured above is Rem Koolhaas, the founder of OMA and AMO. He has a well-known and well-developed record as an architect and designer, and has managed to be seemingly ubiquitous with active projects dotting the globe. OMA has been tireless in execution, and is providing solutions to the domain of exclusive and high profile clients. Pushing boundaries is hard, intense, and expensive work and it takes clients with the money and steely resolve to partner with the likes of Rem Koolhaas. In any event, the results seem to be beneficial for all involved.
Via Eikongraphia I came across a conference held in Rotterdam last November with the overarching theme of how the future of architecture, “Architectuur 2.0″, is presently being shaped. All of the speakers (whose lectures can be viewed here in the archives… in Dutch, I am still looking for full transcripts in English), collectively the group known as the SuperDutch, seemed excellent. But it was a couple of Rem’s comments that stuck with me. He talked about partnerships, and how they are incredibly underestimated, and went on to list a number of examples that, in his view, regardless of the result, helped him move the needle. As you survey the density, and audacity, of the work being done by OMA and AMO worldwide it is evident that none of this could happen, none of it would really even be possible, without that approach to the collective project team. How we partner, and how well we partner, is ultimately the determiner of project success. This obviously extends far beyond just the built environment, but if there was an industry that was plagued with the challenges of navigating partnerships successfully, I would have to say it is architecture and design. At least in the United States.
This is changing, though, and architects are beginning to reconnect with the making, and reconnect with clients. Or, perhaps, connect differently. Smart architecture teams are organizing around projects in new ways that are incorporating research and technology for a remix of the user experience. They are fast, nimble, innovative and not afraid of risk nor of liability. All of these are givens. They approach challenges holistically, with a design brief informed by smart, comprehensive research and well-reasoned conclusions. If it is your goal to create value, to do more than just meet minimal requirements, than this approach is a necessity. The alternative is to let the value of design be eroded, and ultimately distributed across an increasingly complex vendor environment. Not an option. But to prevent this, or to circumvent it entirely, goes right back to Rem’s comments regarding partnership, that “partnership is an underestimated theme.”
We have spent a fair amount of time on this site investigating issues and ideas around innovation (especially back in October of last year). This is because few things can so substantially affect the fortunes of a company to the extent that supporting innovation can. Nothing new here, open any business magazine or visit any number of blogs and innovation is being discussed. This pervasiveness is born out of the priority and value we place on being able build the cultures that allow us to innovate consistently, and well. It is also because creating these cultures is incredibly challenging, and we benefit from learning how others have navigated these challenges.
I read yesterday an excellent article in Architectural Record by Andrew Pressman titled “Creating a Firm Culture That Supports Innovation” that offered a perspective that warrants sharing. This perspective begins with the increasing recognition that a firm’s cultural environment is a critical factor not only in producing the best possible design work but also in attracting and retaining both new staff and clients. In any creative enterprise you are only as good as your people, teams, and degree to which they are supported. A significant component of the talent war is demonstrating to prospects that you offer the culture that will support them in their creative work. Additionally, just as the business press is permeated with investigations into innovation, so are clients. The expectation for design excellence, and for teams and methodologies that put innovation front and center, should be considered a best practice by clients looking for creative services. For creative teams, fostering this culture and being able to identify successful outcomes is a significant competitive differentiator.
The article highlights an approach promoted by Robert Sutton in work featured in the Harvard Business Review back in 2000/2001, but still right on the money. It is an extreme approach to fostering innovation and acknowledges that new perspectives and ideas often emanate from “mavericks” with wildly diverse backgrounds, who harbor no preconceptions, and who are undaunted in challenging the status quo and championing their ideas. These mavericks are invaluable to successful innovation subcultures, and their ultimate impact on the organizational culture at large. Sounds good. The main points of this approach:
- Hire naive misfits who argue with you
- Encourage failure
- Avoid letting client input limit your vision
- Fully commit to risky ventures
I’ll let you read the article to get the full story, but there is some particularly valuable insight offered by Ted Hoff, an innovator and inventor of microprocessors, with respect to how client input can limit your vision. He says:
“Don’t do what your customers want; Do something better.”
Ted Hoff
I think all of the points above are important, and while they may sound somewhat intuitive they are very difficult to maintain in practice. Many organizations exist specifically to limit the existence of these behaviors, they are counterintuitive to an “established” enterprise and threaten the order that some managers can spend their entire careers trying to create. They defy predictability, and therefore deny managers the ability to financially model and plan. Therein lies the challenge, to encourage these behaviors in support of an innovative culture and in contrast to the ubiquitous corporate model. To realize and champion that business as usual in creative enterprise is a definitive path to extinction.
Few things have been as expansively influential in the world of design and the emerging Modern movement as the Bauhaus school and design movement that originated out of Dessau, Germany shortly after WWI ended. Bauhaus translates roughly into English to mean “house of building.” Though very short lived, existing only from when Walter Gropius (a recently decommissioned German officer) founded the school in 1919 to its disbanding in 1933, enough people were touched by the design leadership and thinking at the school to carry it throughout the world. That, and many of the instructors found themselves at schools elsewhere in the world where they could continue the good work and sharpen the minds of future designers and architects. Walter Gropius ended up at Harvard’s design school in 1934, subsequently helping a number of students and instructors make their way to positions and careers in the United States. This migration of Bauhausians to the United States set the stage for the launching of a design movement here that lasts to this day.
There is a concise article in the IHT that gives a nice overview of the Bauhaus and some of the personalities that made it happen. The article is in response to what sounds like an excellent exhibit tracing the history of the Bauhaus at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.
The International Space Station has been underway for so long that I think it is often just forgotten about. Work commenced in 1998, so its been under construction for nearly a full decade. But it’s up there and manned 24/7/365. We should collectively pay more attention to the development of the ISS as that is where the future of humanity is slowly (very, very slowly) being shaped. That, and we’re freaking building this thing in space. Most are at least familiar with the station if only because of the problems that have plagued its construction, including the problems with the NASA space shuttle that have caused major construction delays. There have been some close calls for the astronauts and scientists manning the ISS, and some difficult learning experiences for the international team tasked with building Earth’s first large scale “permanent” space platform. But that is the whole point, really, to learn along the way. Building this station is an incredible undertaking.
Some quick ISS facts:
- It is the largest and most complex international science project in history
- 27 nations are actively involved in its construction, most not having a space program
- When completed it will weigh over 1 million pounds
- It will ultimately be 356 feet across and 290 feet long
- The solar panels on the ISS would cover an acre
- It is in orbit approximately 250 statute miles from Earth
- It completes 15.77 orbits of the Earth each day
- The station has been continuously inhabited since November, 2002
- It will eventually have 15,000 cubic feet of living space
- The costs to create the ISS will exceed $130 billion, far beyond the original budget
- Five space tourists have visited, paying $25 million each for the opportunity
- The microgravity environment on the station is 88% of Earth’s gravity
- As of today it has been in orbit 3,362 days, and has been inhabited for 2,651 days
- For this pinnacle of human technological achievement, it looks rickety
There is a tremendous amount of valuable research already underway on the station, including experiments in biology, medicine, physics, biotechnology, materials research, cosmology and meteorology. Obviously, much more is planned and as more research modules come online the opportunities will increase. 2010 is tentatively planned to be the year of completion. But that will certainly be subject to change. Oddly, the year that the station is completed is the year that NASA decommissions the space shuttle with its replacement, the Orion/Constellation program, not coming online until 2015.
Some images I grabbed of the ISS for review:
This image, from 2001/2002, shows the initial operational solar arrays.
This is the station configuration as of November, 2007.
Very cool image of an astronaut capturing a reflection of the ISS and the Earth below in his face mask.
A detail shot of the connection between one of the solar arrays and a module. Note the astronaut working on the station in the upper center of the image.
Another detail. The exterior is incredibly complex. There is an astronaut in the image towards the center middle providing the scale of this module. The arm in the image was manufactured by Canada.
A space shuttle preparing to dock with the station. The shuttle has been the primary large payload delivery vehicle for the ISS. The Russians provide supplies and take away refuse via manned and unmanned Soyuz capsules.
A chart showing the breakdown of components and with nation’s of origin.
More from NASA. Check out the interactive informational tour.
Set aside your disdain for sticky web monikers for a moment. I have been following the “The Workplace of The Future” for a while now, and have been writing about it since last July. The Innovation Tours that I organize for my team are focused on surveying where boundaries are being pushed and how businesses are responding to changes in the ways people want to work and the resulting impact on meaningful workplace design. No doubt, the demands on the physical workplace environment are changing right before our eyes, being driven by rapid changes in technology, notions of work, telepresence, and shifts in workforce demographics. Intersecting these drivers is the concept of Office 2.0, which encompasses the increasing number of web-based collaborative work applications, such as the smart suite of web applications from 37 Signals. They are a fast, efficient way for users and teams to organize, manage, disseminate and develop information using a simple, intuitive interface. The value of these applications are that they let you work remotely with people in ways that make us less dependent on desktop workstations and organized offices. At their heart, they functionally support collaborative idea and project development and the efficient sharing of documents and files, but the potential for how they will potentially change the ways in which we work go far beyond the functional benefits and they will ultimately influence what work actually constitutes.
Google is in this space with the web-based offerings Google Apps, and Microsoft is throwing its weight behind a rekindled web-based initiative. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller start-up applications also struggling for attention. Start using these tools now. Familiarize yourself. Encourage your teams to do the same. In the imminent future more and more of our work will take place on the web, leveraging web-based applications, and less and less of it will happen within the confines of an office. Smart companies are already there, and are redefining their models based on their own understanding of how Office 2.0 benefits them. In the short term, the biggest benefit for companies is the liberation from legacy notions of space and real estate, in the long term a benefit will be a workforce distributed globally, not locally. Physical offices will become less about the housing of workers during working hours and more about space that supports in-person meetings and collaboration. Think about how you were working ten years ago, think about how you accomplished your tasks and contrast that to how you work now. Now recall ten years before that, and if you’re old enough, ten years before that. I think it is safe to say that we would be hard pressed to not acknowledge the dramatic change that continues to occur, only with increased speed.
There is an annual conference, aptly named the Office 2.0 Conference, focused on exploring developments around Office 2.0 which I am planning on attending this year.
Solar power generation offers amazing potential, but is hampered by the impracticality of being used effectively in urban settings. This is because the scale of solar power generation required for urban areas requires appropriately large solar power generators, and these require huge amounts of open and unfettered access to the sun. In many urban areas there just is no empty space left, and acquiring contiguous space to create large-scale urban solar power generation is cost prohibitive.
Not to be hampered by this, Sanyo, has offered up an innovative and beautiful solution that allows a large, effective solar power facility to coexist with the Japanese need for esthetic harmony, and fit into many urban and sub-urban situations. They call it the Solar Ark, for visually obvious reasons, and it is located in the Gifu prefecture in central Japan. It can be appreciated from the JR Tokaido bullet train as it jets past at 300 km/hr on an adjacent railway track. It is visually unique, impressive and memorable, and beyond being a highly effective solar photovoltaic power generation facility (collecting over 630 kW from over 5,000 solar panels generating upwards of 500,000 kWh of energy per year) it also serves as an ambassador to increasing awareness around the value of solar energy serving as a center for activities related to solar energy, ecology and science. Interestingly, the majority of the monocrystalline modules used were production rejects headed to the scrap pile. More images:
I orginanally came across the Solar Ark at Inhabitat.
We’re going through some very important exercises at work. The goal is a real and unflinching assessment of the state of our industry, architecture and design, and the role we play in that industry. The goal is to seriously challenge notions of status quo, and to question accepted practices. Hard questions are being asked. Tough answers are being put up on the white board. None of us disagree. But, what are we to do with this information, with these confirmations?
We are to change.
Actually, we have already been changing. We know that architecture has become a largely commoditized business, that the value provided by many architecture design firms has been slowly and consistently eroded in the United States over the last 20 to 30 years. Architects have allowed this to happen, and it has happened as issues of liability and responsibility have come to dominate project realities. But instead of embracing this and accepting the challenges, architecture has retreated behind drawings and plans and allowed others to step in and manage the process of building, of making. A long list of other trades were only too happy to step in and take on the historically traditional role of the architect, that of a master builder. Allowing this has effectively removed architecture from the value stream of building. Many, many firms now exist to produce drawings. They are production houses.
What we are finding is priority is the importance of reinserting ourselves into the making and effectively taking back the control of the value stream. We know that we must do what it takes to become the most relevant and influential force in building culture, this much is clear. What is unclear is exactly how we will get there, and I suspect we will continue to challenge and explode traditional notions of design and building. Embodied in this is the reinvention of our firm around core goals of design excellence, as we define it, and the reconnection of our design to implementation, to execution. Architecture is a strategic move, and that move will not be successful if architecture does not protect the value and integrity of the idea, the idea power, from inception through implementation.
While I have framed this discussion around my immediate industry, the reality is that it is powerfully meaningful for a diversity of creative professions who face very similar challenges.
After posting about Oscar Niemeyer and his 100th birthday I felt compelled to discuss another great Brazilian modernist architect, Paulo Mendes da Rocha. He was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2006, the second Brazilian architect to win the Pritzker after Oscar Niemeyer in 1988. In 2000 he was awarded the Mies Van Der Rohe prize for Latin American Architecture, also a tremendous honor. At 79 years old, Mendes da Rocha’s career now spans six decades since beginning his own practice in 1957. Considered one of the father’s of “Brazilian Brutalism” and part of Brazil’s avant-garde design movement, his work is signified by a simplicity of materials and forms. Brutalism for Mendes da Rocha was not about adherence to a style, though, and is instead about being guided by resolute design principles:
“Architecture is a human endeavor inspired by the nature all around us. We must transform nature; fuse science, art and technology into a sublime statement of human dignity.”
Paulo Mendes da Rocha
He is widely considered the most outstanding architect of Brazil and has steadfastly devoted his career to the creation of buildings and spaces guided by a sense of responsibility to those who inhabit then. His work also shows a responsibility to society, and a focus on honoring the context in which his architecture exists. Some of Mendes da Rocha’s work:
His residence in Sao Paulo. Mendes da Rocha has lived here since its completion in 1960.
The Chapel of St. Peter, Campos de Jordao, Brazil completed in 1987.
The Brazilian Museum of sculpture, noted for its unification of the museum with the landscape.
The architect reclining in a chair of his design, the “Paulistano”, created for the Paulistano Athletic Club in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Last evening, December 31, 2007 on New Year’s Eve, Ettore Sottsass passed away at his home in Milan. He was 90 years old. Remembered as one of the founders and the father of the postmodern Memphis design movement (of which I am definitely not a fan, but can respect from a distance), he was also the designer of many, many products that endure to this day. An architect by training, when Sottsass was able to break from Memphis he returned to his collaborative architecture practice in Milan where he practiced up to his death, enjoying a renaissance of his work in recent years with retrospectives in New York, Los Angeles and London.
A memorable Sottsass quote:
“Every color has a history. Red is the color of the Communist flag, the color that makes a surgeon move faster and the color of passion.”
Bear with the shameless self-promotion for a moment while I make a point.
Yes, that is me on the cover of a local commercial real estate publication. It came out last month and something about the interview with me inspired them to put me on the cover. Good times. The point of the interview was a conversation about how the modern workplace has changed, and will continue to change, and how my firm is beginning to experiment on itself to navigate this change and determine those workplace innovations that work, and those that do not. This is as much about organizational dynamics and ergonomics as it is about technology and communications, and it is part of a much larger exercise we are undertaking to develop a comprehensive program and master plan for our office and studio environments. By 2010 my firm will be in a new environment, and ideally one that we own, and this programmatical exercise will inform the type of space we ultimately need to occupy. It is also the inception of a longer term plan to treat our entire office environment as a laboratory, to experiment on ourselves, and be able to model different workplace innovations for our clients by using our own environments as proof of concept. Currently, we have an experimental area of our office, featured in the magazine, that is a studio dedicated to one comprehensive project, and we have used this studio to co-locate the central project team of 8-10 individuals. The space is flexible, surrounded by collaborative tools, and emphasizes the immediacy of communication. It is not private, it is not perfect, but it is a valuable experiment and the quality of work from this team has greatly benefited as a result.
The point that I want to make is that without having experienced and experimented with workplace innovations and organizational concepts it is impossible to appropriately represent them to our clients. For lack of a better expression, this would be “walking the talk.” A significant focus on this blog has been the concept of “the workplace of the future”, but what does that really mean? It means an environment that is about the work to be done and not about place. It means that substantial thought goes into the way an organization works, into its culture and business strategy, and how a work environment can manifest in support of these key aspects. It means that the conservative notion of office organization and layout is not only increasingly irrelevant, but actually counterproductive to the longer term success of a company. At its core, this is the physical embodiment within the environments that we create of superior occupant quality, of environments that are supportive of work and task while also enhancing health, well-being, and ultimately productivity. We know that an environment that we create today may be challenged anywhere from one to five years from now, that is how fast organizations and the markets within which they operate can change. The challenge to us is how we build in flexibility and anticipate this change so that we create value on behalf of our clients that allows their work environments to grow and change in advance of the demands of their markets and their people, without sacrificing the occupant quality of the environment. This is workplace innovation, and at its core involves a thorough understanding of organizational dynamics, occupant quality, product design, communications, materials technology, cultural analysis, and of an organization’s long term business strategy. These are the catalysts to the creation of successful work environments, and it mandates a rethinking of legacy notions of office and a focus on innovations that begin with an individual person’s needs and experiences as they relate to the physical environment.
Earlier this month an icon of modern design and architecture celebrated his 100th birthday. Oscar Niemeyer, the highly regarded and respected Brazilian architect, turned 100 on December 15th. He was an early innovator and pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete, and his stunning work blankets the cities of Brazil, but especially in Brasilia, the newly conceived capital city for Brazil for which he famously did the planning. Neimeyer continues to practice architecture (old architects never die…), and is active in projects that include a new city in Algiers and a cultural center for Avila, Spain.
Niemeyer is a committed communist, having joined the Brazilian Communist Party in 1945, and an atheist. Fidel Castro once exclaimed that “Niemeyer and I are the last Communists of this planet.” That aside, he began practicing architecture in 1934 and maintains a nearly 75 year legacy of design and innovation in the practice. Some images of Niemeyer’s work:
The Palácio da Alvorada, designed by Oscar Niemeyer, was the first building to be inaugurated in Brasília, in 1958 (two years before the official inauguration of the city).
Theater in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, Brazil, which opened in October 2005, in a park Niemeyer designed in the early 1950s.
Oscar Niemeyer Museum (NovoMuseu), in Curitiba, Brazil, completed in 2002
One of the most comprehensive and significant ways in which we can positively enhance the health of individuals, and society, in relation to their interactions with the built environments that we create is through the applied concept of building performance. Building performance is a broad organization of how these environments affect us. This occurs on both a micro, or personal, level as well as a macro, or broader societal level. At the micro-ergonomic level it has to do with the ways buildings balance human factors and provide basic environmental elements and systems that support health and well-being. This includes lighting and daylighting, thermal comfort, air quality, acoustics and privacy. While these all seem like logical qualitative elements of a healthy environment, we all know that they still go largely disregarded. With this is the macro-environment of a building, or how it performs in relation to the whole and in relation to the greater community. Ideally, a building that adheres to certified standards of building performance has been designed with a sustainable agenda and incorporates not only energy savings, but also schema for rain water runoff, waste and recycling, materials life-cycle, and systems that minimize the need for natural resources.
Historically, the science of building performance has done much to honor the perspective and experience of the individual, to ensure that the design of these environments is not in conflict with the health of those who will ultimately inhabit them. More recently, and in line with the larger sustainable movement within design, is how the inclusion of building performance analysis as it impacts the greater environment, and how it exists within this greater context. Taken as a whole this is a sensitive approach to building design, one that embraces constraints that ensure that architecture design is indeed doing no harm. This might sound trivial, but it is a growing movement. Sustainability and human factors are gaining ground within the design of products and services, and those early to this holistic approach are seeing the first financial and productivity based results.
“White space” is a term describing areas within flexible work environments that represent the diversity of work styles and the supporting environments sought by people who demand alternative ways to work. White space is the focus of an article in the New York Times, and follows an employee at an advertising firm as he spends his time being productive everywhere but at his desk. I think that is a terrific name for a flexible work environments, one that is more about our work and less about place. At its core, white space challenges the traditional notions and expectations of how we work, and the environments that we work in, and represents the growing movement in office design to provide employees with flexible space that can adapt to their tasks and their work styles.
Realize that this is not a generational thing. Most people, regardless of age, would prefer flexibility in their work environment and the freedom to tailor that environment to what is optimal for them. That might mean working at a stand-up desk, or while sitting in a common area. Also, the tasks that we need to perform, the work that we need to do, over the course of a day can change dramatically and are better supported by environments that can flex with these changing needs. What do I mean? Think about the productivity savings if meetings did not have to be in conference rooms and always scheduled for an hour. What if, in lieu of a fixed desk, an office was actually made up of a diverse series of work areas with each supporting specific types of work… from intense concentration and focus that might require quiet privacy, to a raucous and energetic brainstorm, to an open and ongoing collaborative environment that fosters easy communication and connectedness. The net result is a radically different approach to the way we work, and one that defies the 1950’s notion of an open plan work environment. Finally. Beyond this, though, it yields very different space demands for companies that ultimately result in smaller, more efficient office environments which changes the real estate equations and potentially saves tremendous investment in space.
A good example of an office environment that successfully blends white space is pictured above and is one of the environments in Google’s headquarters. Much thought and research went into their environment with the ultimate goal being real support of their people in their work. Google realized that tying people to desks is limiting, and in a fast moving and innovative company the people that make it up need to be fast moving and innovative. The environment of their offices is a manifestation of this need. People are rarely at their desks as they are busy engaging in work that is collaborative, impromptu, and occurring over a large campus. A desk would take them out of the flow.
While Google might be an extreme version of this, suffice it to say that more and more companies are seeing the value of white space in their environments. We know that the office as we know it has been under siege for over a decade. Our work has intensified to a point that the traditional office environment can no longer keep up. The value is in adaptive, flexible and customizable environment that empower and support people and allow them to tailor the environment to the immediate task at hand.
That’s a good question, and one the answer for which is elusive. Architecture, as a profession, is changing. It is also being subjected to change. Architects and architecture firms have little, if any, control over this and fight to stay ahead of the change. This involves technology, liability, commoditization, and asymmetrical competition (among many, many other things). While the world has changed, architects have retreated behind flimsy ramparts with a “let’s just wait this whole mess out” mentality, a recurring theme on schneiderism. This evening I came across a post on miragestudio7, a Malaysian, studying in Australia, architecture student’s blog which I have been frequenting (great writing, great perspective), that was a full-on shot across the bow. It was the posting of a comment left by a person who did their work in understanding where the value stream lies in the built environment. Here’s the entire comment as it is worth the read:
“I’m not an architect/architecture student. I’m a cad monkey. I did not chose architecture but I chose building design because the course was only two years, vs 5-6 and a 5 digit HECS debt.
It wasn’t just that, though.
I called lots of architects and building designers and the continuous complaint I heard from both is “grad architects are useless, they don’t know anything about construction or costing.” Also, there was the fact that building designers (evil, soulless creatures that we are) get 85% of the design work out there - and the grad architects I spoke to were only making 35-40K a year. Looking at Job ads, I realized that a building designer with 5 years experience earns around the same as an architect with 5 yrs experience (85-100K)-and the building designer has no HECS debt.
From my contact with the building industry so far (very minimal) it seems that architects have gotten a bad rep for often being impractical with actual building and structural specifics.
Construction is at the heart of building design and architecture. Whichever is better, if you don’t know construction and are depending on others to provide it you’re wages will reflect this. It’s that sentence, “As per engineers specifications” - everytime you write that, what you’re saying is, “I’m not capable of working this out, I’m referring it to someone who can -” and that engineer will be better paid than you because his skills are more necessary. A long time ago architects did all this technical planning themselves. The only modern equivalent is Santiago Calatrava. He says, “As per MY specifications.”
The more divorced architects become from the origin of their profession the less necessary they will be to it, and they’ll be paid less.”
Now, this comment echoes the reality of the place that architects have created for themselves. The money issue is but one manifestation of this place. The real implications are that for a process that was once architect driven, managed and owned… architects now find themselves sometimes totally ancillary, and not necessarily useful.
You hear the words “design thinking” a lot, and with greater frequency in the last year of so. It is not a new concept, by any stretch, but as the value of design has sparked the interest of a growing diversity of businesses in a wide range of industries, you are hearing it with more frequency and in places you might not have a few years ago. This hype around design thinking is also causing some conflict, as beyond the reality that few actually agree on what it means, even fewer people seem to understand what impact it might have on their business, or how to properly apply the concept. Here are four design thinking references pulled from the first page of a Google search:
Wikipedia: Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues. The stages of this process are suggested as: Define | Research | Ideate | Prototype | Choose | Implement | Learn
noisebetweenstations: Design thinking is collaborative, abductive, experimental, personal, integrative and interpretive
Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path: Design thinking is defined by a focus on customers, finding alternatives, ideation and prototyping, wicked problems, diverse influences, and emotion
iDesign: As an approach to understanding, design thinking is the establishment of needs, wants and goals, the defining of what is involved, the exploration of possibilities, suggesting possible solutions, innovating on your ideas, evaluating and measuring your success, and applying what you learn.
These are just from the first page of the search, which yielded 11,700,000 results. Reading through these four interpretations of design thinking there is commonality, but in a pretty vague way. Really, none of them are incorrect. It is that some have a more elaborate or well thought through concept of what design thinking is, and how it works. I do not think that anyone would argue that design thinking, as an approach to understanding and problem solving, does not offer a valuable alternative or complement to other methodologies of addressing problems and yielding solutions. The danger, though, is with the prevalence of the phrase and the hype surrounding it, there are situations where it might be the only approach considered. With the limited understanding and agreement on what design thinking really is, there are serious risks with thinking that it is a panacea for all of the problems we face. Clearly, it is not.
Without a doubt, design thinking is a buzzphrase, and with this is the real risk that it should be the de-facto approach to any kind of creative problem. This is limiting, and will ultimately produce solutions from only a certain perspective. Think of design thinking as a tool, and one that supplements the other critical analysis tools that are already at our disposal. When you approach problems with the appropriate tools, the path to solutions is well defined and supportive of goals. When you force a tool on an approach to a problem you stand to pervert and damage the process. Yes, design thinking is valuable, and it is especially valuable to clearly understand what it is, and is not. But it is in addition to the other tools for analyzing, understanding and measurement that exist.
In 1961 Playboy magazine brought these gentlemen together for a photo. From left are George Nelson, Edward Wormley, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Charles Eames and Jens Risom. I found this photo to be incredibly cool as sitting together here are, really, six pivotal individuals in the development and perpetuation of modernist design. Men who both individually and collectively left a lasting design legacy. Heavyweights, if you will. These six also had significant influence on the concept and execution of the open plan office environment, and its relationship to modernism, working with companies like Knoll, Herman Miller and Steelcase. How little we have progressed in the intervening time and how much potential still remains.
DWR highlighted the image and commentary from Jens Risom about the photo shoot and the accompanying article in Playboy.
That headline is a riff on a sentence in a report written by Steve Orfield and cognitive psychologist Jay Brand for the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). The report, titled “Better Sound Solutions” is a comprehensive analysis of the state of open plan office design, especially as it relates to the human factors around acoustics and sound attenuation. The line from the report is:
“We have long been facing a collision course between privacy and space utilization and the economics of space have won the battle so far.”
I don’t think that this statement should surprise anybody. Those of us who have any exposure to the realities of workplace design and the economics of space leasing and acquisition understand that companies are constantly trying to do more with less. The result is an open plan office that is at best dysfunctional and awkward, and at worst so disruptive as to damage overall workplace productivity and very negatively impact employee health and well-being. Much of this revolves around the concept of privacy within the workplace and as it is yet very difficult to present the economic argument for privacy, the situation continues to deteriorate. It is simply much too compelling and easy to make an economic argument based on space/lease costs, one that can be glaring on a cost analysis of a move/remodel.
The report goes on to describe a series of strategies for approaching this problem, and perhaps constructing an effective argument for the economics of designing effective environments, and those that support employee productivity, health and well-being. If you work in this space I suggest you download a PDF of the report and give it a review. I will be posting some of the key points from it over the next few days/weeks. You can download a PDF of the report from Haworth’s website.
I was interviewed last week by a reporter investigating the limitations in open plan workplace design. It was a good discussion, and he was pursuing what I felt to be a very appropriate theme… that most open plan offices are a result of economic decisions and fail to provide workers with a supportive workplace. Despite the fact that we all experience and acknowledge the challenges of being productive in most open plan environments, they persist. There is an abundance of research to challenge the open plan, but the reality is that workplace environments are first a product of the economics of the space lease or purchase, and second the result of the powerful drive to keep the investment in that space as low as possible and to expedite the process. The result is that decision makers continue to miss an enormously valuable opportunity.
People. The people that make up their organization. The people that do the work.
What company today wouldn’t rush to tell you that the people who work there are their most valuable asset? Nearly everyone says this, and it is reflective of the way the economy in the United States has dramatically changed over the last fifty years. And yet, these same people will also make workplace design decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with their acknowledged most valuable asset. But what if they did?
If they did they would find they have created environments for their people that are infinitely more supportive of activity and tasks, reflective of their culture, and supportive of employee health and welfare. They would have done this with minimal additional cost to the project and would yield tremendous gain with a work environment that supports their people. We would be remiss to not think that all of this together might have a positive impact on worker and workplace productivity.
I am incredibly optimistic. There is tremendous opportunity to think differently about the workplace, and bring research supported assertions to the decision making process that are supportive of human factors and the user experience. Through the effective use of research that already exists we have the opportunity to effectively challenge assumptions, to challenge the status quo, and create environments that inspire and stimulate people, environments that are more enjoyable and healthful. This is really very practical stuff and at its simplest is being smart about how we think about sound attenuation, lighting and daylighting, thermal comfort, and empowering the individual to self-create micro-environments that are ideal to their happiness, efficiency, and productivity.
It should be noted that much of this is not new. We have understood that open plan environments are problematic for some time, and research has existed to support dating back to the 1970’s. We have entered a time, though, where companies depend on every advantage possible to be successful in the marketplace and as a result are increasingly accepting and deman
