schneiderism

I had the opportunity to participate in a design charette yesterday put on by Steve Orfield and Wes Chapman at Orfield Laboratories. The charette is part of their Open Plan Working Group, which seeks to address issues of building performance, user experience, and innovation in workplace design. Steve Orfield has been working, through effective and substantive research, for over 30 years to support investigations into workplace quality, worker health, and challenging accepted norms of office design, organization, and function. Human factors is a huge driver of Orfield’s work, and the belief that the concept of “Architectural Dynamics (AD)” can change the world.

Organizations like Herman Miller and Lutron support his efforts, and sponsor the OPWG. Both were present at the charette yesterday. Specifically, this event was to explore opportunities to improve a building environment by the creative application of Architectural Dynamics. AD refers to environments that are controlled and influenced over time based on knowledge and inputs from occupant preferences and actual occupant behavior. AD seeks to effect change in these environments through such things as bio-mimicry, cuing, stimulation, calming, and other forms of occupant reinforcement. The goal is to change the workplace from a non-preferred and involuntary environment into a preferred and voluntary environment. Specific areas of influence are lighting/daylighting and view, thermal comfort, and sound addition and attenuation. Lofty goals, to be sure, but Steve and his group are far down the path of effecting real change.

The charette began with occupant research presented that challenges suppositions and assertions we all have about the places in which we work. A great example of this research was measurements of occupant valuations in regards to daylighting and view. Having an outside view is shown to greatly outweigh valuations of natural daylight. That was surprising.

The design charette involved looking closely at an existing structure with significant design liabilities, and how the individual design teams might mitigate the building limitations by creatively applying AD concepts. The results were very, very cool. While there was quite a bit of similarity between the teams, there was also great difference… especially with regards to how far each team was able or willing to push the concepts. Ultimately, there was tremendous alignment on enhancing audience experience, both from a macro (building-wide) and micro (individual) perspective. There was much discussion on how much control should be given to individuals, and how to manage this control to maintain energy efficiency and minimize negatively affecting other individuals in close proximity. I came away with a much enhanced understanding both of the impact of design decisions in the workplace, and how to design to more effectively enhance the occupant experience. We want the environments we create to enhance health and well being, and to align appropriately to an individuals work style preferences. Yes, this has dramatic affects on productivity, but first and foremost it supports more healthy work environments. Increased productivity is a nice result from this goal.

All of this seeks to challenge and change the reliance on the 1950’s metaphor of workplace design. This is a metaphor that needs to be cracked open as the places in which we spend upwards of 8 hours a day, five+ days a week are not designed to support us in our work or in our interactions. They are created out of economic decisions based on minimizing expense and gaining as much space efficiency as possible. They are created out of building practices that have stood largely unchallenged by research and health assessments. We have a responsibility as designers to hold ourselves to research based standards of performance in the environments that we create, to ensure that our designs are adding health and NOT detracting. To paraphrase Steve Orfield, we should look to the Hippocratic oath for inspiration and commit our work to “doing no harm.”