FROM ANYWHERE TO SOMEWHERE BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN THE WORKPLACE AND THE URBAN SPHERE
Sarah Gerber | FXFOWLE
FROM ANYWHERE TO SOMEWHERE: BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN THE WORKPLACE AND THE URBAN SPHERE Sarah Gerber, AIA, LEED GA
WHEN WE CAN WORK ANYWHERE, WORKING SOMEWHERE BECOMES INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT. Technology is transforming how we work and, therefore, how we define the workplace. Recent advancements have virtually rendered obsolete the way we have worked for decades: plugged into a particular place. While many 20th century futurists believed technology—mobile technology in particular—would physically separate us from each other, the result has been quite the opposite. We are social beings, hard-wired for interpersonal
exchange, and we thrive when we make connections that involve all of our senses. We communicate not only with words; we communicate through voice intonation, hand gestures, and other physical signifiers that are then interpreted through a unique set of receptors. We go to work just as much to interact with others as we do to perform office tasks. Today’s workforce must be connected, both virtually and physically, to remain informed and relevant. This point was vividly marked by Marissa Mayer’s 2013 decree that all Yahoo-ers must work in
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From Anywhere To Somewhere: Blurring the Lines Between Today’s Workplace and the Urban Sphere.
Figure 1:
17th Century London Coffee House, Lord Price Collection: Alamy Images
Sarah Gerber | FXFOWLE
the office and telecommuting would be frowned upon.1 Mayer was reacting less to a decline in productivity and more to a publicly perceived, company-wide loss of creativity. Leaders of the tech world realize that it is the face-to-face interactions, and often the serendipitous ones, that generate the creative thought necessary to stay competitive in a knowledge-based work environment. In today’s workplace “a more intensively social model of labour is coming into sight, where learning and work are no longer clearly separated and docile obedience is not enough.” 2 As technology continues to advance and generate large amounts of data, the individual who is able to synthesize and see creative connections through collaborative processes will be most valued by modern-day organizations. Time has shown us that while technologies are in almost constant flux, our need for social belonging remains constant. WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN AND YOU CAN FIND IT AT STARBUCKS. Today’s modern coffee houses often function as ersatz work environments, much like the coffee houses of 17th century London. These early coffee houses provided a comfortable, efficient environment that was conducive to informal, in-person communication. Unlike the local pub,
the coffee house was a public venue where it was possible to engage in serious conversation; it was the ideal location to discuss business and learn the news of the day. Initially, the conversations were primarily coincidental in nature. Customers sat at long communal tables where proximity encouraged listening in on strangers’ conversations without regard to their position or stature within society. Soon the coffee house became the designated place for conducting business and the conversations grew more sensitive in nature. Thus semi-private booths were introduced to separate serious business discussions from the lively banter of daily news. As the scale of conducting business continued to grow, the requirement for a dedicated meeting place increased in importance. The result was the modern-day concept of the office. One of the first purpose-built offices was the neoclassical New East India House, opened in 1729. As the London headquarters for the East India Company, it represented a clear separation of decision-making administrative functions from the physical trading of goods that took place in India. Designed by the merchant Theodore Jacobsen, this imposing structure on Leadenhall Street was built on the
1 A ll Things D. http://allthingsd.com/20130222/physically-together-heres-the-internal-yahoo-no-workfrom-home-memo-which-extends-beyond-remote-workers. 2 Cohen, Don and Prusak, Laurence, In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001.
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From Anywhere To Somewhere: Blurring the Lines Between Today’s Workplace and the Urban Sphere.
Figure 2:
Jacques Tati Film “Playtime” 1967. Still from Playtime courtesy of the Criterion Collection. http://www.criterion.com/films/651-playtime
foundations of the former Craven Mansion and consisted of numerous offices and meeting rooms, as well as a courtyard and garden for large receptions. Though the office workers of the East India Company were considered the intellectuals of their time because they managed work done in another country, they were essentially clerical drones, processing huge amounts
of printed information within a bureaucracy poised to take advantage of the nascent Industrial Revolution. By the 19th century—a period of rapid technological change that included the invention of the light bulb, telephone, and typewriter—a new theory of work management called Taylorism emerged. 3 Borrowing the methods of the assembly line, this approach relied heavily on the analysis of workflows to increase efficiency and considered employees little more than cogs in a large corporate wheel. Soon the
3T aylor, Frederick Winslow. Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1911.
Sarah Gerber | FXFOWLE
The Quickborner Team used conventional furniture and arranged it loosely within an open office setting to create microenvironments that responded to the variety of ways in which people work. This concept was the first to acknowledge multiple work activities within an office through the simple arrangement of furniture, panels, and planters to delimit areas and provide a certain degree of privacy.
Figure 3:
Osram Offices in Munich, Germany 1965 by The Quickborner Team—The new idea promoted by Burolandschaft encouraged all levels of staff to sit together on the same open floor. ©HENN
office environment began to physically emulate the manufacturing environment with long rows of identical desks performing repetitive clerical tasks. Terms such as “work ethic” and “best practices” were coined to describe this analytical approach to work processes in which physical activity (like picking up the phone and filing papers) was broken down into its smallest, most time-efficient units. The machine-like approach of Taylorism resulted in high employee turnover and was later challenged by socialist theories that sought to understand the effects of human relationships on work performance. One of these concepts was the “Burolandschaft” or “office landscape,” developed by a team of management consultants based in Quickborn, Germany, during the 1950s.4
A strong advocate of the socialist-based “office landscape” concept was the American furniture company Herman Miller, founded by D.J. DePree, the grandson of Dutch émigrés who settled in Zeeland, Michigan. The European socialist beliefs of Zeeland’s settlers had a strong influence on DePree’s corporate philosophy; therefore, it seemed only natural that he would seek to make an American version of the Quickborner Team’s office landscape at Herman Miller. To do this, DePree developed the Herman Miller Research Corporation (HMRC) and brought on inventor Robert Propst, along with industrial designer George Nelson. Most notably, Propst engaged a team of psychologists, anthropologists, scholars of ornament and pattern, and sociologists to understand how people work, how information travels, and how the office layout affects worker performance. Propst believed “the maximum use of our senses is the most compelling reason for grouping people together in offices, grouping offices together in single large buildings, and putting many large buildings together in compact communities.” His flexible, kit-of-parts approach was a manifesto of sorts that outlined the office as a “critical object in the sensorium of modern experience.” 5 The product of his approach was the Action Office.
4 Francis Duffy, Colin Cave and John Worthington. Planning Office Space. Great Britain: The Architectural Press Ltd., 1976, 69. 5 Propst, Robert (1968) The Office: A Facility Based on Change, Herman Miller
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Figure 4:
Herman Miller “Action Office II.” Courtesy of Herman Miller, Inc.
Introduced in 1964, the Action Office system sought to provide multiple furniture configurations within an open office landscape filled with IBM Selectric typewriters and Xerox copy machines. But its design was deemed too expensive, difficult to assemble, and only appropriate for management office use. Propst went back to the drawing board and developed Action Office II, this time without the involvement of Nelson, whose aesthetic-focused approach did not meld with Propst’s vision for flexible design. Corporations saw the economy in this simple kit-of-parts solution, thereby making the Action Office II the new benchmark for modern office design. While the system
was readily adopted for its cost efficiency, its intended approach was not in line with capitalism’s focus on controlling the work process. The result was a system of furniture in which the parts were limited to a one-size-fits-all configuration known as the “cubical,” a 20th century furniture system relegated to a 19th century Taylorism approach. Propst’s research was focused on enhancing performance by developing a furniture system that would respond to our social requirements. Unfortunately, most corporations chose to sacrifice worker effectiveness in the name of a system efficiency that removed the worker’s ability to reconfigure the furniture to suit his or her individual needs. And so the cubicle farm (often parodied in Dilbert comic strips) became the new corporate office landscape.
Sarah Gerber | FXFOWLE
Figure 5:
Dilbert Comic Strip. DILBERT ©2011 Scott Adams. Used By permission of UNIVERSAL UCLICK. All rights reserved.
The modern workplace could not be limited to the use of a system like the cubicle if it was to keep up with the everchanging, global environment. The onset of the Great Recession of 2007 required a more economical use of real estate, spurring the replacement of the cubicle with a new type of workstation called the bench. A simple solution borrowed from collaborative environments like the trading floor, the bench was a single-surface unit shared by multiple workers. It encouraged ease of office reconfiguration by moving people rather than furniture parts. The benching system’s efficiency benefited from new technology as well, using flatpanel computer monitors which hovered over the desk surface via bracket arms. Businesses also contributed to this overall space-use efficiency by implementing alternative workplace strategies (AWS) that incorporated shared practices, such as hoteling and hot desking. Today, these seating formats are often referred to as free-addressing or touchdown spaces, and commonly seek to provide a 1.3:1 model
of employee to desk ratio rather than the traditional 1:1 ratio. But history repeats itself, and soon the adoption of the open office environment was taken to extremes, creating a one-size-fits-all approach similar to the Dilbert-days of the cubicle. Today’s workplace must acknowledge the complexity in the way we work, adjusting for individual or group settings as well as introvert or extrovert personalities. It must respond to an evolving economy as well as to new tools like handheld devices, which are updated at an exponential rate. This paradigm shift in the way we work requires an office space rich in workplace options that can be measured both quantitatively and qualitatively. To do this, businesses are creating blended work environments, remarkably similar to the environment of the 17th century coffee house, where perceived hierarchy is removed and settings can accommodate both formal and informal interaction. Facilitated by WiFi technology, businesses are adopting solutions from other practice models with similar functional requirements. For example, the office environment now shares many of the spatial qualities seen in hotels and airport lounges, where leisure and business are blended into one setting. In the not-too-distant
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From Anywhere To Somewhere: Blurring the Lines Between Today’s Workplace and the Urban Sphere.
Figure 6:
888 Boylston Sky Garden
past, these informal areas were seen as rare luxuries. Today, access to amenities such as cafes, coffee bars, and fitness centers are a primary consideration when trying to attract top-tier talent known as the knowledge worker. Sometimes these amenities are immersed within the office tower itself; other times they are provided through a larger, urban ecosystem.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. —John Donne
A recent example of an amenity-rich work environment is Boston Properties’ 888 Boylston designed by FXFOWLE Architects, now under construction in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston. One of the speculative office tower’s most notable amenities is the opportunity to provide a sky garden on each tenant floor. Each elevated garden is an indoor-outdoor space designed to promote employee productivity and wellness through natural ventilation and sunlit, southern views. Through the use of WiFi, workers will be able to step outside the traditional boundaries of the office floor onto the terrace to conduct informal business in a vibrant, healthy setting. In addition to this unique office tower amenity, 888 Boylston will also benefit from an Eataly food hall located within the adjacent Prudential Center. The project
Sarah Gerber | FXFOWLE
Wearables devices to reach about $20bn by 2017, growing at over 60% CAGR $20,000
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Figure 7:
Wearables Chart—Goldman Sachs Investment Research 09.03.2014. Courtesy Goldman Sachs & Co.
is part of a larger Back Bay ecosystem, which consists of hospitality, retail, and food options, that extends well beyond the Prudential Center. The tower’s sustainable environment, along with its distinguished neighborhood and wealth of amenities, are integral to the branding of 888 Boylston and its Class A office environment.
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Another developer capitalizing on amenities is Brookfield Office Properties, the current owner of the site formerly known as the World Financial Center. Brookfield has rebranded the WFC complex as Brookfield Place to respond to the Financial District’s evolving workforce and burgeoning residential population by introducing several amenities such as a 100-infant childcare facility, a 35,000-square-foot gym, and a second floor filled with a variety of fast-casual food
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From Anywhere To Somewhere: Blurring the Lines Between Today’s Workplace and the Urban Sphere.
options. To further entice neighborhood involvement, Brookfield hosts a full lineup of events in its public hall which has a dramatic view of the Hudson River and nearby marina. Most importantly, the amenities are intended to service both the Brookfield office towers and adjacent residential areas. This hyper-workplace recognizes the benefits of creating a vibrant, shared environment that blurs the distinction between business and leisure thanks to the physical freedom allowed by mobile technology.
81%
believe that in the future, industry boundaries will dramatically blur as platforms reshape industries into interconnected ecosystems. —Accenture Technology Vision 2015 Survey
A MICKEY MOUSE APPROACH TO WORKPLACE DESIGN As mobile technology reinforces our inherent desire to stay connected, the architecture profession is tasked with finding increasingly innovative ways to respond. We can learn a lot by looking at the interconnected ecosystem created by The Walt Disney Company, who recently made a billion-dollar investment towards upgrading its theme park and resorts in Orlando, Florida. In 2014, Walt Disney launched the MagicBand: mobile technology in the form of a rubber wristband that uses radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to transmit user information. The MagicBand is an RFID bracelet that contains a high-frequency, passive inlay which removes the need for paper tickets, hotel room key cards, and credit cards. It also has a low-frequency active transceiver that provides data related to queue movements and use patterns, allowing management to measure guest behavior in real time.6 The band is part of a larger Disney-curated experience that begins when a guest registers with the online vacation management system known as My Magic+. By using mobile technology, Disney is able
6 Swedberg, Claire. “MagicBands Bring Convenience, New Services to Walt Disney World.” RFID Journal. June 16, 2014.
Sarah Gerber | FXFOWLE
Figure 8:
Mobile technology: Wristbands and smartphone apps are increasingly being used by companies to improve user experience while creating a useful data base of client information.
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to combine data from all of its various hotels, restaurants, rides, and retail outlets into a unified data bank of information. The Magic Kingdom’s approach could be used to inspire new thinking about design of the workplace as today’s office functions expand into the urban environment through the use of mobile technology. Recently, FXFOWLE was engaged to reposition a convention center next door to its 888 Boylston project in Boston. The 1980s function of the center has been superseded by a larger facility in South Boston, requiring it transform its business model from a traditional expo center to a boutique operation that focuses on providing a personalized meeting environment outside the workplace. Similar to work environments found in urban office towers, the Boston center requires a symbiotic relationship between business and attractive amenities. While not considered a typical work environment by today’s standards, the convention center is gradually being redefined as an extension of the workplace. Since the center is a place where people conduct business, establishing a strong mobile connection to its neighborhood would reinforce the operations of both the center and the Back Bay community. The center’s greatest branding asset is right in its own Back Bay backyard. The neighborhood is rich with American history and lined with pleasant, pedestrianscaled streets, creating an authentic experience that is uniquely Boston. In addition to its well-known shopping areas, Newbury Street and the Prudential Center, the neighborhood is near another amenity,
the Charles River Esplanade, which is undergoing a revitalization effort of its own. Back Bay also has numerous hotels and restaurants within easy walking distance of the boutique convention center. With such a diverse array of amenities right next door, why would the center invest in its own? Tapping into the neighborhood assets would reduce overhead costs associated with maintaining and operating food service and other convention center support areas while reinforcing the rich vitality of the community. The sum of the neighborhood is therefore greater than its individual parts. Both the center and Back Bay share in Chamber of Commerce publicity and revenue streams—and most importantly, data that allows for the strategic planning of future convention events. By using a mobile technology concept similar to Disney’s My Magic+ and MagicBand, the convention center would connect with neighboring businesses through one data-driven system. This one-stop-shopping approach would also reduce the friction encountered by event planners when trying to create a memorable convention experience. A unified mobile technology system would allow a convention attendee to use one device, such as a smartphone or wristband, to unlock their hotel room door or charge dinners, drinks, and entertainment throughout Back Bay. Most importantly, the convention center and its neighboring businesses would gain valuable data on the spending habits and preferences of convention-goers for future functions.
Sarah Gerber | FXFOWLE
Figure 9:
Flock of Starlings—Patterns found in nature, similar to the flight pattern of starlings, are studied by researchers to identify mathematical patterns that can be adapted to workplace processes.
This proposed scenario illustrates the power of mobile technology and its ability to connect us across a wide range of settings, while influencing our architecture, and therefore, our urban environment. In some ways, we find ourselves back where we
started: inherently social beings, sharing, planning, and strategizing in a communal space, like London’s early coffee houses. But in this rebirth, we have grown far beyond physical walls. More and more, working somewhere and the art of placemaking is increasing in importance, and those who can capitalize on the potential for creative connections through our newfound freedom, untethered to anyplace in particular, are the ones who will drive the future workplace.
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From Anywhere To Somewhere: Blurring the Lines Between Today’s Workplace and the Urban Sphere.
Sarah Gerber | FXFOWLE
Sarah Gerber, AIA, LEED GA Sarah brings over 25 years of experience in both interior and exterior architecture, through all phases of design. She has a special interest in innovation, focusing on how developing technologies affect the way people live and work. Sarah received her Bachelor of Design in Architecture degree from the University of Florida, and her Master of Architecture degree from Washington University. She was part of FXFOWLE’s team from 2012-2016.
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