Florian Idenburg
Work Environments Space Work
Spring 2017
Studio Report
Florian Idenburg
Work Environments Space Work
NASA’s John Houbolt explaining his space rendezvous concept for lunar landings, which was used as the primary mission mode for the Apollo moon landings.
Work Environments Space Work
Studio Instructor Florian Idenburg
This design studio at Harvard University Graduate School of Design is the last of three sponsored by the furniture company Knoll that examines, through research and design, the disruptive transformations that occur globally in environments where work takes place. Understanding the unique position of the office to both register changes within society and to actively reshape traditional hierarchies, tomorrow’s workplace must arrive with a clear attitude and outlook. This studio series attempts to explicate existing cultural trends and perspectives, using this knowledge to speculate on future scenarios and potential responses within the “worksphere.”
Teaching Associate Duncan Scovil
With this in mind, the third edition examines the opportunities and restrictions of the government workspace, focusing on the spatial and organizational structures of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Studio made possible with the generous support of Knoll, Inc.
Students Tomotsugu Ishida, Taro Kagami, Danielle Kasner, Yoonjin Kim, Michael Matthews, Steven Meyer, Meaghan Pohl (TA), Farnoosh Rafaie, Ho Cheung Tsui, Lu Zhang, Yubai Zhou Review Critics Elizabeth Christoforetti, Andrew Holder, Timothy Hyde, Wonne Ickx, Zeina Koreitem, Jeanette Kuo, Benjamin Pardo, Mark Rukamathu, Oana Stanescu, LeeAnn Suen, Guillermo Trotti, Cameron Wu
The primary crew for the Apollo 1 mission practice water egress procedures.
Foreword 10
Florian Idenburg
Knowledge 16 Conference Center Michael Matthews 20 Shapeshift Danielle Kasner
Lifestyle
40
Vantage Points Yubai Zhou
44
Comfort First Tomotsugu Ishida
Survival
Enterprise
24 COHORT Steven Meyer
48 XSXL Taro Kagami
28
The Mothership Ho Cheung Tsui
52 Hyper-Bound Meaghan Pohl Farnoosh Rafaie
Politics
Afterword
32
Undulated Wall Lu Zhang
58
Benjamin Pardo
36
Shrinking Universe Yoonjin Kim
60 Contributors
Engineers working on the Voyager 2 spacecraft at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1977.
Foreword
10
Assuming a strategically broad view, these explorations are intended to follow this investigation across scales and approaches, examining with equal focus the potential effects of worldwide economic swings and small-scale furniture innovations, corporate and governmental structures, and the individual response. Understanding the unique position of the workplace to register societal transformations and to actively reshape traditional hierarchies, tomorrow’s workplace must arrive with a clear attitude and outlook. Examining both the opportunities and restrictions of government work, this final edition of the Work Environments studio series was developed around the spatial and organizational structures of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Considering the multifaceted identity of government work, no agency better embodies both the good that government can do and the challenges facing its accomplishment. With a mission-based approach, NASA aggressively pursues seemingly impossible, high-risk problems as it explores the unknown. The original “moon-shot factory,” the agency exemplifies the potential for success that comes from clear communications between a range of distinct work environments: traditional offices, laboratories, fabrication spaces, field offices, shuttles, and space stations in orbit. Underlying the intense ambition of space work is the very real potential for failure that might be caused by the disturbance of a single element of any of NASA’s complex assemblies. As such, the rehearsal of failure is a key component of the work they pursue. Ultimately, communication between different work environments, and through the interfaces created to operate and manage assemblies in space, define a mission’s success. NASA’s contribution also transcends traditional profit motives, instead openly disseminating scientific advancements as a national (and often global) service. Regularly collaborating with public, private, and international organizations, the discoveries that emerge from NASA’s facilities inspire invention across industry and culture.
11
Florian Idenburg
Often dismissed as overly bureaucratic, inefficient, or even dreadful, government offices are nonetheless vital components of the worksphere. Unlike its corporate counterpart, the government office serves as an interface point between the public and the system through which that public is assembled; it is an opening through which to engage, confront, resolve, or simply process the challenges of greater society. Tasked with keeping a body of people—a city, state, or country—together, government labor is driven by factors distinctly different to those of the corporation. Unrestrained by the need to secure future profit and achieve longevity, the government must focus its attention on how best to serve to citizens, by offering benefits, providing protection, promoting stability, and inspiring growth and advancement for a society. Despite its responsibilities and its recurring, as well as lasting, impact on daily life, innovation is not necessarily a quality associated with government. Yet it is exactly in (sufficiently funded) government where there is space for experimentation, shooting for the moon, even failure. Driven by societal concerns and determined to succeed, government offices regularly reorder the everyday. What is the role of space, structure, and objects within this dynamic? Can architecture affect insight? Can order foster innovation? The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) understands the relevance of these shifting dynamics, and the need for its students to develop knowledge around the subject. And the Harvard GSD aims to be at the forefront of the discussion, as new economic orders affect people’s mental, social, and economic well-being. The furniture company Knoll has greatly invested in understanding not only the workplace of today, but also in anticipating how it will change in the near and distant future. To this end, Knoll has enabled a select group of Harvard GSD students to examine, through research and design over the course of three years, the disruptive transformations that occur globally in environments where work takes place.
Foreword
12 Top: Overall site plan and aerial view of the main campus of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena.
Middle: Location of student projects at the JPL. Bounded by the main entrance to the campus and central pedestrian outdoor space, the site currently houses a visitor center and two connected research buildings.
Bottom: Views of the JPL’s campus and workspaces. The campus works to balance controlled environments with outdoor amenities.
1. Knowledge Looking beyond milestone events—the launches and landings that define NASA’s public image— the agency’s most significant contribution has, and continues to be, the generation of knowledge. The pursuit of discovery shapes the culture of NASA, determining the course of future mis-
sions while also requiring constant analysis and information processing. “Conference Center” and “Shapeshift” examine the role of knowledge production as the key driver of NASA. 2. Enterprise In new companies such as SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, NASA faces its first real private competition within the United States. Even as NASA continues to help fund these nascent enterprises, it must also compete with them for talent and publicity, requiring the agency to more fully embrace its role as investor and manager. “COHORT” and “The Mothership” look at NASA’s relationship with private industry, identifying the opportunities and pitfalls in emerging space start-ups. 3. Politics Shaped by politics, the history of space travel has always been a tug-of-war between national and international interests, with countries seeking to explore and protect space as an untouched natural realm, while simultaneously working to assert their position as leaders on this new frontier. In this context, the work environment becomes an alternating domain of collaboration and secrecy, with strictly controlled access. The proposals “Undulated Wall” and “Shrinking Universe” scrutinize the complexities of diplomacy and internationalism that necessarily arise from space work. 4. Lifestyle Understanding the future of any human space travel to include longer missions, the typical limits of the human body must be overcome. Psychological and physical stability are equally vital in the work environment that is a testing ground for methods of coping in space, as well as mitigating stresses on earth. “Vantage Points” and “Comfort First” offer alternative assessments of NASA’s safety-first attitude, providing a broader spectrum of possible lifestyles. 5. Survival With climate change threatening the long-term habitability of the earth, back-up plans must be pursued. Looking both outward to potential life-supporting planets, and inward at the changing dynamics of the earth’s climate, NASA is the best hope for a solution. Speed and scale emerge as the crucial drivers of the work environment. “XSXL” and “Hyper-Bound” investigate NASA’s role in addressing global warming and finding alternative environments to maintain human life.
13
Florian Idenburg
This wide-reaching form of engagement suggests a model of work that, while necessarily structured, remains open and responsive to change. In order to test the ideas of the assembly and the interface, and to think through the intricacies of the systems that make up the government, the studio focused on a single center within NASA: the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Based in Pasadena, California, JPL occupies a unique cultural place within NASA. Physically a government facility, JPL is administered by a private research university, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Its workforce is comprised of employees from both organizations, as well as external contractors. Historically more relaxed and open than other NASA facilities, JPL tackles problems of conceptualizing, designing, engineering, assembling, testing, and operating NASA’s robotic spacecraft program and deep space communication networks. The work generated through this studio attempts to build on JPL’s innovative legacy, exploring the history of both its physical production and scientific discovery, and the vital role of failure in its conceptual development process, to produce a series of speculations and provocations grounded in historical research, that nevertheless anticipate change. Thanks to the generosity of JPL, the studio visited its headquarters and facilities, learning firsthand about the center’s unique innovation culture. This report is an exceptionally compact summary of an astonishing amount of research produced over the course of 14 weeks by the 11 students who comprised the studio. Extensive analyses informed 10 design speculations, situated on JPL’s campus in Pasadena. Each of these investigations extrapolates trends observed in contemporary work culture, developing various attitudes, be they idealistic or amoral, to arrive at a clear response. Articulated as future missions for NASA, the proposals are presented here as provocative scenarios to inform ongoing discussions of the worksphere in flux. While each project has a unique perspective on a specific aspect of the work environment and its relevance to the government, NASA, and JPL, together they can be broadly categorized under five key themes, or topics of investigation:
Firing Room 2 of the Launch Control Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida during the launch of the Apollo 12 mission in 1969.
16
Conference Center
Comprised of a network of workers dispersed across the country and bridging public and private organizations, NASA is an organization defined by its ability to facilitate internal communications. Scientists and engineers must not only imagine and develop singular structures and systems for space, but also astronauts and contractors must understand and operate their joint creations. The restrictions on NASA’s budget ensure there is constant competition for funding, contributing to a culture of pitches and gatherings, as individuals and teams look to gain opportunities to pursue their research focuses. Equally important to early development and operations, the scale and potential impact of information that is discovered during missions requires wide-ranging discussion between multiple parties to process and apply recovered data. As a government entity, NASA distributes its “product” freely, sharing knowledge gains with the public. Conferences, hack-a-thons, and public competitions all engage larger communities in analyzing the information NASA generates. The pursuit of the unknown becomes useful only in the collaboration between workers and society. “Conference Center” leverages this discursive culture in a new forum at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) campus in Pasadena, designed to serve as a central space of presentation, debate, and contest for the NASA community. “Conference Center” not only physically brings together disparate workers of varying demographics and backgrounds, but also motivates them to pit their concepts against each other. In this dynamic, ideas emerge from disciplinary silos and are placed under diverse scrutiny, with the lure of funding, or at least recognition, dangled as a possible reward. Group management is the principle task of the physical environment, offering different scales of congregation for meetings, lectures, symposia, and debates. The clock drives such interactions, as strategic scheduling creates moments of overlap and arranges campus-wide events. Finding space for the casu-
Michael Matthews
al aside and continued conversation is integral to the facilitation of innovation. To organize these disparate exchanges, “Conference Center” uses physical structure to facilitate circulation and gathering space, and to absorb the changing situations that rigorous scheduling demands. Unlike a traditional conference venue that sprawls across a landscape, this new facility addresses its scale of gatherings through vertical layers. A field of tree-columns reaches up to connect all levels of the building, branching out above in contrast to the open field of the ground plane below. Spaces of congregation grow smaller as they move upwards through the building, producing a hierarchy of scales. The column “trunks” facilitate movement, creating key nodes of interaction and points for serendipitous encounters. Relating the spaces above and below, the tree-columns link the multiple stages of knowledge production from initial conversations and workshops to public presentation and debate. As conference goers travel up along the tree structure and through its center, they engage in both a literal and physical way—bound by precise scaling and located encounters while moving from the core outward to various branches. “Conference Center” refocuses NASA’s ultimate aim, emphasizing knowledge production over physical production, and seeing innovation arise in heated debate and open brainstorming sessions rather than the laboratory’s quiet. The task of transforming information into knowledge requires constant dialogue. “Conference Center” provides a technological forest for ongoing JPL discussions, a casual yet highly structured environment that opens itself up to maximum visual connections and intersections. In so doing, the center works to overcome the limitations of both scale and time, creating space for continuing conversations, where the whiteboard and the clock work together to render knowledge visible. By heightening the social aspect of knowledge exchange, “Conference Center” creates opportunities to activate local, social, and tacit forms.
auditorium (sm.)
auditorium (sm.)
auditorium (sm.)
auditorium (lrg.)
auditorium (lrg.)
auditorium (sm.)
meeting rooms (lrg.)
meeting rooms (lrg.)
auditorium (lrg.)
private phone booths
meeting rooms (sm.)
auditorium (lrg.)
private phone booths
17
sectional program strategy onal program strategy
lounges
lounges
OPEN meeting OFFICE rooms (sm.)
OPEN OFFICE lecture hall laboratories
storage
classrooms (sm.)
lecture hall
classrooms (sm.) classrooms (lrg.)
upper levels
laboratories
technology lab
storage classrooms (lrg.)
technology lab
er levels
nd level
north entrance (pedestrian)
AUDITORIUM
MULTI-PURPOSE SPACE
north entrance (pedestrian)
east entrance (vehicular)
lobby
ground level
service road loading dock AUDITORIUM
service road
HIGH BAY FABRICATION
TRAINING MULTI-PURPOSE SPACE CENTER lobby
TRAINING CENTER
mechanical rooms (basement)
loading dock
HIGH BAY FABRICATION
cafe
mechanical rooms (basement)
Top: Diagram of relations between the programmatic elements of “Conference Center.” Even as spaces grow smaller and more private at higher levels, the tree-columns relate them directly to programs below.
east entrance (vehicular)
cafe
Bottom: Axonometric drawing of tree-columns that define the organization of “Conference Center. Calibrated in relationship to spaces above and below, the forest of structure adopts a highly specific character.
Conference Center
18 Top: “Conference Center� exterior perspective. Upper floor slabs and the roof extend beyond the workspaces below, producing shade and outdoor gathering spaces.
Bottom: Section drawing highlighting relationships between levels and across the compound. The shifting floor plates create open atrium spaces, allowing visual connections despite physical separation.
6 4 3
Michael Matthews
19
7 5
0 5 10 25 ft
2
GROUND LEVEL PLAN 1
11 10
8 2
9
First level floor plan. The ground plane echoes the surrounding topography, staggering to accommodate different gathering spaces. Tree-column “trunks� break up the space, serving as circulation and service cores.
20
Shapeshift
Innovation has become the main determinant of success, both in a financial sense and in society at large. The drive for progress, as a means to verify the health of a company, has created a culture of perpetual forward motion within the corporate world, particularly in the technology sector. By contrast, government can seem to move frustratingly slowly, and to offer only minor change and occasional invention. Even NASA, the US government’s most visible innovator, is motivated by a different vision and a different set of priorities, focused on documenting and cataloging that which already exists in space. Despite its heralded discoveries, NASA as an organization is focused on the past. Its workers act as archaeologists at a cosmic scale, to uncover the scope, history, and origins of the universe. The accumulation of knowledge is NASA’s ultimate mission; documents, samples, and raw information are carefully catalogued and stored. While the full meaning of what has been found may never arrive, the promise of understanding generates and perpetuates the need for further collection. New findings must be sorted, edited, and made accessible. The work of NASA is therefore twofold: to collect and to sort. The worker, as both scientist and curator, parses through, highlights, and presents discoveries in an attempt to understand, communicate, and debate the history of the universe. Considering the expanding volume of knowledge that defines NASA, “Shapeshift” offers a new model of archive and information organization. With new documents of space and space travel rapidly accumulating, old samples are gradually being limited by those technologies that located and collected them. The individual human worker can no longer be relied upon to comprehensively catalog and recall needed information across diverse applications. Both a storage and research facility, the new “Shapeshift” structure deploys artificial intelligence (AI) in NASA work environments. A series of information collection and distribution devices are introduced throughout the “Shapeshift”
Danielle Kasner
compound, designed to explore the three most common types of AI: reactive, limited memory, and self-aware. Three increasingly corporeal characters—the stack, the gypsy cart, and the gigantesque—work together to organize and disseminate knowledge within the storage facility. Expanding the role of the archive to accommodate different forms of information and information recollection, “Shapeshift” divides its facility into active and inactive forms of knowledge. Primarily reusing the existing buildings on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) campus, “Shapeshift” produces two new companion structures: a stand-alone visitor center and a floating addition above the two buildings currently on site. A series of ramps stitch these disparate buildings together, allowing for fluid movement of the information devices between the four structures. While the traditional archive and fabrication spaces are split between the existing structures, which offer space to deal with artifacts directly, the new workspaces—the museum and the artificial intelligence lab—address themselves to ephemeral and digital forms of knowledge. These two new environments offer full technological mediation. As paired interventions, the new structures give freedom to the worker, created by automation and the pleasure it permits. “Shapeshift” also takes advantage of the space savings that results from automation by pushing the floor area to its limit, packing and storing objects and AI units away until needed. Understanding NASA’s workspace as a zone of information transportation, access, and fabrication, the “Shapeshift” compound makes the process more efficient by making it more sentient. The production of AI as an active element within the office environment frees up the floor plates to more efficient packing, enabling clearer delineations between spaces of storage and realms of engagement. Taking on the tasks of the archivist, the AI “workers” of “Shapeshift” free their human counterparts to pursue the more complex and nuanced task of determining the history of space.
760 bookshelves 760 bookshelves
550 desks desks 342550 bookshelves 342 bookshelves
342 bookshelves
760 bookshelves 760 bookshelves
342 bookshelves desks 342550 bookshelves
180 desks
550 desks desks 342550 bookshelves
180 desks 180 desks
342 bookshelves
180 desks 180 desks
180 desks desks 180
Diagrams of furniture, shelving, and AI units packed within the floor plates of existing JPL buildings. Studies focus on maximum occupancy of the area, and the impact of structure and cores on this density.
21
760 bookshelves
Spaceshift
22
plan, archive
plan, laboratory workspace
Top: Stack render and plan. The rolling cart is attached to a system of tracks that choreograph movement and access across the compound while ensuring efficient storage when not in use.
Middle: Gypsy cart render and plan. When in use, these semi-corporeal devices act as guides or curators, accessing information for human users. Based on a regular rectangular unit, gypsy carts easily pack into corners and other empty spaces of the building.
longitudinal section Bottom: Museum render and plan. A archive, high bay, laboratory space for public engagement, the museum’s main attraction is a simulated Martian landscape. A monumental ramp cuts into the center of the building, allowing easy movement of physical artifacts from the archive or high bay.
spaceshift, danielle kasner
23
Danielle Kasner
work environments III
longitudinal section archive, high bay, laboratory
archive, high bay
section, 1:175
Longitudinal section showing relationships between two existing JPL buildings and the new AI laboratory floating above them. Active and inactive forms of information are compartmentalized within the “Shapeshift� campus, with the archive and high bay divided up between existing structures.
24
COHORT
An innovative enterprise begins with a simple mission: the pursuit of a specific discovery or singular achievement. This drive is the organizing device for a disparate group of individual workers, a clarion call that directs collective success. In taking a seemingly impossible assignment or pursuing a historic accomplishment, an enterprise motivates its employees and investors and captivates the public. Whether a technology start-up or a charity, such an enterprise relies on its stated goals in order to move forward, focusing on a “moonshot” to answer an irresolvable dilemma. As the original moonshot factory, NASA is built on the mission structure as its organizing ethos. Workers regularly compete to gain funding to investigate different aspects of the universe, with successful pitches leading to funded projects for possibly decades. As a branch of the US government, NASA has both an incentive to collaborate internally, as well as a need to discover efficient methods of development. In its pursuits, the agency necessarily forges partnerships, marshalling the resources of hundreds of contractors and companies in order to achieve the unachievable. Outsourcing and investing in private enterprise, the agency relies on its overarching goals to motivate and direct an always ambitious agenda. Understanding this organizing power of inevitability, “COHORT” (Coordinated Office for Habitation Outside the Terrestrial) imagines the industries needed for NASA’s next moonshot: the human mission to Mars. “COHORT” exists to manage the collaborative endeavor between private industry and NASA. The “COHORT” team is a mixed group, including top administrators from NASA, executives from industry, mediators, press officers, and local managers. While acknowledging and supporting prototyping and fabrication, the ultimate aim of “COHORT” is to support discussion, conferences, development, and communication. Two headquarters—a West Coast hub centered on research and development at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and an East Coast compound in Greenbelt, Maryland,
Steven Meyer
directed at Washington bureaucracy—serve as primary meeting points for representatives from a network of smaller “COHORT” field offices around the country. Fundamentally a space of exchange between workers, stakeholders, and leaders, the headquarters of “COHORT” on the JPL campus embrace the flexibility and neutrality that define NASA’s organization. The new facility provides benefits through its physical structure, allying with the needs of the overall JPL campus by developing its organization around the provision of parking. “COHORT” rethinks the traditional office link between the car and the desk as a form of amenity, instead proposing their integration as an expression of efficiency. Stacked, long-span trusses open up the floors of the facility, providing alternating levels of fully flexible and zoned spaces, accessible by both car and pedestrian. Depending on the balance of these two user groups, the use and attitude of the space inverts. When full of cars, the building provides targeted spaces for meetings of different scales. Located within permanent glass rooms, these are the areas of focused exchanges. Transformed into a space of pure work, the floors shift to become open, flexible zones. Work spreads freely across the space; a system of curtains serves as the primary means of delineation and privacy. Looking outward from the compound, the truss structure enables unbroken panoramic views of the surrounding landscape. The “COHORT” facilty embraces the culture of JPL, avoiding the typical tropes of today’s meeting spaces in the process. Taking its cues from NASA’s traditional public identity, the facility aims to be spectacular in the mundane. Rather than producing zones of leisure or play, the facility focuses on the basic needs of the work environment, leveraging them for flexibility, parking, and social interaction to create a specific yet adaptable framework. The center embodies the utilitarian attitude of its mission, by facilitating the collaborations necessary to get humans to Mars.
25 1.5’
8’
18’ unit accommodation
1.5’
8’
11’
18’
18’ unit accommodation
11’
18’
Top: Perspective view of a workspace within the “COHORT” facility at JPL. Providing varying levels of flexibility, the new facility simultaneously frames the exterior landscape.
Bottom: Diagrams exploring the dimensional restrictions related to the two key users of the new building: the worker and the car.
COHORT
26 Top: Model photograph of the “COHORT� building exterior. Alternating layers of long-span structures define both the organization and visual appearance of the complex.
Bottom: Interior perspective of an enclosed meeting space within the compound. While the overall arrangement and use of floor plates may vary between cars and offices, these meeting spaces remain fixed.
27
2/3 2/3floor floor____50/50 full flex split____scale scale==1:200 1:200
Steven Meyer Upper level building plan highlighting different uses of the structure. As a parking garage, cars can pack efficiently within the building core that is accessible via monolithic ramp. As a workspace, the fluid arrangement of furniture and curtains throughout the space allows for flexible and free work.
28
The Mothership
Within the technology landscape, venture capitalism has secured its role as an engine for growth. Risking early capital for end rewards, the venture capitalist hedges on the future, betting on many endeavors to increase the odds of a “one-in-a-million” return. In an increasingly common scenario, the start-up is rewarded for imagination, yet its success rides on its ability to beat out the pack. Such competition drives a Darwinian culture, in which only the fittest survive. Despite its history of investment in the global economy, the US government is often absent from the venture capital mythology. Criticized for its regulatory tendencies, slow pace, and general un-coolness, the government nonetheless remains one of the chief investors in technology and the economy as a whole. For NASA, the role of investor and innovator is especially clear today, as the agency outsources basic tasks to a new generation of start-ups led by SpaceX. While not a new development—NASA has always subcontracted the fabrication of elements for capsules and rockets alike—the highly publicized new collaborations do not challenge the underlying economics, but rather the public imagination. Private enterprise has thus emerged as the visible innovator in the public domain. Within this changing landscape, NASA faces both threats and opportunities. On one hand, the agency must continue to attract top-tier talent despite experiencing the first real private competition it has really had. On the other, NASA can take advantage of its position as the largest participant and funder to offload development costs and focus fully on the pursuit of breakthrough technology. Leveraging the skills and techniques of private industry, “The Mothership” proposes a new competitive incubator at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) campus in Pasadena. While limited in comparison to the market of technology industry venture capitalists, “The Mothership” nonetheless offers two of NASA’s most valuable and unique resources to prospective companies: scale and aura. “The Mothership” divides
Ho Cheung Tsui
responsibilities across the incubator, so as to provide the space and atmosphere for the breakthrough moment of a technology, before spinning development phases off to private industry. By sharing a small pool of talent with these external organizations, “The Mothership” offsets NASA’s failure costs, while allowing for a more advantageous relationship with private industry. Built to impress, “The Mothership” headquarters is designed to enhance the aura of NASA. The compound is organized around a vast, domed central court. A space of exchange and leisure, the dome functionally offers room for informal conversations necessary to the incubation process. More dramatically, the court provides a singular identity and awe-inspiring attitude for the facility. Topped by an oculus, the sky is the only external image seen from within the rotunda. Surrounding this expansive atrium are meeting rooms that keep focused exchange closely aligned with the atmospheric center. Two axes cut through the entire compound; the resulting church-like transepts offer four distinct destinations at each end: fabrication space, assembly room, vacuum testing, and propulsion testing. A ring of laboratories and offices connects these four workshops, providing desk space for nascent enterprise at the compound. From its exterior, “The Mothership” appears monolithic, an expression of its singular attitude. Separated from the rest of the JPL campus by reflecting pools, workers must cross into the compound as if into a fortress or ship. Trading in efficiencies for augmented qualities, the procession of spaces highlight the vastness, prowess, and resources of the government in the area of technological innovation. “The Mothership” deploys a range of atmospheric tropes and even hints at religious or aristocratic architectural typologies. The clear attempt to articulate (or produce) a distinct, elevated aura for space work masks the brute economic reality which drives its mission. Ensuring the retention of talent, “The Mothership” is both a focused incubator and an epic advertisement.
29 Fail
Fail
Fail
Fail
NASA
Fail Fail
Fail
The Mothership Fail
SPACE TECH
INVESTMENTS
PRIVATE SPINOFF
MOTHER SHIP
MARKETING
AURA
TALENT
TALENT
xn
+
BUDGET
PRICE OPTIMIZATION
EXSISTING TECHNOLOGY
EMBARKMENT BREAK THROUGH TECH
INCREMENTAL OPTIMIZATION
FAILURE
FAILURE xn
FAILURE xn VERTICAL PROGRESS
HORIZONTAL PROGRESS
SYMBIOSIS xn
Top: Conceptual drawing of “The Mothership.” Imagined as an incubator, the central nucleus of NASA spawns various enterprises—some failures and others successes.
Bottom: Organizational diagram describing the innovation process and relations between “The Mothership,” private companies, and those products and technologies they create.
NO PROGRESS
The Mothership
30 Top: Building section highlighting the dominant domed court of “The Mothership.” Flanking this central space of exchange, layered meeting and workstations lead to larger amenities and testing facilities.
Bottom: Central court interior perspective looking upward to oculus. Meeting spaces intermix with artifacts of NASA’s past achievements and successes.
SECTION A
31
Ho Cheung Tsui
-2m
-2m -1m
+0m
+0m SECTION B
+0m
+0m
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N
-6m
-6m +0m +0m -6m
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1 PLAN 1:200
Second floor plan of “The Mothership.� Defined by intersecting axes and a central court, smaller workspaces and meeting places are located in relation to larger resources and fill in the rest of the facility.
-3m
32
Undulated Wall
In our globalized world, governments must increasingly make a choice: embrace diplomacy and an international society, or retreat behind borders and defend national interests. For the US government, no agency or department better represents the potential and the pitfalls of both nationalism and internationalism than NASA. On one hand, NASA exemplifies the best that the government and the nation as a whole can achieve, setting the benchmark against which all other ventures are measured (“if we can put a man on the moon . . . ”). On the other hand, NASA requires that systems of governance and politics be flexible, so as to initiate larger, more expensive projects, take greater risks, and work with other nations. Throughout its history NASA has been defined by these polar approaches: in its national competitions, as in the space race with the Soviet Union; and in its international collaborations, the most famous and enduring of which is the International Space Station (ISS). This constant interplay frames the NASA workspace as a place of pragmatism and politics, where exchange and debate not only generate innovations or achievements in outer space, but also map out new alliances on the earth. Building on NASA’s legacy of international collaboration, “Undulated Wall” attempts to bring together spaces of diplomatic exchange with those of physical research and production. A home for scientific and political debate, “Undulated Wall” imagines the new compound on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) campus as a would-be United Nations of international space organizations. The facility offers room for different national space agencies from around the world to gather and pursue international projects in direct collaboration. Breaking with the model for past international projects, like the fragmented evolution of the ISS, the hands-on, day-to-day, in-person association and sustained development of a shared mission requires a nuanced infrastructure, to allow both overlaps and discretion. While each agency is provided a distinct physical identity and office within
Lu Zhang
“Undulated Wall,” the ultimate aim of the new center is to build cross-national missions, which require larger spaces for engagement. “Undulated Wall” bridges the gap between formal spaces of diplomacy and the messy, more flexible realms of research, transforming through its interior as it shifts from a grid-based to a hubbased organization. In the process, the facility works to reorient its inhabitants and their aims. The key to this transformation is the limit of the wall itself. As the shared element between both the grid of research and the objects of diplomacy, the basic unit of “Undulated Wall” is imagined as a distorted partition, a bent corner winding throughout the building, enclosing and exposing the processes and discussions that occur within. On the ground level, the irregular nature of the wall is suppressed, and the compound appears to be structured in a utilitarian grid. Researchers move freely through hallways, from labs to high bays, getting only a hint of the overall character of the compound. As users move upward through the building, hallways gradually give way to enfilade rooms that expose the full interior of wall units, allowing assembly spaces and pressrooms to intermix with labs and offices. At the top of the building this transition is completed as a series of idiosyncratic forms emerge that identify each nation’s demarcated space. Unveiling slowly through clues and traces of its overall organization, the “Undulated Wall” compound revolves around the nuance and detail necessary for the work of international collaboration. While on the interior this subtlety drives encounters and permits crossover and conversation, viewed from the outside the dynamic inverts and the building’s multiple identities conflict loudly, appearing as part fortress, part palace, and part village. The multiple expressions blur distinctions between the work of international and national space agencies and their employees. Driven by a mutual desire to discover, global politics finds common purpose within the shifting walls of the compound.
FIELD
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The Field Container of Subjects
US Capital Building, Washington, 1800
FIELD The Field Container of Subjects ANTE-ROOM The Sequence of Events as Objects
FIELD The Field Container of Subjects
Basic Structure
FIELD The Field Container of Subjects
Basic Structure
Left (top): “Undulated Wall” concept diaUndulated Wall gram showing the building transformaBasic Structure tion, from grid-based room arrangement to hub-centered organization.
Left (bottom): “Undulated Wall” unit diagram. Defined by its bent corner, the distorted partition is the primary element of the building’s overall structure and design.
Right: Diagrams of “Undulated Wall” unit distribution and interaction on lower, middle, and upper levels of the building. A fairly even grid gives way to highly specific spaces up above.
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Plan of “Undulated Wall� middle level. Located midway between the utilitarian grid and more idiosyncratic spaces of diplomacy, this level highlights the various forms of inhabitation made possible by the distorted wall. 4
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Lu Zhang Top: “Undulated Wall” compound exterior perspective. Multiple identities conflict loudly on the building exterior, which appears as part fortress, part palace, part village.
Middle and bottom: “Undulated Wall” interior perspectives. The bending corner of the wall creates precise spaces for exchange and circulation, hinting at rather than defining the limits of a particular zone or form of work.
36
Shrinking Universe
A landscape shaped by competition and collaboration between nations, the post–Cold War outer space environment seemed to offer the promise of international cooperation and exchange. Today, however, the treaties and agreements that held nations at bay for over half a century and protected space as a neutral, shared zone, are routinely overlooked or ignored. Corporations have replaced nations in the pursuit of resources and colonization, igniting a new wave of speculation, evident in the growing number of private space ventures. Simultaneously, space weaponry continues to develop, as nations seek to control the flow of information through satellite dominance. As the outer atmosphere becomes filled with debris from national governments and companies alike, space junk threatens to destroy or irreparably alter the space ecosystem. Space, once an idealized region of tranquility and equality, has become a key site of contestation. In this changed landscape, the space worker is placed in an ethically dubious position, as scientist, speculator, and competitor looking for leverage in an ever more crowded and unruly field. Directly confronting these new risks and potential conflicts, “Shrinking Universe” proposes to introduce limits to this expansionist era, to shift focus back onto scientific pursuit and the promise of global peace. To this end a new international agreement, the Shrinking Universe Treaty, reaffirms the neutrality of space through the commitment of all nations to immediately and permanently halt any human settlement and exploration programs. Space weapons and mining programs are also forbidden, forcing the reallocation of budgets and resources. The “Shrinking Universe” Treaty ensures oversight of each nation’s space program though a permanent United Nations (UN) monitoring facility. This UN regulatory agency has access to all space offices and labs internationally, so as to observe researchers and managers in their daily work environment routines. Considered an assurance of peace, rather than a bureaucratic burden, the new facilities, including a station at NASA’s
Yoonjin Kim
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), are spaces of invention, oversight, and celebration. They are working facilities as well as sites of commemoration for the public. With its overlapping users and their disparate agendas, the “Shrinking Universe” compound at JPL is a collage of sorts. Each user group—the public, the JPL worker, the UN monitor—enters the building from a different pole, defined by privacy requirements and relationship to the larger campus and facilities. Movement across the building is itself a form of negotiation, with the overall organization of the workspaces moving from private to public, and from controlled environment to open air space. Calculated moments of exposure allow visual and physical connection between users, linked by shared amenities and gathering spaces. An underlying grid structure tentatively organizes such interactions. Oriented at an angle of 45° to the footprint of the building, the grid also produces moments of ambiguity as it hits the compound edges diagonally, creating a range of unusual spaces. Navigating the building periphery, the public enters the facility along a “Memorial Trail” that occupies the ambiguous perimeter. The roof of the compound, which is partially buried in the terrain of the site, serves as a “Peace Park” where the public can congregate as well as access the “Memorial Trail.” “Shrinking Universe” reimagines the work environment as a negotiated terrain, where development, commemoration, and diplomacy occur simultaneously. Embracing its surrounding landscape, the new facility nonetheless provides a two-sided attitude towards the JPL campus and the public. The building acts as both plinth and bunker, providing gravitas and defense. Trapped on either side by international monitors and the general public, the space work of “Shrinking Universe” is a radically visible form of research: a shared yet controlled endeavor.
JPL’S NEW WORKPLACE
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A NEW TREATY
Shrinking Universe Treaty On execution of this treaty, States Parties do not reserve right for any form of human settlement in outer space. As used herein, the term ‘settlement’ shall refer to i) claiming a national and personal ownership on a surface of planet otherthan the Earth ii) Any construction for human inhabitation on, above, around and below surface of planets This treaty re-affirms agreement between State Parties to discard and any weapon usage in the outer space. States Parties accept to install and house UNOOSA facilities and teams for monitoring and regulating the private space agencies in surveillance of possible human settlement missions. SU’s new facility shall be constructed in the national space agency in each States.
Top: Program diagram explaining the relations between different users of the “Shrinking Universe” facility.
Bottom: Excerpt from the “Shrinking Universe” Treaty, a new international agreement reaffirming the neutrality of outer space.
EXTENDED OUTDOOR PARK SPACE
38
Shrinking Universe
Existing Outdoor Space
VITING DIFFERENT PARTIES TO WORKPLACE
INVITING PUBLIC INTO WORK SPACE
Top: Diagram and render of Peace Park, an extension of existing public space on the JPL campus adjacent to the “Shrinking Universe” compound.
Middle: Diagram of relations between various users and controlled environments within the building. Render highlighting one of the facility’s open public spaces.
Bottom: Drawing of Memorial Trail, a commemorative public route winding through the compound. Interior perspective of a public archive, one of several stops along the trail.
39
Yoonjin Kim 1:150 Level 01
“Shrinking Universe” building plan. Partially buried, the work environments on different sides of the compound express distinct feelings. A column grid rotated on a 45° angle to the facility’s footprint organizes the mixture of users and spaces.
40
Vantage Points
Like a corporation, a government must supply a comfortable workspace and elevate the lifestyle of its employees. Unlike a corporation, a government must additionally provide stability and ensure the survival of the public it represents. As such, the guarantee of life and “the pursuit of happiness” for its citizenry are the US government’s core responsibilities. While political debate may scrutinize the definition or extent of these commitments, the government must nonetheless continue to process and serve constituents, enacting policies and directing feedback. Like all departments and agencies of the US government, NASA’s responsibilities are ultimately terrestrial, focused on the benefit to life itself. While at times dramatic or exciting, the work NASA pursues on a daily basis is quite grounded. The agency actively works to improve conditions on earth, investigating the planet’s water supplies and biospheres. NASA attempts to protect life by mapping out and warning of cosmic and other events using satellites, research, and analysis. And it searches for life beyond the planet, investigating alternate geologies and ecologies. Despite the often distant reaches of its focus, NASA ultimately works in service of human society, its mission the same as that of the US government: the preservation and advancement of life. In its pursuit of this core mission, NASA increasingly looks outward, deeper and deeper into the solar system and beyond, searching for answers and possible alternative earth-like ecosystems. As the goal of this space research becomes more apparent, “Vantage Points” addresses the need for NASA to expand its scope by doing more than just improving or protecting life, but rather gaining insight into how life is fundamentally sustained. Faced with years-long missions, the traditional norms of human space travel have become unrealistic. The astronaut’s body must physically survive the mission, an already difficult task, but her mind must also remain active and collected, as she is expected to perform highly technical and consequential
Yubai Zhou
tasks and to research regularly. “Vantage Points” sees both the scientific and the psychological as vital components of survival, proposing a new Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) facility to investigate the intersection of these concerns. Responding to the current organization of the JPL campus, “Vantage Points” imagines the new building as a center of life systems research, a point of exchange around which other teams or types of research can gather, and where social and cultural events can take place. The new facility concentrates the range of possible investigations into four primary research hubs: culture, environment, food, and shelter. Organizing these teams, the building is defined by varying interactions of structure. Oriented in relation to different elements on the campus, four different structural grids overlap within the compound, each also tailored to the needs of different research group. These interrelated organizations produce a range of dedicated spaces, distributed in different combinations on different levels of the building. Five larger spaces are produced at the intersection points between these grids, linking the different levels and smaller workspaces to form hubs for the workers housed within. A gallery, auditorium, farm, high bay, and Zero-G research pool serve as these key points of focus, directing work across the site. In “Vantage Points,” researchers and subjects inhabit the idiosyncratic structure of the compound, able to jump quickly between specific research environments and move from hub to hub, while incidentally exposing the scientific to the psychological research and vice-versa. The compound of “Vantage Points” facilitates interactions among the community of scientists, furnishing research spaces and amenities for the campus as a whole. Far from a static arrangement of laboratory experiments or cordoned-off research groups, “Vantage Points” opens up the possibility for new relationships, allowing disciplinary lines to blur and new crossovers to emerge.
41 1st Floor
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Bottom (left): Diagram of building structure and configuration. Disparate wall orientations respond to program and site contingencies.
3rd Floor diagram of Bottom (right): Second-floor wall and column configuration. Large spaces for research hubs and informal gatherings are located at the intersection of these elements.
Vantage Points
42 Top: “Vantage Points� exterior perspective. Different degrees of transparency highlight the shifting program inside, while providing a range of lighting conditions for the work undertaken within.
Bottom: Interior perspective through different walls of the compound. Despite the distinct focus and attitude of each research group in the compound, circulation encourages crossover and exchange.
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Yubai Zhou Second floor plan of the “Vantage Points� facility, highlighting relationships between walls, communal zones, and private research spaces. Three hubs appear in the plan: an auditorium, experimental garden, and high-bay fabrication space.
44
Comfort First
For the everyday citizen and worker, comfort is a basic concern. The desire to remove stress— whether physical, emotional, or economic —regularly motivates major life decisions, leading an individual to change jobs, move to a new location, alter diet, transition from a relationship, and so on. While companies increasingly offer employee benefits to ensure loyalty in the face of competition and increased productivity through contentment, traditionally, the US government has focused on basic benefits, leaving work environment comforts to a manageable minimum. Tasked with the maintenance of society at large, government departments and agencies work to stabilize the nation’s citizenry. They provide basic support to ensure that services function properly and to avoid deprivation. Despite its seeming remoteness from everyday social imperatives, NASA engages in this bureaucratic dynamic through a simple shared directive: safety first. Ensuring the survival of its workers, especially the astronauts, has been far more important to the agency than finding ways for them to physically enjoy their outer space experiences. As workers in extreme environments, NASA employees still face the same dilemmas of all government workers, as the duty of service and job stability are pitted against desires for comfort and ease. “Comfort First” reintroduces the idea of relaxation into space work, producing a testing ground for potential working situations on earth and in outer space. This new research center’s focus is threefold: to examine the physical, physiognomic, and psychological aspects of work. Building on the traditional survival needs of shelter, food, and clothing, the three aspects of comfort are ultimately haptic concerns, understood through the body’s relationship to its surrounding environment. Scale, texture, color, temperature, height relationships, and brightness all work to produce spaces of emotional and physical impact. Subjectively perceived and infinitely variable, the degree of comfort in a given situation can nonetheless be tested across
Tomotsugu Ishida
a range of individuals, to discover common elements and their impact. While specific situations can be catalogued, the possibilities and potentially (highly) personal nature of responses to them require a broad strategy. Instead of offering a neutral container for research, “Comfort First” offers a loose arrangement of parts through which to measure multiple situations. Considering the compound as a collection of individual components, “Comfort First” decouples the ground plane, roof, structure, and furniture of the building, with each element offering an independent gesture or highly subjective method of inhabitation. The existing landscape of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) site, with its 15-foot change in elevation, is accepted as the ground of the building, forcing a rambling and at times vertiginous method of circulation. In place of a neutral flat roof, the ceiling takes on its own terrain, offering a counterpoint to the ground below. Together, the two landscapes offer almost limitless spatial variations in terms of scale and openness. The column grid of the building, which determines its structure, warps as it is drawn between the topographic contouring and ideal isotropic organization. While certain elements and zones remain fixed due to privacy or safety, furniture is freely distributed throughout the majority of the compound. Navigating the building’s disparate parts, testing differences rather than similarities, workers at the new center actively attempt to identify the limitations of the work environment both on the earth and in space. “Comfort First” eschews a singular idea of comfort, refusing to produce a synthetic organization of building elements, as it instead creates a subjective field. The inhabitation of the space in relation to the individual components and terrain acts as a constant form of material research, in which both the occupation of the building and the tests undertaken within it serve as a means to understand the spectrum of physical, psychological, and overall comfort.
45 Diagrams of the variables that affect comfort and the range of experiences that can be produced through the interplay of scale, form, texture, and atmosphere. Applied at the scale of a room, the studies examine the effect of a physical space on its inhabitants.
open offices
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Partial section drawings of the interplay between floor slab and ceiling in the “Comfort First� compound. The relationship between this pair of sloped elements produces a constantly shifting terrain that inhabitants must navigate during daily work routines.
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Tomotsugu Ishida
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Detailed “Comfort First� plan. The column grid diverts from a regular orthogonal organization, adjusting to topography. Furniture and partitions likewise become more loosely arranged, creating a more informal layout within the building.
48
XSXL
The relationship between science and the US government has become increasingly fraught. Driven by economic, geographic, and religious concerns, debate among politicians threatens the stability of the science community, as control over funding becomes a way to express ideology. Resources for meteorological research fall victim to larger doubts about climate studies. Investigations into alternative energies are seen as threats to local and corporate economies. To some in this context, investing in space exploration appears trivial at best, reckless or threatening at worst. At the same time, the turbulent global political landscape has turned nations inward, in retreat behind once porous borders. While alliances remain, cooperation is contested. Earth itself becomes the ultimate casualty, and acrimony rises as terrestrial research is increasingly shunned. In the face of this, NASA’s budget share and prestige has collapsed. Today its operations allowance is only a trace of what it was during the peak Apollo era. NASA continues to work with less and less as it spreads itself across a wide range of potential research subjects. With politics threatening both outward- and inward-looking missions, NASA must make a hard decision to reorient its gaze, to shift from exploring outer space to survival here on earth. “XSXL” confronts this changed landscape as it focuses NASA’s mission on earthbound research and environmental protection. Redirecting the current budget for Mars and other planetary missions, “XSXL” proposes the formation of a new primary center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). A collective facility, the “XSXL” campus brings together currently discrete NASA earth science and robotic programs to leverage the technological solutions the agency has already produced for deep space research back to the earth. The new research facility, the “Extreme Situation Experimental Laboratory (XSXL),” is comprised of four primary units: ocean science, atmospheric science, earth surface
Taro Kagami
and interior science, and cryospheric science. Each unit seeks to repurpose research into the extreme climatic conditions of outer space to the earth’s changing environment, building on this prior knowledge to find solutions to the impacts of global warming. Requiring physical simulation and experimentation, “XSXL” pursues its investigations on multiple scales, examining biological survival techniques on both microscopic and one-to-one levels. Creating space for the varied scales of research necessary, “XSXL” offers a deceptively simple organization. Four primary research units are each comprised of two main zones: an extra-large space for simulations and a series of extra-small rooms for individual study. Assigned unique environmental simulation focuses, the large spaces emphasize the specificity of each extreme, from a water tank for the ocean science wing, to a basic high bay for earth surface and interior science. A peripheral containing ring supports these blocks, physically elevating them while allowing circulation between units, and space for meetings and informal gatherings. This ring, which also serves as the building’s primary envelope, is programmatically and physically a frame—giving structure to the activities that occur at “XSXL.” Inhabiting the interstitial spaces between research units and the ring, public programs, such as a cafe, auditorium, and exhibition space provide areas for external dialogue. Through its provision of scale, “XSXL” allows one-to-one engagement with the problems that NASA faces on earth and the technology it has to offer. By balancing the massive and the minute within its frame, “XSXL” produces a range of formal and informal zones to accommodate an evolving research subject. Concentrated spaces of work—the research unit blocks—pair with the containing ring to open up a diverse realm of exchange. The discussions and events that occur within XSXL offer the promise of not only survival, but also the increased exchange of knowledge and advancement of NASA’s overall mission: to understand the universe.
49 PERSPECTIVE
Top: “XSXL” exterior perspective. A finned facade blurs the overall building outline, highlighting the individual research units within.
Bottom (left): Structural model describing the building’s support elements. Research blocks partially interlock with the perimeter walls, creating a dependent structural relationship.
Bottom (right): Conceptual model explaining the visual and spatial relationship between research units and the containing ring.
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Top: “XSXL” upper level plan highlighting relationships between extra-large and extra-small spaces, their integration into the building perimeter, and circulation.
Bottom: Interior render of upper-level public spaces. Located above the primary research blocks and simulation spaces, an auditorium, museum, and cafe provide amenities for the center’s workers.
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52
Hyper-Bound
With the earth’s long-term habitability in doubt as temperatures increase, treaties fall, and pollution escalates, disaster planning has become necessary for individuals, companies, and governments alike. Levies are built, generators purchased, data backed up. The inhabitation of outer space moves from the realm of fantasy to that of growing necessity, and the search for life-sustaining planets has intensified. Examining the outer reaches of the known universe, exoplanets that exist beyond our solar system offer the possibility of life-sustaining ecosystems that could accommodate humans in the future. Yet, for all their promise, these potential earths are light years away from us, making their settlement impossible based on today’s technology. Despite the drive of NASA and other space organizations to investigate and map such potential sites of salvation, the applicability of their discoveries is limited without a larger, more realistic mission. Survival may be possible, but only if we move fast. In light of this, the slow-moving ship of US government bureaucracy must find a way to speed up, as increasingly, the problem of space is revealed to be time. Tackling these issues of scale and duration head on, “Hyper-Bound” proposes a two-phase mission to explore newly discovered exoplanets for potential inhabitation and create the means to reach them. Project phasing ensures progress and achievement—needed to maintain funding—even as technology slowly matures. While phase one of the “Hyper-Bound” mission continues NASA’s current use of satellites to explore and relay information from deep space, phase two focuses on the development of high-speed space travel. Phase two research investigates multiple forms of propulsion simultaneously. Crossovers and exchanges between projects are the norm within the new facility developed for this endeavor, as the traditional mission timetable is accelerated and redesigned. By attempting to speed the pace of development, “Hyper-Bound” splits its focus, offering
Meaghan Pohl Farnoosh Rafaie
research teams the time and space to explore their ideas outside the silo. To support this multivalent approach, the new “Hyper-Bound” facility also develops over multiple stages. Initially inhabiting two existing buildings on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) campus for phase one, an elevated addition is introduced for phase two. Extending to encompass the entire surrounding lot, this new structure floats above a landscaped exterior space, a garden that connects the upper communal areas of JPL to the campus entrance. Three primary bands of research are found within the addition, each with a specific testing chamber: gravity drop, anechoic chamber, thermal vacuum. Varied individual and communal workspaces surround these chambers, offering specific overlaps to support working dynamics. Separating these zones, walls made of alternating slats function as physical screens. The transparency of these screens allows for increased discussion between workers, while also providing a framework for the physical connectivity of office elements and furniture. Encouraging crossover between investigations, “Hyper-Bound” understands the future is not the product of labor alone, but rather the result of communication. The porous building organization allows workers to jump between zones, interacting with different work groups as multiple forms of propulsion are tested against each other and results examined. Because the testing chambers also serve as sites of vertical circulation through the compound, workers are brought continuously and dramatically back to the mission’s imperative: the pursuit of speed. Workers cut up and down through the compound, and back and forth between existing facility and new addition. The only respite is the garden below, a verdant landscaped vision of both the existing earth to be saved, and those possible earths to be reached.
53 Gathering “Heat” Map | 1:200
Gathering “Heat” Map | 1:200
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Top: Diagrammatic plan showing the distribution of working arrangements Node Lab Flex Office Admin Office within the “Hyper-Bound” complex. Colors indicate degrees of social exchange.
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Bottom: Diagrams highlighting differentNode working arrangementsInterstitial and Teams Casual Meeting their relation to the “Hyper-Bound” structure and its partitions.
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Top: “Hyper-Bound” main-floor perspective. Oriented around a testing chamber, the workspace shown is visually linked to surrounding offices by transparent partitions.
Middle: View into “Hyper-Bound” anechoic chamber highlighting the distinctly textured walls. Surrounded by the compound’s typical slat partitions, the engineered testing cores nonetheless break from this system.
Bottom: “Hyper-Bound” exterior perspective showing the garden below the building extension. Broken up by the testing chambers and vertical circulation, the garden is a respite from daily work routines.
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Meaghan Pohl, Farnoosh Rafaie Detailed “Hyper-Bound� plan illustrating relationships between testing chambers, structure, partitions, and furniture.
Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, site of the Apollo 11 mission launch. Today it is currently operated by SpaceX under a 20-year lease with NASA.
Afterword
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reaffirms the ingenuity of organizations to adapt and grow in the face of change, as well the opportunity for designers to envision new structures and planning models to address ongoing challenges. Today, the imperative for the workplace to serve a great variety of people and an even broader variety of tasks sets the stage for immersive environments with an emphasis on the workspace as an experience. As companies and organizations everywhere seek to keep pace in ever more complex social and economic environments, they must find new ways to improve innovation, build employee camaraderie, and support the changing needs of a global workforce. And the workspace must stay in stride–by transitioning from a static building to a highly interactive experience.
59
Benjamin Pardo
Elevating the human experience through work has led to the reinvention of workspace. “Space Work,” the final Knoll-sponsored design studio leveraging the research acumen of Florian Idenburg and the creative insight of his students at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, focused on the often-marginalized government workplace, and the environment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in particular. The previous studio, “Glass Works,” assessed the groundbreaking company Corning, Inc., with special attention to the architectural workplace planning precepts pioneered by Florence Knoll. The inaugural studio, “Campus and Event,” explored the evolution of the modern office. Over the course of three years, the accumulated discourse
60
Contributors
Florian Idenburg Florian Idenburg is Founding Partner of the firm SO–IL and Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is the 2010 laureate of the Charlotte KÜhler Prize and a 2014 finalist for the Prix de Rome in the Netherlands. Benjamin Pardo Benjamin Pardo is Executive Vice President and Director of Design at Knoll, Inc. Duncan Scovil Duncan Scovil is a designer based in Seattle, WA, and a Teaching Associate in Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is a graduate of Harvard University and Rhode Island School of Design.
Colophon
Work Environments Space Work Instructor Florian Idenburg Teaching Associate Duncan Scovil Report Editor & Design Duncan Scovil A Harvard University Graduate School of Design Publication Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design Mohsen Mostafavi Associate Director and Dean of Communications and Public Programs Ken Stewart Editor in Chief Jennifer Sigler Associate Editor Marielle Suba Production Manager Meghan Sandberg Series design by Laura Grey and Zak Jensen ISBN 978-1-934510-67-4 © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Text and images © 2017 by their authors.
Acknowledgments Special thanks to NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Caltech for generously hosting the studio, and to all those who shared their invaluable time, perspective, and facilities with the group. We would especially like to thank Dan Goods for thoughtfully organizing our visit, as well as Bruno Piana, Leonard Pieroni, Tomas Soderstrom, Bert Ulrich, and Danielle Wood. Additional thanks are due to Bureau Spectacular, Michele Judd and the Keck Institute for Space Studies, Knoll, Inc., Michael Lehrer, Dave Morris, Benjamin Pardo, Nick Riebel, Becca Smith, Tesla, Inc., Gabriel Tomasulo, and Franz Von Holzhausen. Image Credits Front Cover, pages 4, 6, 14–15: NASA Pages 8–9, 12, bottom (left): NASA/JPL, Caltech Page 12, top and middle: Google, NASA Page 12, bottom: NASA/JPL, Caltech/KSC Pages 54–55: SpaceX Front Cover caption: Celebration at Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston, following the completion of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. The editors have attempted to acknowledge all sources of images used and apologize for any errors or omissions. Harvard University Graduate School of Design 48 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 publications@gsd.harvard.edu gsd.harvard.edu Studio made possible with the generous support of Knoll, Inc.
Studio Report Spring 2017
Harvard GSD Department of Architecture
Students Tomotsugu Ishida, Taro Kagami, Danielle Kasner, Yoonjin Kim, Michael Matthews, Steven Meyer, Meaghan Pohl, Farnoosh Rafaie, Ho Cheung Tsui, Lu Zhang, Yubai Zhou
ISBN 978-1-934510-67-4
9 781934 510674