COR(AL)ATIONS The future of workspace
THESIS STATEMENT In this fast-paced era that we live, work and recreate in, the role of everything is changing to adjust and adapt to our changing needs. The role of the built environment is no exception when it comes to this, thus the time has come for architecture to shift its roles. Architecture is no longer only responsible for providing shelter, static functionality and technical rationality. Architecture is now responsible for providing a new level of social functionality as well as a sense of order to the agency of its users. Cor(al)ations is a scenario-based design research that not only explores the role of the built environment in this rapidly changing time, but also explores new spatial typologies. Typologies that are dynamic enough to adapt to the ever-changing human and economic patterns of the future. Typologies that we simply leave to emerge and define themselves as a result of a correlation between human agents within a space and various dynamic systems designed specifically to enhance performance. This research relies on designing the agency of the occupants of a space taking into account the dynamic social and behavioral patterns of those agents and testing the layers of complexity that may arise as a result of the interaction of those agents with their surrounding systems. The brief of this studio is focused around the future of the workspace, and when asked about the future of the workspace many things are uncertain. One thing that has become clear with time however, is the need for flexibility and a higher level of communication that can aid in the expanding knowledge economy within modern day workspaces. Cor(al)ations is a research that focuses on those aspects at an attempt to find solutions for a healthy tech startup incubator within the city of London. In this research, we explore the upmost
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kinetic systems within a space, their impact on the built environment and vice versa. We do so by designing the behavioral patterns in the agents and vigorously testing them physically and computationally in different scenarios and under different conditions, precisely conditions of interaction. Interactions are designed and tested in scenarios that range from a small individual scale to a large urban scale, proving the importance of agency at all scales. The research was initially started at a furniture scale by designing a kinetic furniture system that was dynamic and flexible enough to predict the spatial qualities needed for it to function and make use of the flexibility within it. The research then moved towards independent spatial systems able to accommodate agents and systems of different natures, and progressively reached an urban scale in which the spatial systems were tested in a certain urban context in order to make up a larger general system. The general system was implemented in a way that works well within its context while maintaining the integrity of its subsystems and the agency of its occupants. Flexibility, functionality and dynamism take part of every system at every scale, and thus are reflected on the urban scale almost as much as they are present in the smallest of scales, which is the furniture. In this research, flexible and dynamic spatial patterns are proven necessary for efficient workspace design and are proven achievable by applying the principals of “phenomenology� to both the design process as well as the space itself. Principles of phenomenology along withwell-designed reactive systems can achieve new patterns in the workspace that can contribute to the success and health of startups of different sizes and natures within an incubator. Such patterns include spatial patterns, communicative patterns, social patterns, circulation patterns, and many more.
