Master’s Thesis

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 fnd solutions for a healthy tech startup incubator within the city of London.

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 refected 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.

Furniture conceptual model

FURNITURE SYSTEM

As mentioned previously, the research was contemplated firstly at a furniture scale, designing objects that make up a system that would then acquire relevance and translate itself at an urban scale. The furniture was designed prior to the development of an intricate field or space or anything, simply by an exploration of simple shapes that could potentially coexist within a domain. By referring to the phenomenological theories of grouping, those shapes were analyzed and altered to exist either on their own or as part of a whole.

Initially an actively-flexible shape was designed. A shape with an individual performance which gives the ability to reconfgure or change according to different needs at a local scale and a global scale. A quarter of a circle was adopted as a starting point. Despite the apparent rigidity of the arc of a circle, the design strategy included the possibility of altering the level of curvature of the object and therefore the overall confguration as several objects were arranged in space. The possibility to change the curvature was not taken further because simpler tactics of transformation were discovered. Tactics that were simple yet had a large impact on the overall configurations. Since the quarter of a circle has the duality to exist as a concave or convex form, carrying out different arrangements and grouping methods gave the opportunity to have numerous confgurations that represent different levels of privacy and different spatial qualities.

At the start, the quarter arc was developed as an individual work desk with the ability to attach and detach from other work desks in a circular manner around a central pivot point, forming a fully closed circular form when four desks are joined together. The closed circular form quickly resembled a meeting table for a group in contrast to the individual work table or the semi-circle made up of two desks and that can serve up to two individuals working side by side. The almost infinite possibilities inspired the design of a partitioning system also made up of quarters of a circle that have their own concave/convex qualities and a system that could allow for methods of sliding and rotating. The degrees of privacy

could be subject to change depending on two variables, the degree of rotation and translation of the partition walls and furniture. When the working tables and the partition walls interlock to form a circle, this corresponds to a 0-degree rotation of both walls and tables and becomes a meeting space. When the furniture rotates 90 degrees clockwise around the pivot point without displacement, they generate an “individual-working” confguration. However, when there is also displacement involved, the furniture can reconfigure

itself to offer as well as meeting s p a c e , p r i v a t e i n d i v i d u a l working space with separation, thus generating a dispersed confguration.

Slowly, more furniture pieces that serve different functions yet speak the same language were developed and eventually a catalogue of furniture that was flexible enough to meet the extreme needs of a potential workspace was composed. A catalogue of furniture with its own ability to potentially take behavioral decisions concerning its manner of motion in the coming stages of the research. The manner of motion was structured in such a way as to provide it with a phenomenological dimension

work table

lounge table

lounge sofa

Talbes catalogue

Interior physical model

Having defined the spatial system that works best with the rest of the systems and that achieves the goals of this research project, a strong urban strategy needed to be adopted in order to implement the spatial system and its subsystems into a certain urban context. The urban strategy that was developed was the result of several layers of research, urban analysis and computational algorithms.

The site appointed being in Stoke Newington, a mostly residential area occupying the north- west part of the London Borough of Hackney in north-east London, the exact plot acts as a connection point. The plot connects one of the busy streets with commercial activity to an inner area with a less dense urban fabric. Due to its location, the plot also has a strong potential to connect to neighbouring plots that are to be developed within the same studio brief into other tech start-ups forming a type of campus that is spread out across the area. With this information, it was clear that certain paths within the plot needed to be highlighted, differentiating mass from void, and forming the frst steps of the urban strategy. Looking at the plot as a general feld in which the parametric computational algorithms could be tested out on, a few parameters needed to be set first. Having observed the evolution of the workspace in the last hundred years, the application of the concept of proxemics (the study of personal

space and the degree of separation that individuals maintain between each other in social situations) such as in Miller and Propst’s ‘Action Office’ to define the necessary spatial boundaries to ensure the user`s commodity was deemed very crucial. Human proxemics were slightly adjusted here to represent the proxemics of an individual at work instead. Having done this, a catalogue of different circular spaces based on those proxemics that can accommodate different amounts of working people with varying needs was put into practice.

A system of computational circle packing with tangent varying diameter circles was deployed in site in order to achieve interaction with the adjacent constructed buildings. As the algorithm generated different iterations, different patterns could be traced where the smaller circle units served as circulation spaces since they could slide past each other with greater ease than the larger circles. The larger working spaces would allow for major furniture transformations, as opposed to the smaller, which would remain more static. At a global scale the confguration of the working spaces could be more radial or more linear depending on the needs of the start- ups and the level of interaction between different groups.

For a more intricate field, a magnetic-field lines computational approach was also adopted whereby the

centre of the larger circles was considered an attractor point (since most of the work activity is carried out there). The computational magnetic fields created a system whereby each working space has a meeting point which is left as a void and is in turn separated from the next working space by means of a green or open space. The density of the feld lines also describes the external circulations to access the ensemble giving the user a sociological reference to navigate the space.

As the interior space is ever-changing and adaptive, the variability of the field depends on where the meeting point of each of the working spaces changes, thus altering the position of the exterior/interior spaces.

The objective was to create a feld that would dialogue with the urban fabric and that would allow for a productive workfow while maintaining the flexibility and dynamism of the precedent systems. The aim at the end of this research is to prove a successful implementation of the designed systems with their agency in an urban setting, allowing them to maintain their integrity and ability to transform, thus proving the possibility of new spatial typologies for a flexible, urban scale start-up incubator that meets the complex needs of today’s work culture.

After various form finding strategies, the circular zones identified by the previous circle packing algorithm were translated into 3 dimensional floor plates. A meandering system was used to connect all the foor plates together both horizontally and vertically, eventually becoming circulation ramps

Meandering diagram

ITERATIONS

Using the required urban connection nodes, a series of image iterations were developed on which image based circle packing was implemented. The iterations resulted in different patterns of circle packing that accomodate different numbers of different sized startups. An algorithm of magnetic feld lines was then implemented by choosing the center of the circles within a selected range only.

Exploded diagram

building volume landscape core circulation