Working LandScapes Shifting Work and Learning Environments to the Outdoors
A Response to COVID-19
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Contents
Hello. Take It Outside...................... 04 01. The Public Health Landscape .... 06 02. Assessing Your Needs................ 14 03. WorkScape Toolkit.................... 20 04. Contact Us................................. 40
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Take It
Outside Mounting evidence of the benefits of exposure to nature has increased demand for outdoor workspaces and learning environments. The current pandemic has only accelerated—and intensified—the demand. We think it won't be long before the public-health and bottom-line benefits will make outdoor settings a key feature of organizational workflow and culture. In the meantime, the challenge of balancing our collective well-being with the essential activities of the workplace has our designer brains thinking. You are going to need productive and flexible open-air spaces to get up and running. We have ideas...
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A review of 7,000 cases in China documented only a single instance of outdoor transmission.1
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The Public Health Landscape Today, when we venture to the park for a break from shelter-in-place, we are reaping the benefits of a historic response to the cholera, tuberculosis, and flu pandemics of the 19th century. The legacy of the move to invest in clean streets, broad boulevards, and designed public parks is easiest to spot in cities like Paris and New York. Frederick Law Olmsted famously conceived of Central Park as the "lungs of the city." Such spectacular places of prospect and refuge, designed for the "sanitary advantage of breathing," continue to bring people out for health and inspiration. No doubt, the pandemic of our time will leave its own mark on the built environment. Our hunch is it will take the form of outdoor WorkScapes that integrate our networked way of life with the benefits of biophilia.
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"We can look to the parklet trend to think about how we transform ‌ permanently after the pandemic has passed." —Dr. Sara Jensen Carr, author of The Topography of Wellness2
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01 / The Public Health Landscape
Origins of the WorkScape As the Information Age changed our relationship to where and how we work, science was rethinking our relationship to nature.
1984
De fea
Biologist E.O. Wilson publishes Biophilia, arguing that humans have an innate affinity for living species.
Stone and Luchetti's Harvard Business Review article anticipates wireless work spaces and the gig economy.
1985
Psychologist Philip J. Stone and architect Robert Luchetti argue that the computerage workplace should organize around "activity settings" in "Your Office Is Where You Are."
Organi and Ste
1989
In The Experience of Nature, psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan present evidence that time spent in nature restores the mind's capacity for focused attention. Ray Oldenburg writes in The Great Good Place that loosely structured social settings, or "third places," are anchors of strong communities.
edicated "third places" become a defining ature of team-oriented start-up offices.
1993
Social ecology essays in The Biophilia Hypothesis interpret the built environment as an extension of humans' affinity for nature, laying the groundwork for "biophilic design."
izational strategy takes hold with Becker eele's concept of the "total workplace."
1995
Franklin Becker and Fritz Steele map the "high-performance workscape" in Workplace by Design, linking space planning to productive collaboration and business profitability.
01 / The Public Health Landscape
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Pivot because you have to. Look ahead because it makes good sense. The WorkScape is a necessary response to pandemics like COVID-19. It also happens to be the ideal union of workplace strategy, learning, and biophilic design.
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01 / The Public Health Landscape
93
%
Proportion of the day most people spend indoors. 3
Proportion of organization operating costs invested in design, construction, and maintenance.4
"Outdoors is what will save us." —Dr. Julia Marcus, Infectious Disease Epidemiologist, Harvard Medical School5
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0
65 %
%
Proportion of people who say their job is the biggest barrier to spending time outdoors.6
"The 'nature' that makes such a strong difference need not be extensive or awesome." —Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, authors of The Experience of Nature7
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Assessing Your Needs Landscape designers know by trade how to navigate the relationship between people and the natural environment. Our Landscape Architecture team excels at guiding that relationship by elevating performance, productivity, and well-being for our clients in the spaces and communities they seek to build. In the following pages, we break down the factors to consider as you think about taking your work and learning environments outside. In a pandemic, consideration has to start with Health & Safety. Once those parameters are set, then Personal Comfort and Infrastructure can inform your choices. Finally, questions of Investment & Operations will inform the design of your WorkScape, addressing the issues of permanence, flexibility, and ongoing maintenance.
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"Pandemic life is safer outdoors, in part, because even a light wind will quickly dilute the virus." —New York Times, July 3, 20208
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02 / Assessing Your Needs
PANDEMIC GUIDELINES
SECURITY
PRIVACY
WIND
PRECIPITATION
GLARE
TEMPERATURE
Health & Safety
Comfort & Productivity
Health & Safety are paramount considerations whether we are fighting a pandemic or not. However, the public health dimension of containing the coronavirus dictates the need for clearly defined circulation and protective barriers, from masks and sanitized surfaces to safe distances and physical boundaries. When pandemic restrictions are eventually lifted, securing personal space and belongings as well as the privacy of one's activity will return to being baseline design considerations.
Once the Health & Safety baseline has been established, outdoor activity quickly becomes a matter of Personal Comfort. Outdoor work spaces need to minimize environmental distractions whether they are predictable, like sun and heat, or sudden, like rain and wind. The unpredictability of the environment means that outdoor work spaces also need to be movable and operable: one needs to be able to adjust and position the site furnishings to support attention on the solitary or group task at hand.
• Adhering to pandemic guidelines
• Minimizing disturbance
• Securing personal space
• Adapting to the environment
• Managing boundaries
• Anticipating screen use
• Promoting productivity
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WI-FI
LIGHTING
ERGONOMICS
$
POWER
COST
Infrastructure The underlying Infrastructure that makes outside work and learning environments possible also factors into making the outdoor experience cohesive and inspiring. Here is where design expertise and creative problem solving assume their most critical role, in orchestrating the built and natural systems into a social system that advances individual and organizational goals. When outdoor work or learning environments are effortlessly healthy, safe, comfortable, and productive, they enrich the quality of the activity once limited to inside spaces.
MAINTENANCE
Investment & Operations Adapting to the pandemic will entail weighing the cost of short-term fixes against the projected value of investment in long-term solutions with ongoing costs. If 10 percent of an operating budget goes to the creation and maintenance of the environment that supports and inspires the people working in it—i.e., the other 90 percent—then even modest investment is justified by the returns. The biophilic design movement is rooted in the bottom-line value of access to nature and organic forms.9
• Connecting to networks
• Calculating value
• Regulating the environment
• Keeping it all running
• Supporting technology
• Maintaining value
• Illuminating spaces and paths
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02 / Assessing Your Needs
Creative and Inspiring Innovative Design Practical considerations are the first step in taking indoor working and learning environments outside. To be truly successful, however, the spaces must be dynamic and inviting to engage users in both pandemic and nonpandemic times.
• Bold Forms • Socially Magnetic • Instagram Moments
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Flexible and Adaptive
Connected and Engaging
• Environmentally Responsive
• Biophilic Design
• Performance Based
• Health and Wellness
• Pandemic Resilient
• Contentment and Balance
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WorkScape Toolkit Once the needs of an outdoor working or learning environment have been assessed, our Landscape Architects can bring a wide range of integrated tools to bear on the task of creating a safe, comfortable, and functional outdoor work environment. These tools include adaptable features for environmental control, safety guidelines for circulation and seating, approaches to spatial separation and privacy, and fully integrated architectural solutions that address a host of outdoor work considerations. These tools can be used alone or in combination to provide a custom solution for your outdoor WorkScape.
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A Japanese study of 100 cases found that the odds of catching the coronavirus are nearly 20 times higher indoors than outdoors.10
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03 / WorkScape Toolkit
Pivot Visor Operable shade integrated with fixed seating at table: • Mitigates environmental conditions including glare, precipitation and wind. • Provides additional privacy. • Offers convenience of integrated power supply. • Designed as an individual or team workspace.
PRIVACY
COST
WIND
PRECIPITATION
GLARE
MAINTENANCE
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POWER
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03 / WorkScape Toolkit
Dedicated Circulation One-way paths with planted dividers: • Accommodate social distancing guidelines during pandemic times. • Provide additional green space for work and learning environments and passive recreation. • Easily integrate with small seating nooks. • Can become two-way during when pandemic restrictions relax.
PANDEMIC GUIDELINES
COST
SECURITY
ERGONOMICS
MAINTENANCE
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03 / WorkScape Toolkit
Seating Nook Small-scale seating opportunities: • Easily combine with Dedicated Circulation routes. • Accommodate social distancing guidelines during pandemic times. • Provide additional security and privacy during nonpandemic times. • Integrate with planting to provide shade, glare control, and encourage compliance with social distancing guidelines.
PANDEMIC GUIDELINES
COST
SECURITY
PRIVACY
ERGONOMICS
MAINTENANCE
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03 / WorkScape Toolkit
Operable Partitions Folding and rotating movable dividers: • Easily integrate with ergonomically correct fixed seating. • Accommodate social distancing guidelines during pandemic times. • Provide additional privacy and environmental control during nonpandemic times. • Offer convenience of integrated power supply.
PANDEMIC GUIDELINES
COST
PRIVACY
WIND
GLARE
MAINTENANCE
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ERGONOMICS
POWER
Single Panel Work / Relax
Double Panel Present / Focus
Rounded Panels Circulate / Pause
Rounded Panels Collaborate / Connect
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03 / WorkScape Toolkit
Work Pavilion A fully integrated design solution: • Addresses the full range of considerations for outdoor work and learning environments. • Provides flexibility in furniture layout for pandemic and nonpandemic times.
PANDEMIC GUIDELINES
WIND
PRECIPITATION
GLARE
WI-FI
LIGHTING
ERGONOMICS
POWER
COST
MAINTENANCE
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TEMPERATURE
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03 / WorkScape Toolkit
Caster Bench Movable, lockable, ergonomic seating with integrated planting: • Provides adaptable and resilient landscape design. • Accommodates social distancing guidelines during pandemic times. • Enables individual privacy or social arrangements during nonpandemic times. • Can be relocated out of direct sunlight.
PANDEMIC GUIDELINES
COST
PRIVACY
GLARE
ERGONOMICS
MAINTENANCE
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Auditorium
Team Meeting
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Collaboration
Plaza
03 / WorkScape Toolkit
Tidal Distancing Urban plaza with transient water feature: • Accommodates social distancing guidelines during pandemic times. • Floods to limit access and enhance security and privacy during pandemic times. • Serves as a visual amenity while providing soothing background noise. • Integrates ergonomically correct seating.
PANDEMIC GUIDELINES
COST
SECURITY
PRIVACY
TEMPERATURE
MAINTENANCE
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ERGONOMICS
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03 / WorkScape Toolkit
Planted Amphitheater Modern terraced seating and stage with vegetative buffers: • Accommodate social distancing requirements without obstructing views. • Integrate a range of ergonomically correct seating to promote work, learning, and play. • Provide fixed seating for convenience of integrated power supply. • Can maximize capacity during nonpandemic times.
PANDEMIC GUIDELINES
COST
ERGONOMICS
POWER
MAINTENANCE
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Multi-purpose Par Socially Distanced Seating
Movable Furnitu
Wide Entry Walks
rtitions
re
Meeting Rooms
Secondary Access Routes
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Contact Us At Perkins&Will, we design spaces by working ecological and social considerations into poetic expressions of physical context. Our landscapes encourage interaction and creativity while supporting public health and the natural world.
Leadership: Zan Stewart, Steve Summerford, Valdis Zusmanis
Team: Rachel Flanagan, Katie Janson, Luke Murphree, Lauren Neefe, AndrĂŠs Orjuela, Alyssa Rogut Endnotes 1
Qian et al., "Indoor Transmission of SARS-CoV-2," 2020. Preprint.
2
"A Conversation with Sara Jensen Carr," Capita, 14 May 2020. Web.
3
L.L. Bean, with Industrious and Leigh Stringer, Be an Outsider Handbook, 2018. PDF.
4
Terrapin Bright Green, "The Economics of Biophilia," 2012. PDF.
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Cited in "How Safe Are Outdoor Gatherings?" New York Times, 3 July 2020. Web.
6
L.L. Bean, Be an Outsider.
7
Kaplan and Kaplan, "Well-Being, Reasonableness, and the Natural Environment," Applied Psychology, 2011. PDF.
8
Levenson et al.. "What We Know About Your Chances of Catching the Virus Outdoors," New York Times, 15 May 2020, updated 3 July. Web.
9
Heath et al., "Creating Positive Spaces: Using Biophilic Design," DesignLab, 2018. PDF.
10 Nishiura et al., "Closed Environments Facilitate Secondary Transmission of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)," 2020. Preprint. 40
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1315 Peachtree Street NE Atlanta, Georgia 30309 www.perkinswill.com
