FUTURE OFFICE ECIFFO ERUTUF
Design Research Goal
In late 2019, The popular coworking firm WeWork has 90 percent of its valuation vanished and its IPO canceled. Apart from faults in business model, branding and upper management, what has this taught us about modern workspaces from a design perspective? This research intends to discover the spatial strategies that are not working in the current office model and propose a new one that addresses the future workforces and working behaviors.
Chapter I Reflection of Workspace
Chapter II Retrospection
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. WeWork As Trend Setter In Office Space Design
. How We G Are In Workspac
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. How WeWork Fail And A Designer’s Takeaway From It
. Casestudy Design and Move History
of Workspace
Got Where We ce Design
y Of Key Office ement in
Chapter III Reimagination of Workspace
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. New York As A Casestudy City For Office Design Intervention
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. A Manifesto Of Future Office Typology
Chapter 1 Reflection of Workspace
what makes up a trendy office space? 6
Open Plan Workstation
Amenities
Pet Friendly Policy
(Photo Owner: Silicon Valley, HBO)
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When we think about an ideal work environment, what do we think about? Open plan workstations, amenities (foosball and billiard table) and pet friendly policy, tools that create a sense of “openness” and “community”, just like how TV show Silicon Valley portraits ideal office space in large tech corporates and edgiest startup firms. It’s hard to leave WeWork out of conversation when we talk about office design trend nowadays. Since the firm’s establishment in 2010, the co-working giant has successfully embedded the paradigm shift - flexible workspace rather than task-oriented workspace - in public’s mind. It has greatly influenced how we perceive workspaces and how large corporate design their workspace. More importantly, WeWork has directly caused hype in “co-working” workspace mode not only in companies, but also in educational and healthcare institutes. In addition, co-work spaces targeted at entrepreneur/freelancers suddenly gained attention and had its huge market. (Photo Owner: WeWork)
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(Photo from: Financial Times)
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“Just six weeks ago, the coworking giant WeWork was the US’s most valuable tech startup. Then it filed its S-1 registration for an initial public offering, disclosing a bevy of conflicts of interest and mismanagement by its magnetic and eccentric cofounder, Adam Neumann...” “...Within 33 days the offering was scuttled, WeWork’s valuation plummeted 70% or more, and Neumann, who believed he would become the world’s first trillionaire, was ousted as CEO.”
Dakin Campbell, Bussiness Insider Sep 28, 2019
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what is a designer’s takeaway from this?
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who is using offices? how are they feeling about their current spaces? While the firm’s misbranding and mismanagement can be blamed for WeWork’s failure, what can we designers learn from this? Has this incident also forebode essential failure in the current office’s spatial strategy? Two key parameters to understand this question are who actually uses the workspace and how are they feeling about them.
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who is using offices?
“The number of co-working spaces worldwide is expected to hit 25,968 by 2022, an increase of 42% from 2019, says CoworkingResources. Increasingly, WeWork and other co-working spaces are pivoting from targeting the independent worker to luring in corporate accounts, promising an alternative to cubicleville by providing flashy amenities. That’s a huge mistake, as 40% of American workers are expected to be independent contractors by 2020.”
Casey McCarty, Idea Foundry CEO 14
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As can be seen from WeWork’s website, they largely advertised on how they provide for big firms like GE and Standard Chartered, unlike how they branded themselves as a freelancing workspace provider to the public. When WeWork pivoted its direction from serving independent workers and entrepreneurs to large corporate, it has looked at short-term profits but not the longterm trend, that we are entering an era where freelancers are no longer the minority in the entire workforce. Not only have more population (especially millennial) favored freelancing, but also have large firms benefited from more freelancers. To corporates, those workforces are free of cost like training and insurance, and more importantly, they are contractual and contingent upon tasks. The question remains how do designers spatially embrace such new relationships.
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On top section of their website, WeWork markets how good they are in terms of serving corporate employees, not the independent workers (wework.com)
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how are they feeling about their current spaces?
“According to a survey of some 600,000 desk-bound staff across the world by Leesman, a data provider whose benchmarking survey is used by companies to find out how their employees rate their offices, nearly 40% of respondents disagree with the statement that their office environment “enables me to work productively”.
The Economist, Oct, 2019 18
(The Economist, 2019)
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“WeWork’s fundamental business idea — to cram as many people as possible into swank, high-dollar office space, and then shower them with snacks and foosball-type perks so they overlook the distraction-carnival of their desks — fails office workers, too.” (arhad Manjoo, The New York Times) Similar to WeWork’s strategy, which is to squeeze out the square footages of a floor plan so they can sublease to as much subscribers as possible, many corporate offices utilize the “open plan workstation + amenity model” out of real estate consideration rather than the democratic ideology to improve sense of openness and employee’s mental well-being. (Musser, 2009) And office design with such intention has seriously intervened office users’ privacy and ability to concentrate at work. The capitalistic intention behind open office today has been packaged with the pretty buzz word: sense of community. The goal to achieve maximum output in given amount of area has made today’s offices reminiscent to Taylorism streamlines back in the early 20th century.
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Talyorism Workspaces (Photo: Medium.com)
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An extreme example of how an office can abuse open plan workstations. This is an a (Photo: Newell Post, Wikipedia)
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actual floor plan of an office.
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WeWork’s rise and fall has taught us people’s reaction towards the workplace status quo as well as the changing workforce demographics.
However, what has been successful and unsuccessful spatial interventions to address similar issues historically? (Photo: Knoll)
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Chapter 2 Reflection of Workspace
“Taylorism” 1890 “Johnson Wax HQ” 1936 “Bürolandschaft” 1950 “Action Office” 1964
Photo from Getty Images
Industrial revolution has brought about changes in the thinking of workspace, from focus on individual employee to focus on systemic efficiency. Before industrial revolution, the first building dedicated to be workspace, the Admiralty Building in United Kingdom has emphasized devisions between each officers. “for the intellectual work, separate rooms are necessary so that a person who works with his head may not be interrupted� Reported by UK government on the building. (Tseng, 2018) However, as industrial revolution arrived, workspace strategy that maximizes productivity gained popularity. Scientific Management, a management theory in workspaces invented by Frederick Winslow Taylor has become very influential during the time.
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Admiralty Building in UK (Photo: D. Cunego 1896, Ian Dunster 2006)
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“Taylorism was a highly influential theory that dominated the design of workspaces of the early 20th century. The notion of systematization the workplace into a hierarchical management of labour resulted into rigid office layouts with managers encircling rows upon rows of desks manned by clerical staff. Long and narrow floor plans to access natural daylight and accommodate limited structural spans lead to double-loaded corridors and repetition of desks in bleak open plan areas. The desire to maximize efficiency and productivity left out the human and social elements and resulted in dehumanizing working environments.�
Danny SC Tseng, Architect Medium.com
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“In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first.� --Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winston Taylor and his Scientific Management applied to workspaces. (Photo: Philip Gendreau/Berrmann/Corbis)
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How to Mediate Between Efficiency and Humanization? While as workspaces, production is inevitably the priority of design, there is certainly better environment than the dehumanizing Talyorism spaces. Is it possible to reconcile efficiency and humanity through spatial invention? Fortunately, Frank Llyode Wright offered a successful solution to this dilemma through his design of Johnson Wax Headquarters in 1930s. The key is: high customization throughout the space that fits the project 34
Section and plan of Johnson Wax HQ (Photo: Archdaily)
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(Photo: scjohnson.com)
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Unlike Taylorism offices or many offices today that are merely occupying any given floor with workstations, Johnson Wax HQ presents a office scheme that is highly coordinated and synergic, through customization of different scales of design elements. While equally streamlined and spatially efficient as Taylorism offices did, Johnson Wax HQ didn’t at all compromise users’ well-being and privacy. This is due to the highly customized ceiling/roof and furniture that work so well with one another, and with the existing condition. The column and roof module that resembles tree canopy brings tremendous daylight to project of such large footprint. More importantly, they visually mimic a forest that connects with users biophilicly. Wright designed and planned 40 different types of furniture pieces in this space. They are round cornered and spaced from one another, so employees barely feel “trapped” like they did in regular rows of rectangle desks. In the end, these customized furniture have both given users visual pleasure, ergonomic comfort as well as individual privacy.
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“One of the first consequences was tea in the afternoon, and they didn’t like to go home.” -Frank Lloyd Wright
Furniture in Johnson Wax HQ customized by Wright (Photo: https://wrightinracine.wordpress.com)
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What Happens If We Brainlessly Copy Wright’s Design?
The success of Frank Lloyd Wright’s design lies in his attention to the project’s precondition, and his ability to orchestrate different scales of elements through customization. However, many has only learned Wright’s open plan office scheme and wanted to copy that with no attention to context and design. Namely, floating furnitures within a floor plan with no walls.
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German State Library That Utilized BĂźrolandschaft Method (https://www.spacesmith.com/blog/the-office-a-historical-perspective)
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A typical Bürolandschaft style office floor plan
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax HQ certainly has inspired some novel approaches to office planning. Bürolandschaft, translated as “office landscape“ in English, is introduced by German space planning consultancy Quickborner Group in 1985. This planning theory features an organic layout of furniture to allow for flexible organization of teams and free-flowing circulation. Quickborner Group imagined this would increase collaboration, communication and eliminate sense of hierarchy. (Tseng, 2018) Similar approaches can be seen from the Action Office furniture systems designed by Herman Miller in 1968. Action Office is a group of desk, shelves, chair and partition that allows individual users to adjust and customize. The system is easy to configure into repeatable modules while still maintaining the ability to have varying function, aesthetics, and level of privacy depending on users’ need.
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Herman Miller’s Action Office (Photo: Herman Miller)
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The starting point of both projects is to discuss potential of an office to be flexible and customizable. More importantly, the flexibility and customizability revolve around the users of the workspace, in realization that the workers’ ability to choose results in a positive and healthy work environment. However, a majority of us today have seemed to only learn from their potential to be affordable and profitable. Brainless copy of Wright, Quickborner and Herman Miller’s ideas without context has given rises to cost-driven planning methods like open plan workstations and hotdesks, which we commonly see today.
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Hot desking means employees don’t have assigned desk and share desk with their co-workers. While being extremely affordable, it has caused stress and anxiety by eliminating personal spaces. (Photo: https://www.opensourcedworkplace.com/news/what-is-hot-deskanxiety-what-employees-should-do-to-have-less-hot-desk-anxiety)
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History has taught us how offices evolved and the motivations behind the evolution. More importantly, projects like Johnson Wax HQ highlighted architect’s ability and responsibility in shaping an inspiring and healthy work environment. Based on retrospection to the past offices and reflection on the current offices from the first two chapters:
Can we imagine a future office? (Photo: Knoll)
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Chapter 3 Reimagination of Workspace
New York has been selected as a casestudy city where it’s perfect to study what a future office can look like, as it both has a lot of room to improve on employee satisfaction as well as a large number of independent contractors.
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Employee Satisfaction vs Cities
1. Miami, Fla. 2. Los Angeles, Calif. 3. Raleigh, N.C. 4. Louisville, Ky. 5. Omaha, Neb. . . . 46. Dallas, Tex. 47. Houston, Tex. 48. Memphis, Tn. 49. Oakland, Calif. 50. New York, N.Y (Kununu, 2019)
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(The abundance of coffee shops in New York has proven the dire need to have a workspace in a city that is impossible to acquire your own office, Photo: A/D/O)
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The design projection of the research tends to manifest the following key elements concluded from the previous chapters: 1. Users of the future offices 2. Inter-relationships between different user groups 3. Requirement from each of these user groups 4. High customizability in design
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“The proximity of an office to business operations is an incredibly important factor. Minimizing the waste of excess travel will keep your operations lean and your business productive.” “A coworking space should always be available. Entrepreneurs are always on call, often working at very unaccommodating hours.” “A coworking space should readily scale alongside your business. There should always be real estate available for you to expand your operations with minimal processing delays.”
Edward Kost, Freelancer.com Technical Co-Pilot
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Availability
Proximity
Expandability
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Independent Workers
Availability
Corporate Employees
Community
Short-term hire/collaborator
Potential Colleague/client
Expandability
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Privacy
Proximity
The diagram showcases the required elements of a future office, projected from the researches from the previous chapters. Spatially, the proposal would have spaces for independent workers, spaces for corporate employees since they would each make up half of the future workforce. More importantly, a interstitial environment would have to be formed to address the symbiosis between the two demographics.
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The potential site to study the design intervention is: 388 Hudson St New York, NY 10014 The site 125 x 200 ft lot, close to amenities including park and museums. It is one of the vacant lot that satisfied “Proximity“ requirement from future workforces. In urban scale, the site is located between lower Manhattan office areas, addressing the distancing issues by both independent works and corporate employees.
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Site Plan & Site Perspectives
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Conceptual Collage
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The conceptual collage shows a possible scenario of the future workspace design, where offices are decentralized, expandable and customizable modules to house both corporate workers and independent workers. When offices become decentralized and customized, it meets different levels of proximity and privacy requirement from workers. The interstitial spaces between the working modules becomes social spaces to encourage communication and collaboration between different position, occupation, or even between academia and professional.
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Conclusion
Working/attending school from home due to pandemic since March 2020 has reassured designers that in a future world with advanced technology, workspace is less about tasks and tools, but more about interactions and opportunities made possible through the spatial experience. More importantly, as more people pursue an independent career, and as productivity is more contingent upon workers’ level of comfort and concentration, the current office strategy will soon become obsolete. Therefore, the question of how to break the boundaries of workspace through inventive spatial interventions should never be overlooked.
(Photo: Artemide)
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SICHENG ZHOU M.ARCH 2021 UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA