7 minute read
The Architecture of WeWork
Advertisement
The Architecture of WeWork Hong Bae Yang, Michael Pickoff and Summer Liu
WeWork, the global co-working office company is rapidly expanding (including a branding change to The We Company) with 400,000 members in 30 countries and opening two million square feet of office space every month. WeWork is a co-working juggernaut, and an understanding and critical assessment of their data-driven design methodology is an important aspect of any informed discourse on contemporary office architecture.
WeWork’s methodical data collection has played a role in their business and design models since their acquisition of a BIM consultancy firm called Case in 2010. Today, data analytics plays a primary role in the company’s real estate deals, construction sequence, and design choices, and has allowed them to set their sights on near-term expansion of the company’s scope of services. The company’s unprecedented use of quantitative, data-driven design motivates an analysis of the qualitative architectural features that the company uses to market its “space as service” business model. The company is shifting the architectural focus from place as product towards analytical design as service.
The history of WeWork’s implementation of innovative technology solutions started with the company’s first major acquisition of Case, a small software development firm focusing on virtual design, construction, BIM and information management consulting. Case was founded in May of 2008 by architects Federico Negro, David Fano and Steve Sanderson during the economic downturn. Prior to the Wework acquisition, Case primarily developed a series of Revit add-ons that could be customized to
a firm’s specific needs. They mostly amounted to simple scripts that helped automate a variety of otherwise tedious tasks, for labeling, documenting, and coordinating a project.
WeWork acquired Case in the summer of 2015, and their work shifted towards 3D scanning and building information modeling (BIM) for producing digital representations of spaces, as well as customized software for internal process management. Case assisted WeWork’s designers with leveraging innovative and emerging technology. Today, David Fano leads a 160-person “physical products” team that includes a development group and a design and construction group that is a composed of architecture, interior design, engineering, construction, integration, logistics, and art and graphics teams.
WeWork’s business model can be described in three interrelated phases: real estate acquisition, design and construction, and post-occupancy data analysis. As a real estate developer, WeWork employs algorithmic parameters to assess the viability of a prospective acquisition including the profiling of local
Layout of WeWork’s storefront assembly system within a point cloud model. WeWork, 2018
transportation options, nearby businesses, and demographics. Once a lease is signed, the physical space is 3D scanned for reality capture, transforming the architecture into point cloud data for use in an extremely high-resolution BIM model. This 3D model then serves as input data for proprietary procedural algorithms for WeWork’s “augmented space planning” for desk and partition layout, which includes the output of shop drawings for manufacture. When building begins, the construction layout is described to workers by BIM intelligent lasers, and the process is monitored remotely by WeWork’s designers using HD 360 degree cameras developed by Field Lens. Once the space is occupied, WeWork employs a multitude of strategies for assessing efficiency and gathering user data, including a neural net that collects information on its existing buildings’ layouts and meeting room usage, heat maps, key cards, mobile devices, interior beacons and environmental sensors. All of these technologies gather usage information which is analyzed and used an input parameter for future construction.
The WeWork model has proven to be valid and effective, and indeed revolutionized the way millennials work. The company
sees this as the perfect opportunity in branching out to other aspects of one’s life: housing, exercising, schooling, etc. WeLive is the brainchild of WeWork’s founder Miguel McKelvey. It is founded on the premise that young professionals who live in metropolitan areas these days do not need as much individual living space as before. This new communal housing provides shared kitchen and living room, which paved the road for micro units with private bathrooms and bedrooms. There are on-site baristas and bartenders, and many ways of interacting between residents. There are two WeLive locations, New York and Washington DC, targeting professionals who travel frequently and are looking for a flexible lease agreement. All the units are equipped with basic pots and pans, bedsheets, and even curated books.
This is not just a commune disguised in the “We-” branding, but the very beginning of something much larger. As of now, WeWork is proposing a mega campus on the old Presidio site in San Francisco, that would accommodate one’s life from the early stages of kindergarten and preschool, all the way to living, working, and higher education at a college level.
Procedural algorithm for generating private office layouts. International Journal of Architectural Computing, 2018
Anatomy of a micro-unit at WeLive 110 Wall Street, New York ARExA, 2016
The Presidio proposal has: WeWork, WeWork Labs, Innovation Garage, Veterans in Residence, Creators in Residence, WeGrow, Flatiron School, Rise by We (which is gym for all the residents). It is not unprecedented if we consider Karl Marx Hof in Vienna, where the complex is big enough to contain four kindergartens, aiming to provide infrastructure support for a family’s need every way possible. But what WeWork is proposing is something at a much larger scale than a local project like Karl Marx Hof. They are marketing for a new definition of international and universal, developing something that is workable at a global scale, transportable from location to location, be it New York to DC, or Los Angeles to Tokyo. Their business is growing with the standard attitude of seeing something that works and fits, acquiring those services, and isolating them from the rest of the market. One example is their acquisition of Case, a building information and technology consultancy that provides customized BIM solutions for efficient project management. This acquisition allowed WeWork to focus on subsequent BIM developments in scanning and “printing” an existing space at
Karl Marx-Hof, Vienna Bwag/Commons, 2015
a much faster rate than relying on conventional blueprints for building information.
WeWork continues to expand aggressively at a global scale and is expected to grow exponentially. The impact that WeWork will have on the culture and physical environment of the workplace is inevitable. Most architects will agree that the spatial quality of WeWork office spaces is not the driving force that spearheaded the company to its current status. In fact, most architects would dismiss the spaces as being undesirable.
Design decisions are made in order to determine the culture of the workplace. The degree of openness, types of desks, interior design, amenities, and events offered are input variables that produce a certain output. WeWork Community managers will point out that the placement of amnenities such as fruit water, beer and kombucha on tap are done so to maximize collaboration and interaction. Architects aim to set the design of the spaces to cultivate a specific culture of the workplace.
Draft beer on tap in WeWork locations. Amy F. Robertson, 2016
What WeWork aims to control is not the design of the spaces, but rather the culture of workplace. For WeWork, the culture of the workplace has the same capacity as architecture in terms of its susceptibility to be designed. Culture is no longer an output, but a type of input that can be controlled. According to the US industry standard, typical office space per person is about 200 sq. ft.; WeWork provides about 60 to 80 sq.ft. that are jampacked, and at times over-packed. Yet however, the growth of their membership does not decline, and is projected to double every year. Current conventions and standards regarding the workspace rely on the physical quantitative data to make it seem desirable. But as WeWork demonstrates with their growing membership, the qualitative aspects, such as proximity of commute, social/communal opportunities, and amenities that are overlooked in the standards are more valued than the quantitative measurement of square footage.
The success of WeWork derives not only from technical and financial strategies, but also from its approachability. WeWork shows the capacity to expand the architect’s scope to design beyond just architecture. WeWork demonstrates design opportunities not just in utilizing data-driven technology, but also in recognizing and utilizing “lifestyle” as an asset that can be produced and marketed. Consequently, WeWork is not offering any innovation in the form of architectural design, but rather they offer unconventional lifestyle in the form of conventional space through their data-driven methodology, shifting from place-based to data-based design solutions.
