a copy of this report

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Cover
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F U T U R E W O R K 2020
PHASE TWO
PRESENTING
THE
FUTURE
OF
THE
WORKPLACE
As presented byAndrea Vanecko
principal, director of interior design, Callison
J. Robert Hillier, FAIA
founder and chairman, The Hillier Group Inc.
FUTURE WORK
Nila R. Leiserowitz, FASID
vice president, Gensler
2020
As reviewed byBrian K. Ferguson, AIA
global director, planning and workplace design,
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Vivian E. Loftnness, AIA
professor of architecture, Carnegie Mellon
University senior researcher, Center for Building
Performance and Diagnostics
SPONSORED BY
American Society of Interior Designers
Armstrong World Industries, Inc.
Steelcase
Ziff Davis Smart Business
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF INTERIOR DESIGNERS
Cover
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Intro
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PRESIDENT’S INTRODUCTION
The future holds endless possibilities. The trick is knowing how to take advantage of those possibilities
as we prepare for the future. We are all aware that the workplace has changed tremendously in our
lifetime and is still being shaped by ongoing developments. There is no doubt that we are part of an
era of change - both the change that happens to us and the change that we create.
Think about it this way…when you are driving your car on a dark, rainy night and visibility is poor, you
turn on the car’s high beams so that you can see farther. You certainly wouldn’t just close your eyes,
hit the gas and speed forward, hoping that you won’t hit anything. The same theory applies when planning for the future. The future is uncertain, like a dark, moonless night. You prepare for it by looking
ahead and examining your options, a process similar to turning on your high beams to improve visibility. We can’t afford to simply speed forward without giving any thought to what might happen. So, we
are going to turn on our own ‘high beams’ and look into the future — 20 years into the future of the
work environment.
The reason that we developed this white paper was to share a glimpse into the future of the workplace
with you. But it is important to understand that this is not a script, but merely a guidebook. I encourage you to take what you learn from these experts’ scenarios and apply it to your own plans for the
future. Included in this paper are a wide range of expertise and ideas from five established professionals who are sharing their visions as to what the future work environment will be like in twenty years.
You might wonder which expert is right. Which future should you plan for? Well, when forecasting the
future there is no definite answer and there is no one right answer. The future takes multiple paths.
Every person’s future is different. But, we do not have to sit back and just wait to see what will happen. While we may not know exactly what the future holds, we can plan for it. And that is what
FutureWork 2020 is all about.
The first three sections of this white paper were developed through research, time investment and
effort by respected professionals in not just interior design, but architecture, management and real
estate. The remaining two papers, one by a seasoned researcher and one by an expert with a background in architecture and interior and corporate real estate, are responses to the first three papers
with additional gathered research, examples, facts and figures. All five authors have given generously
of their time and expertise to help us all look into our own crystal balls and to plan for the future of
the work environment.
Now, my challenge to you is to use the visions of the future offered by the authors of this research to
do some scenario planning of your own. Develop your own forecasts of the future based on what you
know and what you can learn from resources such as this paper and many others available from the
American Society of Interior Designers.
Terri Maurer, FASID
2001 President
The American Society of Interior Designers
president’s introduction
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Photo: Armstrong®
As Callison’s principal in charge of corporate-office interior design, Andrea Vanecko
has worked nationally with a diverse base of clients such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard,
Latham & Watkings, LLP, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP and Goldman Sachs.
Vanecko brings an extraordinary level of talent, energy and collaborative commitment
to her work. Her passion for creating spaces that inspire is backed by a solid grasp of
operational and business issues.
Her philosophy of recognizing space as a powerful business tool is one that Vanecko
aggressively pursues. The driving force behind Callison’s Future-at-Work exhibit, she is recognized
for her forward-thinking approach to how we will work in the future and for helping companies
of all sizes understand how the office environment will need to change to accommodate new
paradigms of the “office.”
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THE INTEGRATED WORKPLACE
ANDREA VANECKO, PRINCIPAL, DIRECTOR OF INTERIOR DESIGN, Callison
1. Introduction
SCENARIO: CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR
ISLANDS 2010
GREG BEAR - AUTHOR
It’s the whole world now, not just Redmond, Washington. You all work like software engineers, any
hour of the day, project-oriented, driven until your biological clock sounds an alarm. Your skin-mounted Dattoo, a PDA in a freckle, is changing color and might be malignant.
But it’s worth it. You make more money, work for seven corporations on a revolving basis, and nobody
tells you when you should be at a meeting, because you can paste your virtual face into a virtual conference, and it will give virtual answers just vague enough to get by.
You met your spouse in a chat room and had an Internet detective check out his or her bona fides. You
have a prenuptial agreement with said spouse. Married couples issue stock to finance buying dishes,
and the Fidelity Emerging Couples Fund is betting how long it will take for the divorce, and who will
get the house and the Golden Retriever.
You have a big house on three acres, with its own hiking trail and pop-up trees to change the scenery.
You have a home theater with its own laugh track, a subwoofer the size of your basement, a swimming
pool with a wave machine. You do all your shopping online, and automated trucks deliver your groceries. Housecleaning is done while you’re out jogging, so you don’t have to feel guilty about hiring
someone who may not have a green card. Going into work is optional, you don’t own a suit any more,
and besides, all your companies merged last week, and the new corporate headquarters is a server in a
small closet in Moscow, Idaho.
Everybody at “work” has a golden parachute, and the online bosses are running scared you’ll jump
along with your virtual co-workers, whom you’ve never met in person, when the stock drops. You own
stock in everything and everybody else, and you all swarm like sheep when analysts bark. You no longer
know whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat because you’re starting to think like a Libertarian,
except you have a recycle bin bigger than your student apartment. But no doubt about it, Ralph Nader
is now just a low point with a first name.
It’s getting scary to go outside. Crime is down to almost nothing but reports of crime are up. Everyone
is nervous about losing their hard-earned stuff. But the truth is, crime is down because burglars are
taking night classes and becoming market analysts.
Welcome to the future, it may be strangely familiar.
the integrated workplace
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“English does not contain a suitable word
for ‘system of problems.’ Therefore I have
had to coin one. I choose to call such a
system a “mess.” The solution to a mess
can seldom be obtained by independently
solving each of the problems of which it
is composed.”
–Russell L. Ackoff
For decades futurists, politicians, scientists,
philosophers, and business leaders, have
preached the gospel of a changing society,
our world in transition from one age to
another. Hailing it variously as the age of
innovation, the knowledge age, the age of
possibility, the age of complexity, the age of
chaos, they are nonetheless unanimous in
their claim that it calls just about everything
we know into question.
They can call it whatever they want. We
believe it. The world is an ever-changing
place, ever more defined by dynamic and
complex networks. We believe that holistic
systems, connecting an interlocking array of
factors from within organizations and without, will be increasingly critical to our prosperity and quality of life.
As workplace design professionals we must
approach our evolving world from a new
perspective, helping us to understand the
changing nature of work and the issues that
surround it. This paper shows how one
group of workplace professionals adopted
this perspective to explore a more integrated approach to workplace design, testing a
range of ideas, activities and solutions in a
challenging business environment. Finally, it
outlines the conclusions drawn from the
experiment, and their implications for the
design profession.
2. A Different Perspective:
Systems Thinking
“When we try to pick out anything by
itself, we find it hitched to everything
else in the universe.”
— John Muir
We live in world of networks — social, economic, political, cultural webs which are
increasingly interdependent. The Internet is
the oft-cited example of these networks, but
these self-organizing, spontaneously evolving
webs are all around us. The Chicago-based
Doblin Research Group deftly points out that
“…the Internet is only the most prominent of
many similar nets defined as reasonably
large, decentralized, interdependent systems.
Others include wire line and cellular phone
networks; stock, bond and commodities trading systems; fax systems; travel networks,
news networks; and most utilities.”1 While
these and other networks strengthen our
communities with new learning and
resources, they also create much more complicated systems, which in turn make problem-solving a more complex task.
Until recently, we’ve been able to drive innovation and solve problems using a conventional disciplinary approach. However, to
cope with the increasingly complex systems
that networks create, it is useful to explore
how a different perspective called systems
thinking could be more effective.
THE DISCIPLINARY APPROACH
The disciplinary method isolates known phenomena within disciplines (such as biology,
anthropology or psychology) and structures
our exploration of the unknown within and
along the boundaries of these categories. It
also introduces us to two of the most powerful tools of modern thinking: the doctrine
of reductionism — which holds that all
things are composed of indivisible elements
— and its natural complement, analytical
thinking. Together, these tools allow the disciplinarian to explain the unknown by reducing problems to simpler sub-problems which
can be solved and reassembled into the
greater solution. The result is an incremental
and deductive process, — we “chip away” at
problems, rather like a sculptor who chisels
marble to reveal an ideal form.
This disciplinary method has basic flaws in
scope and process that limit its applicability
to the complex problems of a rapidly
changing, networked society. Most critical
is that it confines our attention to problems
that belong to established categories of
“problems that fall within the boundaries of
specific disciplines. While this results in
rich repositories (silos) of knowledge inside
the lines of a particular field of study, it
tends to restrict the exploration of new
knowledge and insight that lie at the intersection of various disciplines — the areas
John Seely Brown refers to as ‘the white
space between fields’. ” 2 This bias renders
disciplinarian thinking ill equipped to deal
with the dynamic and interwoven issues of
modern society.
PROBLEMS ESCALATE
In fact, we are observing that a traditional,
disciplinarian process often not only fails to
solve the individual problems in a given situation, it often intensifies the collective
mess.
For example, consider the challenges
encountered by an organization that makes
a major investment in sophisticated technological tools as part of a strategy to
increase productivity, without equal consideration toward technical support, training
and incentive programs. No doubt the information technology (IT) and human resource
(HR) groups have the knowledge in their
respective silos to address these issues.
However, their failure to collaborate dilutes
the potential success of the original initiative (increased productivity) and, in fact,
contributes to increased staff dissatisfaction. That same company might also fail to
consider how the new technology and work
process strategies can effectively alter their
real estate and workstation requirements. 3
Thus, the failure to integrate the knowledge
of real estate, IT and HR groups results in
lower productivity levels and staff dissatisfaction while missing an opportunity to cut
costs and leverage investment dollars.
The point is that problems can no longer be
assigned exclusively to a discipline; issues
transcend disciplinary silos just as they cross
national boundaries. Instead, problems must
be attacked with a broad range of technical,
scientific and humanitarian methods. The
arbitrary silos of disciplinary thinking are
giving way to an integrated network of
systems thinking.
Systems thinking does not replace the disciplinary framework, it expands upon and
supplements it in response to the changing
needs of a changing world. As Russell
Ackoff explains: “What was ‘all’ in the past
has become a ‘part’ of the present.”
THE SYSTEMS APPROACH
Whereas the disciplinary approach subscribes
to reductionism, and employs analytical
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thinking, the systems approach is practiced
through synthetic thinking, based on the
doctrine of expansionism, which holds that
all objects, events and experiences of them
are parts of larger wholes. Expansionism
does not deny the existence of parts, but
focuses on the whole of which they are a
part.4 So what is a system, really?
“A system is a set of two or more interrelated elements of any kind (concepts,
objects or people)…A set of elements that
forms a system always has some characteristics, or can display some behavior,
that none of its parts or subgroups can.
A system is more than the sum of its parts.
A human being, for example, can write or
run, but none of its parts can.”5
According to the synthetic mode of thinking,
answers are not found by taking problems
apart, but by viewing them as pieces of a
larger context or problem. In this way we
build toward solutions much like a sculptor
who uses clay to construct an ideal form.
In comparing the two approaches, think
again of our two sculptors. The disciplinarian
carves away marble, thus his final “solution”
emerges as he eliminates what he does not
want. Each move is final, for there is no
turning back. The systems sculptor, on the
other hand, shapes his “solution” by adding
and manipulating bits of clay. In this manner, he can incorporate changes as he moves
ahead, adapting the form as his vision, or
circumstances, evolve.
Even with this insight, we were left with the
overwhelming project of “designing and
managing systems so that [we] can cope
with increasingly complex and rapidly
emerging sets of interacting problems in an
increasingly complex and dynamic environment.”6 It was a call to action. We saw the
opportunity to explore and apply a systems
point of view within the dynamic setting of
the work place, and from this seed of inspiration grew Future@Work.
The following case study details our first
attempt to explore and apply a systems point
of view by approaching the workplace as a
set of problems which can only be resolved
with an integrated, coordinated effort
toward an ideal form.
3. Case study: Future@Work
“…when you’re trying to solve a very complex problem, you don’t always have to
have a plan…The solution emerges from
the interaction of all the individuals.”
— Jim Dowe
PROBLEM SEEKING: INTEGRATION OF EFFORTS
Witnessing the complicating influences of
the “new” economy in early 1995, Callison
sought out a dedicated group of design,
technology and business professionals to discuss how the changing nature of work would
affect the future of the workplace.
Discussion centered around the lack of success our respective clients were experiencing
when implementing new workplace strategies aimed at cutting costs and/or improving
productivity. As a group, we observed several
consistently occurring conflicts or “disconnects” that occurred as a result of “silo management.”
• Major investments in technology were not
demonstrating returns commensurate with
their expense.
cial results. The most recent examines
innovative workplace practices.7
We then turned inward and evaluated our
own methods of responding to the workplace
needs of today’s organizations. The consensus was that current methods of practice
among traditional design disciplines did not
result in workplace solutions that support
today’s business needs. The more we compared notes, the more we understood our
common challenge: we could see opportunities to connect workplace solutions with
business goals, but clients could not — at
least not in the context of a given, active
project. Specifically, we saw how integrated
workplace strategies could help companies
address their primary business issues:
GOALS
• Develop/maintain a strong organizational
culture
• Reduce overhead spending while increasing
productivity/profitability
• Foster creativity and innovation
• Traditional hierarchies and symbols of status remained despite systematic flattening
of internal management structures.
CEOs see human resources
support and people performance
as important issues.
• The creation of teams resulted in negligible
productivity gains.
FIVE KEYS TO CREATE PRODUCTIVE
WORKPLACES PRIORITY RANKING
• The implementation of alternative work
strategies met with marginal success.
• A focus on innovation was coupled with an
inability to attract and retain workers with
desirable skill sets.
• The traditional design process was not
meeting the demand for accelerated
responses to a changing marketplace.
• Draconian cost-cutting measures were
jeopardizing a company’s ability to
accomplish core business objectives.
• Companies are searching for ways to
incorporate intangibles such as innovation,
R&D, customer retention into their regular
performance evaluations. The Department
of Labor has produced a number of studies
analyzing the relationship between nonfinancial performance and corporate finan-
PRODUCTIVITY
KEYS
PRESIDENT/
CEOs
People Performance
Designed Environment
Workflow
Technology
Human Resources
2
4
5
3
1
ASID Productive Workplaces
How Design Increases Productivity:
Expert Insights
STRATEGIES
• Attract and retain great people
• Stay agile
• Increase efficiency, decrease waste
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ATTRACT AND RETAIN
Physical workplace impacts decisions to accept or leave jobs
ed approaches to workplace design could be
explored and experienced became the vision
that gave birth to the Future@Work exhibit.
STRATEGY
Going forward based on the content created
from orchestrated brainstorming sessions,
the Consortium started development of the
Future@Work exhibit by creating the following set of assumptions. What might the work
a day world be like 10 years into the future:
• Information technologies will continue to
increase in power, speed, complexity, and
offer an expanding variety of applications.
%
%
%
%
%
%
%
%
ASID Recruiting and Retaining Qualified Employees - by Design
Addressing each of these issues clearly
required consideration of influences beyond
“The Office.” Advances in information and
communication technology, along with corresponding changes in organizational structure
and processes spurred the need to redefine
the workplace. Furthermore, we agreed that
to operate successfully in a rapidly changing
world required that organizations behave in a
less linear fashion; we needed to move
toward more organic organizational models
that thrive on the interrelated dependency of
all aspects of their organization.
structures, emerging technology trends and
tools, as well as demographic and organizational culture shifts expanded the
Consortium’s perspective and list of participants to more than 150 contributors.
Based on this shared understanding, we
established a non-profit organization, the
Office of the Future Consortium (the
Consortium), representing a multi-disciplinary core group of members: AT&T Wireless,
Steelcase, Barclay Dean, Bank of America
(formerly SeaFirst Bank), Sparling Engineers
and Callison Architecture.
We observed that change was rarely
approached using this methodology, particularly in larger organizations that maintain traditional linear and segregated approaches to
change and decision-making. Business leaders
frequently talked about cross-functional
change processes, but most organizations continued to compartmentalize the execution of
strategies among their Real Estate/ Facilities,
IT and Human Resource departments. While
these groups may share the same strategic
vision, they rarely talk to one another about
how their “silos” might be interrelated.
To consider the various, interconnected
influences of business and the workplace,
the Consortium adopted an integrated model
that includes four major areas of focus:
Business Process, People, Technology and
Workplace (space). In this model, an interrelationship was developed that defines all
organizational performance as the result of
the needs of people organized by business
processes, who are supported by technology
and perform work in a workplace.
Continuing discussions with industry leaders
about changing business processes and
VISION
The Consortium believed companies could
implement meaningful change to the workplace by executing a process strategy that
systematically integrates the fundamental
business factors (People, Process, Technology
and Workplace).
The Consortium also observed that while
many people were talking about the need to
redefine workplace strategies, there were few,
if any, places to see or experience integrated
work place strategies or environments. We
envisioned a place that would break people’s
traditional “mental models” of the office and
provoke them to reconsider their approaches
to real estate as it relates to their business
goals and strategies. A place where integrat-
• Wireless technologies will release computing and communication technologies from
fixed locations within or outside the office.
• Alternative environments outside the office
will frequently support the working needs
of people better than their current office
environment.
• Focus on collaborative work will increase the
demand for collaborative/group communication tools and environments. Collaborative
tools will also be required outside the traditional office (home and other remote sites).
• As boundaries between work life and personal life blur, people will need new ways
to cope with the overlapping demands of
family, relationships, community responsibilities and work.
• Less space will be allocated to individual
work.
• Symbols of status will need to be
exchanged with alternative workplace, HR
and IT benefits and solutions.
• “The bottom line” will continue to be of
primary importance but will not remain the
only indicator of success. (Others include
ability to innovate, strength of corporate
culture, management quality, market position, customer/employee satisfaction)
• Greater cultural and intellectual diversity in
the workforce will require accommodation in
work and workplace strategies and processes.
• What people accomplish will increasingly
gain importance over who they are.
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Given these ten assumptions, the collaborative design team continued to ask how the
workplace can reflect or respond to these
issues. How do we translate workplaces into
multi-functional, comfortable, motivational,
inviting and healthy environments?
EXPERIENCE: REVOLUTIONARY VS.
EVOLUTIONARY
The resulting exhibit was a collection of
spaces that expanded upon our “future”
workplace assumptions. Each venue needed
to support a variety of individual and group
work styles, work tools and technology. We
attempted to make the office a place where
people would want to come by designing
areas that, though smaller, are more comfortable, attractive, and gracious than traditional
office environments, maintaining attention to
cost and functionality as well.
The experience was divided into two sections, called 2007 and 1997.
2007
The 2007 portion represented our ideal of the
future workplace. To create it we wiped the
slate clean of conventional standards and let
go of our own pre-conceived notions. Solutions
included little dedicated office space, but many
choices of alternative work settings with comfortable, mobile furniture and lots of available
tools. The emphasis was on group activity and
communication; spaces could be divided or
opened easily to create places for retreat as
well as spaces for collaboration.
1997
Understanding that many of our guests were
not prepared to implement revolutionary
workplace strategies, we used the 1997 section to demonstrate evolutionary workplace
changes, offering a realistic migration strategy by enhancing traditional concepts within
a context of enhanced flexibility and choice.
For example, the 2007 section focused on
the user as a cooperative member of a group
and thus emphasized settings and tools for a
variety of group-based work activities such
as socialization and collaboration. Workplace
settings and tools supported small and largegroup interactions, opportunities for remote
interface (mobile workers) as well as environmental options for focused and/or solo
work. Discussions in this area focused on the
effects of remote workplace strategies, management practices and protocols.
The 1997 portion of the exhibit, on the other
hand, focused on solutions that supported the
evolution of the individual contributor toward
a group/team collaborator. Settings and tools
in this environment place more emphasis on
individual workstations with flexible furniture
solutions and technological tools accommodating the users’ need for customization of
their primary work area. This area also
emphasizes allocations of real estate to dedicated team areas, mobile communication
tools, and the development of behavior protocols for new, team-based environments.
FUTURE@WORK: CONCLUSIONS
Each space supported a minimum of two
functions with no modifications. For example,
in one 147 square foot area we housed a private office, a ten-person conference room, a
team space and a media presentation venue
— no wall changes, no new furniture pieces,
no re-wiring. In this way, we made highly
efficient use of the real estate, providing the
appropriate tools/technology that individuals
as well as groups need to be productive and
allowed users to create the type of space
that best suits their activity, mood and style.
In general, the 2007 space introduced a revolutionary approach to the workplace, integrating office design, work practices, and technology. We wanted to expose people to new ideas
and interrupt their thinking about elements of
work and the workplace, but we didn’t want
to lose them by taking them too far, too fast.
The exhibit opened in 1997 and continued for
three years, during which time more than
6,000 people from business, government and
academia experienced and responded to the
Consortium’s observations and ideas. Their
overwhelmingly positive response, in the form
of verbal and written feedback, business referrals and action, confirmed that our approach
to integrated design solutions results in a
deeper understanding of the links between the
issues of people, technology, business and
space. Moreover, it sheds light on new ideas as
to how these elements might come together
to effect more rewarding workplace strategies:
1. COMMUNICATION IS KEY TO THE
IMPLEMENTATION OF SUCCESSFUL
WORKPLACE STRATEGIES. Traditional design
processes do not communicate the right
information to the right people at the right
time. For example, we frequently see workplace solutions implemented with limited
understanding of how they support the business objectives of the company and the needs
of its diverse end-user population. If the
design/problem-solving process is not continuously rationalized against the business
needs of the client, the solution will fail.
In addition, all users need to understand how
workplace changes will effect and support
them. Without a clearly defined communication strategy that involves all participants, the
users will contribute to the initiative’s failure
rather than working towards its success.
“…of the 99 completed reengineering initiatives, 67 percent were judged as producing
mediocre, marginal or failed results. Fifty
percent of the companies that participated
in the study reported that the most difficult
part of reengineering is dealing with fear
and anxiety in their organizations.”
(Emphasis added) — State of Reengineering
Report, a 1994 study by CSC Index8
2. BEHAVIORAL PROTOCOL DEVELOPMENT IS
CRITICAL IN ASSURING THE SUCCESS OF ANY
NEW WORKPLACE STRATEGY. New workplace
initiatives will not support significant shifts
in organizational culture or process without
the review and development of appropriate
behavioral protocols. For example, putting
workers in open workstations will not, on its
own, correct a lack of communication among
working teams or related staff members.
Open space solutions can encourage more
communication but will not correct communication problems that are directly attributable to existing corporate cultural issues.
Behavioral protocol development must parallel the development and implementation of
new work environments.
“Leadership is about clearly communicating ethical principles of behavior in the
workplace and development of a spirit of
community.”
–Charles Grantham, The Future of Work
3. PROBLEMS DO NOT STAY SOLVED, AND
THAT’S OKAY. In an uncertain and complex
world problems, like the environments in
which they are found, are in constant flux.
Problems, therefore, are not as much targets
to be fixed as they are issues to be managed.
We simply no longer have the time to cope
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with change by reducing systems to static
elements and then doggedly pursuing these
isolated parts; new problems will evolve
before prescribed fixes can be implemented.
If we look at problem-solving as a form of
planning – a participatory, coordinated, integrated and continuous process that builds
toward a desired future, rather than a process
of eliminating a past/present that we don’t
want — we expand our ability to adapt to
change. The ongoing practice of testing and
feedback results in incremental progress
toward what is admittedly an open-ended goal.
This approach allows us to readily adjust our
course so that, however the future unfolds,
we’re always headed in the right direction.
4. SEEING IS BELIEVING. One of the most profound lessons to emerge from Future@Work
grew from the presentation itself. The power
of the exhibit experience to take the fear out
of change cannot be stated strongly enough.
Many experienced workplace professionals had
heard or read about many of the ideas shown
in the exhibit. However, the venue’s ability to
demonstrate integrated design, technology,
human and business strategies in a physical
setting that people could see, feel and touch
first-hand, strengthened their understanding
of the issues. Their experience provided insight
as to how the workplace can influence the
effectiveness of their organization. Once people could begin to understand how various
ideas might — or might not — apply to their
organizations, their minds opened to a range
of possibilities never before considered.
“The experiences we have affect who we
are, what we can accomplish, and where
we are going, and we will increasingly
ask companies to stage experiences that
change us.”
- Joseph Pine II & James Gilmore,
The Experience Economy
4. Implications for Design
“The way forward is paradoxically to look
not ahead, but to look around.”
— John Seely Brown
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. New-economy businesses need new-economy design
The traditional, linear approach to design
(programming, schematic design, design
development, etc.) does not serve the needs
of organizations in a complex, changing
world. It fails to meet today’s business pace,
and fails to include adequate input from
appropriate sources. Information gathered
becomes obsolete due to the laborious
nature of the design process and thus,
design solutions are often irrelevant.
To be able to create the kind of dynamic,
open-ended solutions (constant evolution)
that will best serve our clients in a world of
change, we recommend professional development focused on three areas:
EXPANDED PERSPECTIVE
“People think design is styling. Design is
not style. It’s not about giving shape to
the shell and not giving a damn about
the guts. Good design is a renaissance
attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need and beauty to
produce something that the world didn’t
know it was missing.”
—Paola Antonelli, curator of architecture
and design, Museum of Modern Art
First, the design profession must link its thinking to the needs of business. That means
expanding its knowledge base to include
issues and topics that historically have not
been considered by the design profession, such
as: organizational psychology, behavior modification, cognitive ergonomics, economics,
telecommunications technology, group communication dynamics, and demographics to
name a few. The alternative, a lack of understanding of the many variables that contribute
to an effective workplace, establishes a model
for failure before any solution is realized.
OPEN-ENDED PROCESS. Not only do businesses, and ultimately designers, need to expand
their awareness of various subjects, but we
need to evolve our processes: from linear to
organic; segregated to integrated; static to
fluid. Such processes build on the collective
strength, ideas and direction of a diverse
group of collaborators. This participatory
design process is defined by the following:
•
•
•
•
•
•
shared goals and expectations
mutual respect and trust
established rules
decentralized decision-making
dedication to learning
commitment to ongoing testing
and refinement
COMMUNICATION SKILLS
• Translation - The most successful designers
will be those who learn how to convey the
right things to the right people — to make
their ideas meaningful to different audiences: executives, end-users, technology
experts, human resource professionals, other
designers, etc. Understanding the issues that
each audience holds dear, and knowing how
to communicate the implications of their
decisions is an increasingly critical skill.
• Facilitation - As our approach to design
becomes more integrated, participatory and
less linear, the role of designer is increasingly
that of facilitator. Progress depends on the
ability to facilitate direct inputs and orchestrate the actions of the myriad of players
and perspectives involved in any project.
• Scenario Planning - helps us rehearse for
the future. They are what ifs, created by
taking current significant trends, pushing
them to their logical limits and then asking
what would happen. As a tool for ordering
perceptions about alternative future environments in which today’s decisions might
be played out, scenario planning is not a
way to paint a more accurate picture of
tomorrow but a means to creating better
thinking and an ongoing strategic conversation about the future. It is equally valuable
whether applied within the confines of an
active project as part of a re-engineered
design process, or in the broader context of
experimentation and research.
• Research - We must contribute to our
future. We share responsibility for the
growth and development of our professional knowledge base. Participation in the
development of new processes and areas
of research are critical to the long-term
viability of our profession and the contributions we make to the success of business
- our own as well as our clients.
• Explore new collaborative methods of
delivering design services that respond to
the accelerated demands of the marketplace. New methods must be organized
around integrated “systems” platforms and
include the perspective and expertise of
multi-diciplinary inputs, i.e., suppliers,
construction trades, anthropologists,
behavioral scientist, futurists, MBAs.
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• Seek out participation in social/behavioral
research that enhances our understanding
of the environment and its effect on
human behavior.
• Expand the fundamental skills of the
design profession to include scenario
development and expanded communication/facilitation skills.
• Actively participate in any opportunity to
provoke, learn, test, or build upon provocative points of view and new ideas.
5. Conclusion
If you do not understand your situation
well enough to be in control of it, all you
can do is live in it and learn from it and
try to create possibilities and see what
happens as one goes along.”
- Don Michaels
It is a whole new world. Business is constantly exploring new strategies, technology
is pushing the speed of work and the way in
which it gets done, and people – represented
as individuals or as communities – are
demanding balance between work and life.
This is a “call to action.”
• The collaborative nature of the design
process has broadened the resource base
of the team. New resources continue to
encourage experimentation and testing of
new ideas.
Grantham, Charles. The Future of Work.
McGraw-Hill: 2000.
Mitchell, William J., City of Bits; MIT Press. 1995
DESIGN SOLUTIONS
• Design solutions are developed against a
balanced criterion of issues involving business, technology, and the physical, emotional and social needs of people.
• Design solutions for the workplace are not
finite or static. They must embrace change,
ready to adapt to the future, prototypes
within a company’s business evolution.
• Design solutions must demonstrate efficient use of resources and reduce current
levels of resource/energy consumption.
Our future has been profoundly impacted by
this experiment. We continue our dedication
to experimentation and research through our
extended commitment to Future@Work II.
6. Bibliography
Ackoff, Russell L., Redesigning the Future: A
Systems Approach to Societal Problems; John
Wiley and Sons, 1974
The design profession must evaluate its contribution to the development and implementation of new workplace strategies. Traditional
design approaches used to create workplace
solutions are failing to deliver environments
that meet the goals of business as well as
the needs of people.
Brown, John S., Paul Duguid, The Social Life
of Information, Harvard Business School
Press, 2000
Our response to this call to action created
two important venues, Office of the Future
Consortium and Future@Work. We believe
participation in both of these unique venues
created the following results:
Davenport, Thomas H., “The Fad that Forgot
People, “ Fast Company, November 1995, p. 70
DESIGN PROCESS
• The exhibit experience provided the design
team an opportunity to challenge traditional design processes.
Global Business Network (www.gbn.com)
Davis, Stan and Christopher Meyer, Blur: The
Speed of Change in the Connected Economy;
Addison-Wesley, 1998
Office of the Future Consortium
Poltrock, Steven, Andrea Vanecko, Bob Hunt,
Future@Work: “An Experimental Exhibit
Investigating Integrated Workplace Design,”
appeared in: Streitz, N. et.al (Eds), Cooperative
Buildings Integrating Information Organization,
and Architecture. Proceedings of the first
International Workshop on Cooperative
Buildings (CoBuild 98) Heidelberg, 1998.
Postrel, Virginia, The Future and its Enemies,
The Growing Conflict Over Creativity,
Enterprise and Progress The Free Press, 1998
Rummler, Geary A., and Alan P. Brache.
Improving Performance: How to Manage the
White Space on the Organization Chart.
Jossey-Bass: 1995.
Schrage, Michael “The Debriefing: John Seely
Brown,” Wired Magazine, August 2000 p. 204
“New Survey Examines Net Company Profits;”
Seattle Post Intelligencer, November 23 1999
Details: A Steelcase Company, “The Flat
Screen: Illuminated”, December 1999.
Weinberg, Gerald M. An Introduction to General
Systems Thinking. John Wiley & Sons: 1975.
1 Doblin Group On the Nature of Nets 1996
2 Schrage, Michael “The Debriefing: John Seely
Brown,” Wired Magazine, August 2000 p. 204
Doblin Group On the Nature of Nets 1996
3 Details; A Steelcase Company, The Flat
Screen: Illuminated, 12/99
Ernst and Young LLP, “Measures that Matter”
White paper 1997
4 Ackoff, Russell L., “Redesigning the
Future”, 1974
Horan, Thomas A., Digital Places: Building our
City of Bits, Urban Land Institute, 2000
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
• New design processes continue to evolve
toward a non-linear, “systems” approach to
design, encouraging multiple design inputs,
new communication tools and accelerated
methods of implementation.
Heerwagen, Judith H., Janet G. Heubach,
Joseph Montgomery and Wally Weimer,
“Environmental Design, Work and Well
Design.” AAOHN Journal, vol. 43, no. 9,
September 1995 p. 458
7 Ernst and Young “Measure that Matter”, 1997
8 Thomas H. Davenport, “The Fad that Forgot
People, “ Fast Company, November 1995, p. 70)
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Photo: Steelcase®
Bob Hillier can’t talk about architecture without talking about people. For the
founder and chairman of The Hillier Group, Inc., the client’s needs and goals are a
central factor in the design of any project. “An architect,” he observes, “is a traveler
who leaves his mark [on the building], then moves on. The client lives there.”
Hillier has carefully developed the company to foster a creative environment for the
designers while responding to clients’ needs. The result is a firm organized into
project-driven practice groups that provide quality control, offer personalized service
and foster ingenuity and entrepreneurship.
His vision, enthusiasm and business acumen have propelled the company’s development into the
nation’s fourth largest architectural firm with a rapidly growing international clientele. Yet he
continues to be remarkably accessible to everyone — his clients, employees, the young architects
he teaches at Princeton University and members of the community with which he is so involved.
While Hillier redefines and reshapes his firm to meet the challenges of the next century, he remains
its guiding spirit, defining the key to success, simply, as “the ability to listen.”
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MASTERING YOUR UNIVERSE: BALANCING WORK
AND LIFE IN THE 2020 WORKPLACE
BY J. ROBERT HILLIER, FAIA, FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, The Hillier Group, Inc.
1 Introduction
By 2020, communications and other technology will have completely untethered most knowledge
workers from the traditional office, a process that is already well underway. Empowered to choose the
best place to do the task at hand, people will become “masters” of both space and time, free to create
individually customized workspaces and work schedules that blend seamlessly with their leisure and
family time. The desire and the need to balance life and work will be a basic motivation.
Paradoxically, while individuals will have the freedom to work where and how they wish, tasks may
become increasingly complex in the next two decades, requiring more team effort in environments that
bring individuals together physically as well as virtually. Thus the optimally effective — or “motivating”
workplace — will change according to the nature of the work, whether individual or aggregated, while
the organization of the workplace will be separate from the organization of the work.
For many knowledge workers, home will likely be at the hub of a range of possible work environments
including satellite offices, commercial magnet sites (“mega-Kinkos”) and other nearby venues. Energy
shortages — a phenomenon that will persist until technology moves beyond its current reliance on
fossil fuels — will limit business travel and shorten commutes, changing regional development
patterns. At the same time, leisure travel will probably increase, as people seek out new places to
experience, taking their work with them. Technology will respond with still more tools to support the
nomadic worker.
Thus, as work becomes ubiquitous, designers and architects will have to take a broader, more regional
view of workplace design and planning, while creating a range of “motivating environments” that
optimize a worker’s ability to do the task at hand, whether individually or as part of a team.
Increasingly, the role of the architect/designer will be to give people a greater sense of control over
their lives, not just their work. Design will be the tool by which technology is tamed and brought into
human scale as the lines between work and leisure continue to blur. The roles of architecture and
environmental design will be expanded to encompass not just discrete buildings, but the larger city
and regional patterns of which they are a part.
The pages that follow will examine the factors that are driving the accelerated rate of change in the
workplace, will sketch three possible scenarios about Workplace 2020, and will suggest ways in which
the architecture and design community can most effectively address the challenges that lie ahead.
mastering your universe
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II: Drivers of
Workplace Change
Over the last two centuries, the ever-changing nature of work (always catalyzed by
technological advances) has shaped not just
the workplace itself, but the patterns of
regional development surrounding it.1 Until
the second quarter of the 19th century, the
farm was the basic unit for living and working, while household articles and tools were
made by hand in small workshops. The coming of the industrial revolution drew agricultural workers to large new steam-powered
mills and factories, speeding the pace of
urbanization in America and Europe. In turn,
factories fostered commerce requiring management and paperwork — and offices were
built to house these activities. New kinds of
tools quickly followed: Remington was massmanufacturing typewriters by the late 1860s,
while the telephone, patented by Alexander
Graham Bell in 1876, afforded instantaneous
communication. Theories of organizational
management emerged, among them Frederick
Taylor’s performance- and production-oriented ideas, which fostered bullpen-like open
offices crammed with desks arranged in rigid
rows.2 By the early 1900s, offices like these
were commonplace in large American cities
and remained so for decades.
When the standardized 9-to-5 workday,
along with the affordable Ford, freed people
to live further than walking distance from
work, they bolted for the greenery and fresh
air of the countryside — an antidote to
cramped city workplaces. By the 1920s, the
first true suburbs emerged — leafy, prosperous bedroom communities of Tudor- and
Colonial Revival-style single-family houses a
short train or car ride away from work. The
Great Depression and World War II slowed
the pace of suburban growth. But by the
‘50s, returning soldiers and their brides pursued the American Dream in a new kind of
community typified by the Levittowns in
Pennsylvania and on Long Island, where rows
of identical tract houses (“ranch homes”)
offered a comfortable standard of living for
those willing to commute miles to their jobs.
On another level, a growing appreciation of
the clean lines and functionality of modern
architecture emerged in the postwar decade,
spurred by housing competitions sponsored by
various design journals. (Art & Architecture
magazine, for example, commissioned 26
show houses as prototypes for “the new way
of postwar living.” The first six received
almost 400,000 visitors. According to architectural scholar Beatriz Colomina, “The
Second World War…provided the context for
the acceptance of modern architecture. It was
as if the war had educated the taste, the aesthetic sensibility, of the public.” The returning
veteran, she notes, had gained “a new respect
for the machine both as creator and as a
weapon of destruction” and not only accepted, but demanded, “simple, direct and honest
efficiency in the material aspects of the
means by which he lives.”3)
The growth of suburbia and the postwar
embrace of modernism also laid the groundwork for changes in the physical workplace.
Beginning in the 1960s, clean-lined corporate headquarters sprouted in suburbia.
Their large floor plates were honeycombed
into identical worker-bee cubicles that
seemed to bring the spatial dynamics — and
aesthetic anonymity — of tract housing into
the workplace itself. Cubicle workstations
were made possible by modular furniture
systems, of which Robert Propst’s Action
Office, designed for Herman Miller in 1964,
was the first.
Unlike its architectural envelope, the tools of
the workplace evolved more slowly. While the
first desk-sized computers were made by
Burroughs in Philadelphia in the mid-1950s
(the same decade the Internet’s predecessor,
ARPANET, was launched by the government), it
wasn’t until the late ‘80s that the technological revolution truly impacted and accelerated
the pace of workplace change. The mainframe
computers of the’70s, with their remote terminals, gave way to personal computers networked by fiber optic cables or wireless
infrared technology. Modems and optical character reading software gave workers the freedom to communicate with the office while
working away from it.
Within the last 20 years we have moved
from the traditional, hierarchical officewith-walls to the “alternative” office of the
‘90s (with its concepts of non-hierarchical
spaces, telecommuting and hoteling, among
others), to the here-and-now reality of the
ubiquitous workplace — an evolution driven
by technological refinements in the tools of
work. As Paola Antonelli, curator of design
at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, writes
in her introduction to the catalogue for the
visionary exhibition Workspheres, “Work has
become transportable and ubiquitous,
almost a state of mind. Like a bubble of
pure concentration that one can turn on and
off with or without the help of tangible
tools, work is where you are.”4 Here are
some of the major advances in technology
and other factors that have made this transformation possible and that continue to be
the primary drivers of change:
Technology:
Miniaturization. Intel’s introduction of the
microprocessor in 1971 launched a series of
advances in chip technology enabling the
miniaturization of computers and communications devices to make them transportable,
even wearable. For example, University of
Toronto professor Steve Mann has been
experimenting since the 1970s with wearable computers that look “much like ordinary eyeglasses and are meant to empower
the wearer to reclaim access to information
that has largely been subsumed by corporations, institutions and government.” 5
Similarly, the Palo Alto, California-based
industrial design firm IDEO has teamed with
the MIT Media Lab to experiment with other
wearable technology, including head scarves
and tiny ear pieces described in scenarios
envisioned on the IDEO Web site. 6 Telephony
has followed suit. By 2020, such seemingly
farfetched ideas as a phone in your teeth,
with a tongue switch, could well be reality.
Robotics. Technology-enabling robots that
take over repetitive tasks will eliminate the
need for many low-level jobs and the physical
offices in which they are performed, while
giving knowledge workers more time and
energy for creative efforts. Robotics are
already in the consumer mainstream (e.g.
Sony’s Aibo dog, which is advertised as “not a
toy”). Over the coming decades, robots will
inevitably be harnessed for day-to-day workrelated pursuits.
Infrared/wireless technology. Wireless tools
that untether their users from the traditional
office base will become even more sophisticated and user-friendly over the next 20
years. Consider the rapid evolution and commercial success of the Personal Digital
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Assistant (PDA) and the cellular and digital
phone, which have already revolutionized
“on the road” communication for business
travelers. In a special edition focusing on the
workplace of 2010, Business Week magazine
envisioned “an entirely wireless world
where…an endless sea of data engulfs
us…and the net is always on, always there.”7
The same article predicts the rapid availability of ear-mounted phones equipped with
“one follow-you number that connects to the
net via (your) PDA.” In addition, flexible LCD
(Liquid Crystal Display) screens that roll up
into small scrolls will replace cumbersome
video monitors for “anywhere, anytime”
graphics applications.
Artificial intelligence. CEO of IDEO and
Stanford University engineering professor
David Kelley predicts that within the next
10 years workers barraged 24/7 with incoming communications will be able to use
artificial intelligence software programs as
fire walls to filter, prioritize and communicate or block out information.8 Sophisticated
auto-navigational programs, already an
option in upscale motor vehicles, will
proliferate, enabling us to work while
our cars are automatically driven.
Voice recognition. As it emerges from its
infancy, voice recognition technology will
soon eliminate the need for keyboards,
typing and word pads, changing the look
and feel of all “office” tools and furnishings, so that “boxy screens disappear and
the shape of things morphs,” according to
David Kelley. 9
Advanced scanning. The thumbprint (or possibly, the eye print or the voiceprint) recognized by sophisticated super-scanners will
replace keys and passwords for opening
doors and data programs. “Say goodbye to
money, keys, credit cards, beepers and TV
remotes,” says Kelley.
Energy and the
Environment
Fuel shortages, higher costs. As fossil fuel
supplies are depleted, the energy they provide will be expensive and in short supply.
The cost of commuting and business travel,
whether by car, train or plane, will increase
— and employers will compensate by finding
alternatives to expensive travel (more teleconferencing and digital networking). As the
price of gas rises, workers will gravitate
toward jobs that reduce or eliminate the
daily commute by substituting home or
neighborhood workplaces for distant offices.
The cost of heating and lighting traditional
“fixed” offices (which are vacant 70 percent
of the time, according to workplace theorist
Franklin Becker of Cornell University)10 will
also become burdensome to corporations.
Air and water pollution. Clean air and water
regulations will increasingly limit the
byproducts of fossil fuel combustion, adding
another disincentive to the long commute
and to the maintenance of fixed office
spaces. As the impacts of global warming
become clearer, the need to reduce emissions
will take on greater urgency.11
Power grid failures. “Rolling blackouts” and
other consequences of inadequate power
resources have already sounded the wake-up
call to conserve energy. This will underline
the increasingly urgent need for smart building technology.
Social issues
Globalization. Thanks to the Internet,
instantaneous global communication has
made it possible (and often necessary) to do
business around the world at virtually any
time of day or night. Thus the traditional 9to-5 workday has stretched to the maximum 7/24/365 parameters, while employment economics have also changed. For
example, it’s now possible for U.S. firms to
reach out to parts of the world where compensation for skilled knowledge work is
comparatively cheap (say, the Indian subcontinent) for computer programmers and
CAD workers.
Extended work years. As the boomer population ages, the age of retirement is likely to
recede as knowledge workers and professionals opt to remain in the workforce beyond
age 65. This will increase the demand for situations that offer a satisfying balance of
work and leisure.
Quality of life concerns. The need for balance between work and home life, and the
quest for meaning and satisfaction, already
on the increase, are likely to become ever
more important factors in the 2020
workplace.
Socialization needs. As technology makes it
possible for individuals to work anytime
anywhere, the need for contact with others
will become even more important.
“Socialization will become the most important organizational objective in the future,”
predicts Arthur Andersen’s Peter J.
Miscovich. 12
Business Process Issues
In addition to the previously listed factors,
the rapid transformation of the workplace
since 1990 is also a result of changing
work patterns within corporations.
Architecture and planning for office venues has become more complicated, reflecting the increasing complexity of knowledge work and the strategic goals of the
businesses it serves. While workplace
design was traditionally focused on the
individual worker performing a set of tasks
in a fixed environment, it is now centered
on teamwork and group activity in flexible
environments that support rapidly evolving
business strategies and goals.
Since the most successful businesses are
the ones that respond at the drop of a hat
to change (in the marketplace, in technology, in the economy), the need for changeresponsive work environments will become
ever more vital. 13 Architecture and design
firms, once limited to space planning and
aesthetic concerns, are increasingly
involved in business process issues requiring organizational planning skills.
Management consulting is a service
offered by more and more architecture
firms, as the profession becomes more
sophisticated in how it does programming
and business planning.
III: Scenarios
As a way of predicting future organizational
and social behaviors, scenario planning is
now a well recognized tool.14,15 The approach
has been increasingly adopted by architectural firms who need to anticipate a range of
possible outcomes given a set of factors
affecting a project. Here are three possible
scenarios for life in the 2020 workplace.
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Though these projections may seem contradictory, it’s likely that elements of all three
will constitute the reality of work 20 years
down the line.
Scenario One: The
Disappearing Workplace
(or The Suit of Gadgets)
For architects and designers, The
Disappearing Workplace is perhaps the
hardest one to pin down. Since cuttingedge technology has now completely
untethered many workers from a single
work base, work’s locus becomes a moving
target, rendered all but invisible by the
swiftness with which it can change. This
workplace is defined not by a building,
office furniture, or walls, but rather by a
suite of tools that allow work to take
place anywhere, at the worker’s bidding.
Best exemplifying this scenario is the free
agent, who contracts his services on a
project basis, shifting from place to place
as needed.
Instead of suiting up in grey flannel at the
start of the business day, the 2020 knowledge worker puts on a Suit of Gadgets. It
might include Smart Glasses, which give
instant access to all the graphic interface
elements of the Internet, yet offer isolation
from the visual interruptions of the environment (tune out on the subway if you dare). Or
it could include an in-the-ear device that
combines wireless communication (via one
“follow you” phone number) with an audio
interface linked to a Personal Digital
Assistant. It might also include a bio-patch
that monitors one’s response to stress, exercise, and other physical activity (concerns
that will become more important as the
nature of work becomes more sedentary), or
a scroll-up LCD screen no bigger than a wallet or umbrella, in place of a cumbersome
laptop monitor.
Even while pursuing leisure activities in farflung parts of the world, the Suit of Gadgets
worker can stay in touch, thanks to a mobile
home/office vehicle equipped with artificial
intelligence navigational devices, a global
communications system and other amenities.
Thus equipped, the knowledge worker is free
to work anytime, anywhere — and is responsive, whether he or she wants to be or not, to
the barrage of work-related communication
24 hours a day.
The devices comprising the “suit of gadgets” are a rapidly growing category of
tools known simply as “wearables” made
possible by advances in miniaturization.
IDEO, an industrial design firm based in
Palo Alto, Calif., has pioneered the design
of wearables and is currently joint venturing with the MIT Media Lab on a wearables project. Two fictional scenarios
viewable on the IDEO Web site envision
“Kio,” a 19-year-old MIT student, and
“Guy,” a globe-trotting Sotheby’s executive. 16 Kio’s parents are pleased that wearable computers have prompted their studious daughter to get out from behind her
desk and into the society of her peers and
friends. “I’ve never been more connected
or more free in my entire life,” she says of
her wearable audio-based interface that
integrates music, telephony, systems information and ambient sound so she can listen to music while doing research or chatting up friends in Japan. Sotheby’s “Guy”
is also pleased with his wearables that
“offer seamless integration into my
wardrobe, lifestyle and business world” as
he hops between his office in London, his
home in Paris and his clients in the Far
East.
As for the transportable environment —
the “envelope of gadgets,” if you will —
consider the MaxiMog vehicle, a combination SUV/mobile home/office designed by
Bran Ferren and Thomas Ritter as a highperformance work environment. Featured
in MoMa New York special exhibition
Workspheres, the MaxiMog, or Global
Expedition Vehicle System, is a custombuilt high mobility vehicle based on a
Mercedes Benz Unimog chassis.17 It can
cruise at 90 mph, climb a 45-degree angle
and ford six feet of water. Equipped with
a sleeping deck, kitchen and bath pods,
and its own emergency motorcycle,
MaxiMog has a secure global communication system with voice, data, fax and email. It can navigate almost anywhere,
thanks to its digital imaging and worldwide “moving maps” system. Though
MaxiMog carries the genre to the
extreme, it is at heart a sports utility
vehicle (or SUV) of the type favored by a
new generation of suburbanites.
Scenario Two: Fortress
Home (or, The Backlash)
The flip side of The Suit of Gadgets scenario, Fortress Home is a reaction to being
available for work 7/24/365 in all times
and all places. As “work expands to fill the
time allotted,” workers will strive for
greater balance by working smarter,
traveling less, dedicating time for non-work
activities and defining the boundaries
between work life and home life, with
home as the physical/psychological center
of their universe.
In this scenario, work is limited to certain
times and places. As work becomes all-pervasive, then the limits of work become more
precise. Home becomes a sanctuary where
one can work undisturbed if desired, yet
reserve the right to “tune out” by putting up a
technological firewall to keep from being
devoured by work. One might elect to have a
home office, yet employ artificial intelligence
technology to screen and prioritize incoming
messages and to block them entirely during
certain periods of the day or night. Those who
elect to work from home on a time-defined
basis (which allows the easiest transition
from work to leisure and family life) will
make use of such amenities as the Smart
Chair or “morphing task chair” that incorporates every digital tool while offering comfort
and correct ergonomics.
Because homelife assumes greater importance in this scenario, the “backlash” worker will reject time-consuming commutes.
Those who insist on total separation of
home and worklife (“I give 150 percent at
work and I don’t want a totally blended
lifestyle”) will favor employers who maintain satellite corporate offices in the neighborhood. For those who choose to work primarily from Fortress Home (albeit with protective firewalls), magnet workplaces,
including commercial offices like Kinko’s,
will address the need for teamwork and
social interaction, countering a sense of
isolation. Workplace design thus becomes
regional in its approach, incorporating these
various kinds of environments.
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Scenario Three: The
Motivating Environment
This scenario incorporates elements of the first
two, and is likely to be closest to the reality of
work two decades from now. It distinguishes
between workplaces (connoting a rich, humanistic environment) and workspaces (equated
merely with a measure of cubic volume).
Freed by technology to work anywhere, by
2020 workers will be able to choose “the best
place to do the task at hand.” These “best
places” or Motivating Environments will
change with the nature of the work, fostering
productivity and creativity, individual effort
and teamwork. A motivating environment
might be a quiet home office, the reading
room of a library, a cyber café, an airline club
conference room, a short-term rented workspace in a business center, a desk in a “new
traditional” corporate headquarters, or even
the beach or a bench in the park. Even workstations in traditional offices will be sufficiently flexible to adjust to the individual’s
preferences for climate control, lighting, sound
absorption, surface heights and ergonomic
seating. In such offices, technology and the
obsolescence of hierarchical work structures
will give many workers the latitude to customize their own environments to order.
This is the flexible scenario that many
Americans yearn for, according to a
December 2000 Roper/Starch study commissioned by Fast Company magazine.18
A thousand college-educated AOL subscribers with household incomes of $75,000
or more were asked their thoughts on the
following scenario: “In five years, most of us
will only go to an office…when we have to
meet with colleagues or customers…most of
the time, we’ll work from where ever is convenient — home or on the road — connected
to work and to each other by technology.”
While 48 percent of the respondents said
they “thought it would happen in five
years,” 53 percent of the respondents said,
“I want this now.”
(In point of fact, this option is already common practice in consulting firms like
Accenture [formerly Andersen Consulting] —
an $8.9 billion global management and technology consulting organization with more
than 65,000 employees in 48 countries. As
outlined in its Web site, Accenture “aspires to
become a market maker, architect and builder
of the new economy, delivering excellence in
consulting, technology, outsourcing, alliances
and venture capital.”)
Implicit in this scenario is the need to create
an interrelated series of motivating environments, in which every space optimizes the
worker’s ability to perform. The focus will be
not only on the specific workspace, but on
the “envelope” of place and on regional patterning. Such patterning is already being
explored in projects such as the visionary
real estate development Cambourne, recently
opened near Cambridge, England.19 In this
joint venture, a high-tech office park and
residential community are “wired” together
for communication so workers, if they wish,
can have 24/7 access to projects. Every home
is within an easy walk to the office buildings, which are utilized on the weekends by
community groups.
The first tenant in the Cambourne office
complex is Regus Business Centers PLC, a
corporation that earned $300 million in
1999 by developing and renting business
centers worldwide. Driven by globalization,
Regus’s 250 business centers in prestigious
areas of 45 countries offer five million
square feet of fully furnished, equipped and
staffed office space, available by the day,
week or month with a simple rental agreement patterned after a car rental. “Where do
you want to work today?” is the Regus slogan used on all its ads. Chris Boulton,
Regus’s group property director, asks, “How
can we design the office of the future, when
the future is so uncertain?”20 Flexible temporary accommodations such as this one are a
plausible answer.
Of course, not all work fits into this scenario. Scientific and medical research, artand music-making, and similar endeavors
requiring special environments will remain
distinct, even as other kinds of workplaces
blur into one another. Such spaces might
be regarded as the ultimate motivating
environments (physically fitted out to
reflect and support the specific nature of
the task itself) — and as such, they present
a special challenge to the architect and
designer charged with maximizing their
effectiveness.
IV: Challenges Imposed by
these Scenarios
If architecture is the mirror of society, it
stands to reason that cities and their patterning will be different now that work
styles and the places where work happens
have changed. It is very likely that the borders between architecture and city planning
will blur as the importance of regional patterning emerges. Addressing these issues
effectively will be a major challenge for the
architecture/design professions in the
decades ahead.
And there will be other challenges that
embrace “the big picture,” going beyond
architecture’s traditional purview of design
by structure and function to raise broader
questions such as:
• How can architects and designers help
workers and employers maintain a sense
of connection and community/team spirit
when much work can be done anywhere,
in isolation?
• How can architecture and design contribute to the more balanced lifestyle
sought by all? Despite the time-saving
technological advances of the last quarter
century, people are working harder than
ever; everybody is worn out and stressed.
Why hasn’t leisure happened?
• What can the design professions do to
improve the quality of life both at home
and at work?
V: What Architects and
Designers Must do to
Prepare to Meet These
Challenges
• Understand that while technology has
revolutionized the nature of work and
altered the definition of a “workplace,”
certain traits of human behavior —
responses to the built environment —
remain constant. Among them are the
need for privacy and personal space, the
territorial instinct, the desire for status
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and the need for socialization. As C.M.
Deasy, AIA, notes in Designing Places for
People: A Handbook on Human Behavior
for Architects, Designers and Facility
Managers, “The principal reason for
building anything is to help people
accomplish their purposes as effectively
as possible. Human effectiveness in any
activity is greatly influenced by social
and psychological factors. Environmental
designers should use the knowledge of
human behavior to create places that
help people accomplish their purposes
with a maximum of satisfaction and a
minimum of friction and frustration.” 20
• Take a holistic view of the design professions and the academic preparation for
them. Educate students more broadly by
revising architecture and design school
curricula to include a grounding in the
principles of psychology, business, behavioral and change management, communications technology, sociology, motivation,
and city and regional planning.
• Within architecture and design firms,
adopt a more integrated and holistic
approach to project planning, one that
takes into account the previously listed
categories. Many architectural firms
already offer strategic facilities planning
or management consulting services; the
need to understand a client’s business
goals and strategies before embarking on
the design process is already a given. But
in order to adequately address the broader social and regional planning issues
likely to affect WorkPlace 2020, firms will
need to employ professionals with those
specific skills — or work more collaboratively with other firms offering such services.
• Routinely use the tools of visualization and
scenario planning to foster creative innovation in the face of ongoing change.
“How can you plan for the future when
the future is unknown?” is the challenge.
In The Art of Innovation: Lessons in
Creativity, IDEO’s Tom Kelley advocates
scenario planning and visualization as
basic factors in the innovative process. 21
And in a thought-provoking new book,
Retracing Situationalist Architecture from
Constant’s New Babylon to Beyond, Mark
Wigley of Columbia University and M.
Catherine De Zegler recount the visionary
architectural project, New Babylon,
sketched out by Constant Niewenhuys
between 1956 and 1974. 22 His utopian
images describe a world in which technology allowed its residents to reconstruct
every aspect of the environment — walls,
floors, lighting, sound and more — according to their needs and wishes, much in the
same way one might travel from site to
site on the Internet.
VI: What Research Should
be Done to Help Build a
Knowledge Base to
Meet These Challenges?
• Analyze personnel costs as a response to
design factors. Much has been made of
the need to justify design expenditures by
research that “proves” the bottom-line,
real dollar benefits of design on the
workplace. Because so many factors both
tangible and intangible affect this, it’s
hard to quantify. However, it is generally
accepted that the current per-square-foot
operations and maintenance cost of a
typical office building run between $6.50
and $8 — and that good design of such
elements as HVAC will allow a client to
cut about 10 percent off that figure. By
applying the same formula to personnel
costs — which average about $200 per
square foot — effective design ought to
save a client 10 percent, or $20 per
square foot, by reducing employee
turnover and by cutting the total number
of employees through more efficient
organization of space where teaming
opportunities exist. Nevertheless, in a
world where change is the only constant
and employees “vote with their feet” on
the merits of a workplace, less ambitious
studies relating to worker satisfaction and
life balance (proposed below) are increasingly meaningful.
• Additional studies are needed on how elements of the physical workplace affect productivity, creativity and worker satisfaction.
The roles played by light, space configuration, climate control, color, noise, smell
and ergonomics in determining the individ-
ual’s capacity to function at optimal levels
need to be more thoroughly explored as
components of effective workplace design.
• Relationships between work patterns (individual vs. aggregate, for example) and
worker satisfaction and function bear further study.
• Studies of city and regional planning
patterns as they are affected by — and
in turn, affect — workplace change
would be useful in providing a holistic
context for workplace design.
Particularly useful would be “imaging”
or perception studies of the type proposed by Kevin Lynch in his enduring,
classic planning work, “The Image of the
City.” As Lynch observes, “There is a lack
of understanding of the city image as a
total field, of the interrelations of elements, patterns and sequences…if the
environment is to be perceived as an
organic whole, then the clarification of
parts in their immediate context is only
an elementary step. It will be extremely
important to find ways of understanding and manipulating wholes, or at least
of handling the problems of sequence
and unfolding pattern.” 23
VII: Summary
Twenty years from now, technology will
allow most workers to choose where and
how they work best. Mastering both space
and time in order to work most creatively
and productively, people will be free to create individually customized workspaces and
work schedules that blend seamlessly with
their leisure and family time. The desire and
the need to balance life and work will be a
basic motivation, as workers will be barraged with work-related demands on a
24/7/365 basis.
Work involving team effort is also likely to
increase, so there will be an ongoing need
for environments that bring individuals
together physically as well as virtually. Thus
the optimally effective — or “motivating”
workplace — will change according to the
nature of the work. It will range from a fixed
space designed with a specific task in mind
(like an art studio) to a series of variable
spaces for individual and team effort. These
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might include home, a cyber café, a rent-bythe-day office or a satellite corporate facility, among others.
Notes and Sources
Thus, as work becomes ubiquitous, designers
and architects will have to take a broader,
more regional view of workplace design and
planning, while creating a range of “motivating environments” that optimize a worker’s ability to do the task at hand, whether
individually or as part of a team. While
some individuals will insist on a rigid separation between work and home life, others
will seek an arrangement in which work
schedules and work places foster maximum
satisfaction in both arenas.
2
Marilyn Zelinsky: New Workplaces for New
Workstyles. New York, McGraw Hill, 1998.
1
Mark Wigley et al. Boston: MIT Press, 2001.
23
The Image of the City, by Kenneth Lynch.
Boston: MIT Press, 1982.
“They Aimed for a Better Workplace,” by
Tracie Rozhon, The New York Times, Jan. 30,
2001.
“Reflections on the Eames House,” essay by
Beatriz Colomina in The Work of Charles and
Ray Eames edited by Donald Albrecht, Harry
N. Abrams, 1997.
3
Workspheres, by Paola Antonelli and others.
New York, Harry N. Abrams, 2001.
4,5
6
See the IDEO Web site at www.ideo.com.
“Special Report: Welcome to 2010”,
Business Week, March 6, 2000
7,8,9
Increasingly, the role of the architect/
designer will be to give people a greater
sense of control over their lives, not just
their work. Design will be the tool by
which technology is tamed and brought
into human scale as the lines between
work and leisure continue to blur. The roles
of architecture and environmental design
will be expanded to encompass not just
discrete buildings, but the larger city and
regional patterns of which they are a part.
Architects and designers will thus be challenged to broaden their own work practices to bring other disciplines like psychology, behavioral and organizational science, and city planning into the circle of
collaboration. Research that documents
the effect of the physical workplace on the
satisfaction and productivity of the worker
will help environmental designers meet
this challenge.
10 Workplace by Design, by Franklin Becker
and Fritz Steele. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass,
1995.
“A Message in Eroding Glacial Ice: Humans
Are Turning Up the Heat,” by Andrew C.
Revkin, The New York Times, Feb. 19, 2001.
11
“Workplace Transformation: How Do YOU
Work?” presented at NEOCON 2000
FutureWork Forum by Peter J. Miscovich,
Andersen Consulting.
12
“Building on Internet Time,” by Queena Sook
Kim, The Industry Standard, May 1, 2000.
13
Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation,
by Kees Van Der Heijden; New York, Wiley
Press, 1999.
14
The Art of the Long View: Planning for the
Future in an Uncertain World, by Peter
Schwartz. New York: Doubleday, 1996.
15
16
See the IDEO website at www.ideo.com.
Workspheres, by Paola Antonelli and others. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001.
17
“Fast Forward,” by Keith W. Hammonds,
Fast Company, issue 44, March 2001.
18
“The Office of the Future,” by Chuck Salter,
Fast Company, issue 33, April 2000.
19
Designing Places for People: A Handbook for
Architects, Designers, and Facility Managers,
by C.M. Deasy, FAIA. New York: Whitney
Library of Design, 1985.
20
The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley,
Jonathan Littman, and Tom Peters. New York:
Doubleday, 2000.
21
Retracing Situationalist Architecture from
Constant’s New Babylon to Beyond, edited by
22
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Photo: Steelcase®
Nila R. Leiserowitz joined Gensler as the director of interiors with over 25 years
experience in interior design including commercial and institutional work. She
co-leads the firmwide workplace taskforce, the core practice of the firm. She serves
on the management committee of the firm and participates in Gensler University
on Global Accounts.
Leiserowitz provides design leadership for the workplace practice group. The mission of
the workplace is to create viable and appropriate work solutions to Gensler clients’
workplace needs. She actively participates in strategic programming, planning and
design, working as a team member to define the business goals and objectives of the client and then
creating responsive design solutions.
She brings a strong understanding of business to her work. Leiserowitz’s career has provided her
this experience through ownership of her own business to leading design practices for major international architecture/interior firms. She has completed work for such clients as City of Minneapolis,
Deloitte & Touche, Foothill Capital, Viant, DirecTV, Universal, DreamWorks SKG and Arthur Andersen.
Her work has won numerous design awards and honors from the International Interior Design
Association, the American Society of Interior Designers and the American Institute of Architects.
Leiserowtiz has been a guest lecturer at a number of conferences and has written numerous articles
covering design topics relating to the work environment. At the October 2000 American Society of
Interior Designer’s Annual Conference in New York City she was awarded the honor of Fellowship.
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F UTU R E I M P E R F E CT:
THE WORLD OF WORK IN 2020
BY NILA R. LEISEROWITZ, FASID, VICE PRESIDENT, Gensler
Acknowledgements to Helen Dimoff, Loree Goffigon, Joe Ortiz, Joe Ouye, John Parman and Gervais Tompkin who all
helped to shape this paper.
Forecasting is guesswork. Think about how Stanley Kubrick envisioned the year 2001. The look is Italian: Joe Colombo
comes to mind. At least the men aren’t wearing ties. People still talk face to face, although, elsewhere in the film
they videoconference and chat with their computers. Technology has a human voice, even a human – that is, fallible
and jealous – heart. Man (and it’s definitely a man) prevails.
Judging from the Beatles’ renewed success, the ‘60s have regained their influence. In our field, three books from
then still resonate, like 2001 itself: Serge Chermayeff and Christopher Alexander’s Community and Privacy (1963);
Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media (1964); and Edward T. Hall’s The Hidden Dimension (1966). They each
speak in different ways to the situation in which we find ourselves today.
The world in 2001
Although Kubrick’s manned voyage to Jupiter overstated NASA’s abilities, his vision of our present captures our
era’s ambiguity with regard to space and time. Granted, he portrayed it more dramatically than reality, but we move
through the world today with our feet on the ground and our brains often somewhere else entirely. For every real
place we occupy, there’s a virtual place that’s its echo. So where are we?
This is the world that Marshall McLuhan prophesied. Our children are more at home in it than we are. The Japanese
give this “place” a name, ba: “a shared space for emerging relationships.” Its purpose, they say, is to support knowledge creation. “When knowledge is separated from ba,” they add, “it turns into information.” Today, when we’re
drowning in data, knowledge is oxygen.
future imperfect
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Community and privacy
“Transformed by electronics, the dwelling is
no longer a refuge but an arena.” This was
Chermayeff and Alexander’s observation,
nearly 40 years ago. Today, bandwidth has
also obliterated the line separating home
from work. We are basically “at work” on a
continuous basis unless we choose consciously not to be. Karrie Jacobs, editor of
the new design magazine, Dwell, notes that
“being unplugged” is now a recognized
lifestyle. Some people create “media-free
zones” in their electronic cottages; while
others move to places so remote that the
media can’t touch them (although, in this
age of satellites, this is an illusion). As the
futurist Paul Saffo predicted, privacy is now
a scarce commodity.
Paradoxically, real community is still very
much in demand. Starbucks, borrowing Ray
Oldenburg’s notion of “third place” (not
home, not work, but a place in-between
where community happens), has had a great
run. In the retail sector, the mall is dead and
Main Street’s back in. Authenticity and connection – real, physical connection with
one’s peers – are what people want. Arthur
Rubinfeld, who rolled out 3,500 Starbucks
during the ‘90s, commented that while all
those young professionals sipping coffee may
have their heads buried in their laptops,
they’re as aware as ever of what’s going on
around them. “Laptops are the newspapers
and paperbacks of our era.”
There’s a lot to learn from Starbucks about
making people feel at home in a communal
setting. Rubinfeld actually scoured the
world, visiting the demi-monde of café society and borrowing its paraphernalia. Behind
Starbucks success is a very human impulse,
to play matchmaker and “host” to strangers,
bring them together and encourage their
interaction. Yet the laptops are a clue that
something has changed.
Hidden dimensions
Edward T. Hall noticed that people have culturally-determined invisible boundaries. His
work finds an echo in Paco Underhill’s current research on retail settings, which shows
how men and women move through retail
space and are affected by its flow and the
proximity of others. Hall’s focus was on per-
future imperfect
sonal space, which he pictured as an invisible envelope that surrounds us, growing and
shrinking as we move from place to place.
Like our shadows, personal space is contiguous with our physical selves. Today, we recognize another “hidden dimension,” less our
shadow than a parallel universe in which we
have a virtual presence. In naming it cyberspace, we’ve made it more foreign than it
really is.
Virtual means being such in essence or
effect, though not in reality. Virtuality
means potential existence. We conflate it
with virtually – for all practical purposes –
so that “essentially here” has become its
real meaning. Although “real time” interaction in cyberspace wasn’t possible until the
mid-19th century, correspondence has
enabled people to be “essentially here” for
centuries. Philosophers, divines, scientists,
revolutionaries, friends, family and lovers
have all collaborated through its medium,
making their presence felt and furthering
their aims, plots and troths. The epistolary
novel, St. Paul’s letters, the dialogues of
Plato – all these are evidence of a “life of
the mind” that exists beyond the confines
of the individual and transcends his or her
physical existence.
Cyber-style versus
cyber-substance
Today, there’s an interest in bringing the
imagery of cyberspace into everyday settings.
The new systems being put forward now by
our industry partners and others are serious
in their effort to deal with the “collaboration
versus concentration” dilemma that dogs
the open workplace. Yet, at some level, these
new systems are also about “looking
different” – and trying to make the hidden
dimensions of the workplace visible.
We get caught up in “the new” as a kind of
visual language that is picked up and emulated without much understanding of what
it means and does. The dot-coms are an
example – an unsustainable phenomenon
that looked briefly like the future, designwise and business-wise. Ayse Birsel’s
resolve may indicate their influence going
forward. The casual character remains, but
the pervasive atmosphere of the sweatshop
has been strained out along with the
machismo. In their place we find supportiveness and nurture.
A room of their own
The start-ups, many of them, went against
the flow of workplace trends since the mid90s. That flow reflects the growing presence
of women, not just as workers but as leaders.
Their ascendancy opened the door to
redefining the nature of work and its settings. Some of this was coincidental, since
technology and demographic shifts have also
played into workplace transformation. Yet,
like outsiders descending on an entrenched,
and in some ways backward, culture, women
have made their mark.
Unwilling to “retire” from the workplace to
meet the demands of their families, women
have demanded that work change to
accommodate their evolving needs. Men
have changed, too, many of them taking on
more day-to-day responsibility for their
families. And thanks to freeway gridlock,
everyone has lost patience with traffic.
Time is highly valued now, and people want
it to be their own.
The growing presence of women in the
workplace will pave the way for older people, too, to participate. In the future, work
and its settings are likely to be tailored to
their needs, to take advantage of their talent and experience without over-taxing
them physically. Distributed work and flexible hours both play into this scenario. It
also suggests the possibility of new partnerships to tap that “human capital” – senior centers that are also touchdown centers,
for example, and a different approach to
“elder care.”
The economy and demography have made
“talent” a scarce resource. To attract it, companies have gone out of their way to support
“the whole person” and make possible a
broad range of career paths and work patterns. This is likely to survive any economic
downturn, because – done properly – the
“bespoke” job and tailored workplace are
equally efficient for both parties. No one is
asking for 40 hours pay for 35 hours of work.
What they want are work settings that work
for them, when they need them.
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In work as in life today, people are looking
for communities that reflect their beliefs
and interests. These are communities of
choice, not birth, which suggests to me
that, along with change, choice will be one
of the constants in the workplace going
forward. Recession or not, people will
choose and their choices will proliferate.
Place, both real and virtual, will be a key
factor in the choices they make and the
communities they seek.
ings also provide “touchdown” desks,
reserved on the Intranet, and “free address”
desks that can be booked on the spot.
People store documents on the Intranet
rather than physically, so they can be
accessed by anyone from any location. The
office buildings array these identically
equipped workstations around high-quality
shared facilities – conference rooms and
“war rooms,” cafés and dining facilities, and
a wide range of services.
One result of this is that “home” is now a
benchmark for the workplace. To be more
precise, the workplace is being overlaid by
settings that are more like retail or hospitality. Often, they are examples of “third
place” – settings intended to support “community” and casual interaction. (I use the
word “hospitality” here because a setting
like a corporate “hearth” may need a host –
someone who will take care of it and make
sure it serves its function. This can’t be left
to the community itself, because it’s not
really “theirs”.)
BT locates their office buildings in areas
that offer good public transit access, a
central location in relation to their employees, and with fitness and childcare centers
and other amenities in the immediate
vicinity. Ten percent of BT’s 130,000
employees work “from home,” which means
that their homes are their permanent base.
The rest may be assigned to a given office
building, but – with very few exceptions –
they will not have a permanently assigned
desk there.
These new variables,
“work” and “place”
As their “social contract” with their workforce changes, the workplace paradigm is
changing with it. British Telecommunications
plc (BT) is an example of a company that is
quite far along this road, with close to a
decade of experience with an Internetdriven workplace strategy that recasts
their office buildings as face-to-face
collaboration centers.
In 1994, BT recognized that their extensive
bandwidth was in fact a strategic asset –
organizational “glue” that could tie their
project teams together and change the way
they used space. BT made their Intranet the
“place” where knowledge and services
reside. And they turned their office buildings
into meeting places for constantly changing
teams.
BT’s project teams produce some 600 new
“products” each year, many with very short
lifecycles. As teams form and disband, BT
assigns them blocks of “flexi-desks” in their
office buildings for the life of their project,
one desk for every four people. The build-
because BT is very much part of the new
economy. What is striking about BT is that
while their revenues have tripled since
1994, their workforce is stable at about
130,000 people. BT has invested heavily in
infrastructure to support them – with
place figuring equally with technology in
their investments.
The work settings that BT offers its
employees are straightforward – uniform
minimally dimensioned workstations in an
open plan. What’s good about them? The
planning, the amenities, and the supporting
bandwidth and services. The drawbacks are
“one size fits all” and the lack of acoustic
and visual separation between teams.
Old dogs, new tricks
BT’s embrace of bandwidth has saved them
about £1.0 billion ($1.45 billion at the current exchange rate). It’s also changed their
whole idea of the workplace. These
changes have three dimensions: service,
utilization, and productivity. Let me
explain.
Start-ups have received the attention, but
established companies like BT may be more
indicative of where things are headed. One
Swiss company is an example of this – a
global finance and insurance giant that
takes seriously their need for “a shared
space for knowledge creation” (to go back
to that Japanese word ba). They describe
their new development center as a “garage”
for new business prototyping at a global
scale.
• Service: BT’s office buildings are run like a
hotel chain. Facilities and information
technology (IT) people compete to deliver
services promptly and cheaply. E-mail
takes care of the vast majority (85%) of IT
requests, but immediate, in-person service
is available at a price. The Facilities
groups, which used to see building users
as a necessary evil, now see them as
clients – so their services are much more
concierge-like.
Technology is integrated with every part of
this facility. Even the guestrooms are as
technology-laden as a modern office floor,
but the interface is based on “Hotel TV” –
a touch screen that does away with buttons and keyboards. They see technology as
a tool, albeit a powerful one, that connects the initial face-to-face collaboration
that the center supports as a physical
place to the global collaboration it supports as a “knowledge hub.”
• Utilization: BT’s first Workstyle 2000 office
building was purchased from British
Petroleum in 1994. When it was BP’s, 750
people worked there. Now it supports
1,700. (It could support 2,500, but there
isn’t enough parking. This is why access to
public transit became a firm criterion for
locating BT’s office buildings.)
This global company extends BT’s insight
that bandwidth changes the nature of work
and its settings. Its premise is that people
need highly supportive physical settings to
dream up new global businesses. Once
they’ve done so, they will shift to a virtual
collaborative process as they implement
them on a regional or global basis.
• Productivity: BT has built their workplace
around their project teams. Time to market
is the measure, just like a start-up,
For this reason, the center’s settings constantly reference the larger dimension of
people’s activities. The auditorium, for
future imperfect
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example, has a video wall that can immediately tie in a person or team in another
location, information from any data
source, or a visual record of a previous
session. Similarly, the guestrooms give
each “collaborator” the same access to colleagues, data and visual records of their
collaboration. Yet they also provide homelike comfort and atmosphere. Shared
amenities are brought down to the level of
the individual, on the assumption that his
or her creative process stretches across the
full 24 hours of the day, across “life” as
well as “work.”
The concept of ba was first put forward by
the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida. He
argues is that the sharing of tacit knowledge involves “pure experience” – a term
that relates to “Zen learning.” Zen, which
takes us back a millennium, is a good
precedent for our current dilemma.
Somehow, we have to break through the
duality of the real and the virtual. The concept of ba suggests that we can resolve our
dilemma by thinking of “place” in a new
way – in which the real and the virtual are
both present.
First steps toward ba
In 2101, we may look back at the development center as an early example of our
continuing struggle to bridge between real
and virtual collaboration and, equally,
between information and knowledge. The
Japanese idea of ba is really about both
these things.
Clicks and Bricks
Ba can be thought of as a shared space
for emerging relationships. This space
can be physical, virtual, mental or any
combination of them. What differentiates ba from ordinary human interaction is the concept of knowledge creation. Ba provides a platform for
advancing individual and/or collective
knowledge. Ba is a context that harbors
meaning. Thus ba is a shared space that
serves as the foundation for knowledge
creation.
Management consultants Ikujiro Nonaka
and Noboru Konno suggest that “knowledge creation is a spiraling process of
interactions between explicit and tacit
knowledge.” Explicit knowledge can be
expressed and shared in words and numbers. Tacit knowledge is “highly personal
and hard to formalize, making it difficult
to communicate or share.” It consists of
“know-how,” informal personal skills,
and “beliefs, ideals, values, schemata,
and mental models which are deeply
ingrained in us and which we often take
for granted.” Creating knowledge
requires four distinct steps: socialization,
externalization, combination, and internalization. These steps involve individuals,
groups and organizations. Ba is the
Japanese word for the “place” that
supports them.
future imperfect
The retail sector has already passed
through this particular mirror. In 1999,
Gensler teamed with GTE, Booz-Allen &
Hamilton, Pepperdine University and the
La Jolla Institute to conduct a series of
research sessions in different U.S. and
European cities. Main Street 2020 asked
developers, brokers, retailers and real
estate economists, “How will the Internet
impact bricks-and-mortar retail?” They
suggested three scenarios, one of which
would have killed off retail as a real
estate sector. The most likely one, though,
was that retailers would pursue a
multi-channel strategy: clicks and bricks.
Each channel would be used for its
particular strengths, but all of them
would reinforce each other and the brand.
Events have borne out what Main Street
2020 predicted: “pure Internet play”
retailers have had much harder going than
established bricks-and-mortar retailers that
developed a strong Web presence. To put
this another way, the retailers that saw
their retail space as ba – both real and
virtual – have done better than those who
opted for one or the other.
There’s no duality in retailing because,
among other things, the target audience is
often young. That’s increasingly true of
the workplace, too. While there’s still a
generation gap between those who are
comfortable with the new technology and
those who are not, it’s closing. As the
Economist wrote recently, “Imagine a society
converging on a virtual age between 20 and
30, and you have a fair picture of New York
or San Francisco now.”
What this might mean in
2020
“Future imperfect” is an apt phrase for any
forecast that tries to look out 20 years. If I
were to try to describe a typical work setting
in 2020, I would focus on these elements:
• There are flat screens – a technology that I
believe will drop in price and gain popularity as a medium of interpersonal exchange.
• There may not be keyboards (they may
drop away if voice recognition software
improves or if they figure out some other
way to turn thoughts into text).
• It has desks, tables, and chairs, all of
which are likely to be with us still in 2020.
• It conveys informality, which I also believe
is here to stay.
• It’s sustainable – filled with natural light
and air, too, from operable windows or a
double-layered skin, with under floor air to
give each person environmental control.
The materials it uses are chosen to minimize CO2/SO2 emissions, ensure indoor air
quality, protect the environment and allow
for future recycling or direct reuse.
Next steps toward ba
What I can’t yet describe is how it will
bridge the real and the virtual – how it will
solve this dilemma, end the split. The interfaces now at our disposal – teleconferencing,
for example, and streaming video – are a
limited and unsatisfactory compromise.
At Gensler’s 1998 Workplace Conference,
George Washington University Business
School Professor Duncan Sutherland said
that,
Despite their appearance, messy offices
can be very effective if they provide people with the tools they need to do their
minds’ best work. It’s like the project
room – people immerse themselves in
artifacts and memory aids that are very
similar to those older people use to
manipulate their personal space. The
mind actively uses physical space to
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structure memory. At one place I worked,
we sometimes left project rooms
untouched for months or years. When the
project started again, we could take a
client into that room, and even after
three years, they could be up to speed in
an instant. They’d walk into a space
immersed in artifacts and images, and
they’d feel it all coming back in.
In his book The Memory Palace of Matteo
Ricci, Jonathan Spence explains how, long
before they had Palm Pilots, people would
construct “palaces” in their heads in which
to store their memories, each in a specific
place, so they could retrace their steps and
find them again. Our Swiss insurance client
put a lot of stress on this “persistence of
knowledge” because it triggers comprehensive memory, bringing back not just isolated
facts but the full context of a conversation
or an event. Many of our projects now –
especially those that consciously seek to
support innovation – do this by integrating
technology and place. Perhaps another strategy would be to integrate place with technology to create virtual “memory palaces”
for collaboration.
Can we put ourselves into cyberspace, not
just gaze through it to find the heads of our
colleagues bobbing on the other end? Flat
screens, which will make those heads larger
or perhaps allow people to appear “full-bodied,” may take the current TV metaphor a
step further, but what about virtual reality
and the world of electronic games that really
put you in the action – Matrix-style? As a
designer, I’m intrigued by the notion that
you could literally recreate a setting this
way – a “place” in which others are present
and proximate, “essentially there.”
When they planned their development center, the Swiss company chose a 19th century
health clinic, complete with an historic villa
and chalets, as its location. They intuited
that this link to the past might be helpful in
considering the future. Virtual reality opens
the door entirely to these precedents. In
doing so, it prompts us to realize that the
door can swing both ways. Just as aspects of
“home” have found their way to the workplace, and vice versa, so the presence of the
past may emerge in both settings, not as
kitsch and replication, but as real inspiration,
as it has been for humankind over the cen-
turies. Modernism tried to wall us off from
history, and then Post-Modernism gave it
back to us in pieces. Now ba inspires us to
do whatever we need to do to spark collaboration and the creation of knowledge. That’s
our mandate. Let’s make the most of it.
Ikujiro Nonaka and Noboru Konno: “The
Concept of Ba: Building a Foundation for
Knowledge, California Management Review,
Vol. 40, No. 3, Spring 1998, pp. 40-54.
© 2001, Gensler. All rights reserved.
Notes
The example of British Telecommunications
plc is taken from an interview with Neil
McLocklin, director of BT’s Change
Management Practice, that appeared in
issue three of Dialogue, Gensler’s client
magazine.
An article on Main Street 2020 appeared in
issue two of Dialogue. A Gensler white paper
on Main Street 2020 is also available.
To obtain it, please write the author
([email protected]).
The Duncan Sutherland quote is taken from
a Gensler white paper, Advance the Thinking,
documenting our October 1997 Workplace
Conference; also available from the author.
Bibliography
Waltraud Beckmann: Bigger than the Boomer
Cohort: A New and Different Office Worker
Generation, Herman Miller Research Report,
January 2000.
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid:
“Organizing Knowledge,” California
Management Review, Vol. 40, No. 3, Spring
1998, pp. 90-111.
Serge Chermayeff and Christopher Alexander:
Community and Privacy: Toward a New
Architecture of Humanism, Doubleday, 1963.
DYG, Inc.: The Second Bottom Line: Competing
for Talent using Innovative Workplace Design:
Results of Qualitative Research among High
Tech Workers, Knoll, Inc., n.d.
Malcolm Gladwell: “Designs for Working”,
New Yorker, December 11, 2000, pp. 60-70.
Edward T. Hall: The Hidden Dimension,
Doubleday, 1966.
Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media: The
Extensions of Man, Signet, 1964.
Kitaro Nishida: An Inquiry into the Good, Yale
University, 1990; and Fundamental Problems
in Philosophy: The World of Action and the
Dialectical World, Sophia University, 1970.
(Cited by Nonaka and Konno, op. cit.).
future imperfect
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Photo: Steelcase®
Brian Ferguson has a diverse background in architecture, planning, and interior and
corporate real estate. For 12 years, he had his own architectural practice in New York
and Illinois. During this period, he also co-founded CEPA Corp., a firm specializing in
the integration of information technology and architecture.
Corporately, Ferguson has over 11 years of experience as the head of occupancy planning and workplace strategies at two major global organizations. Since the merger of
Price Waterhouse with Coopers and Lybrand to create the world’s largest consulting
organization, as the global director of planning and design he led the development of
the combined PwC’s new workplace approach. Internally branded GlobalworkPlace, the comprehensive efforts included cultural and business envisioning activities; a branding program to focus
the team and integrate GwP into the culture; full integration of all major domains including
human resources, technology, support services, design and planning, change, and communications;
quality-assurance programs to ensure continued commitment to the levels of promise; a full set of
new accommodation standards.
Moving well beyond the customary range of “design” activities, Ferguson respects the power the
workplace adds to or detracts from achieving strategically fundamental objectives related to
process, behavior and culture.
This February he founded wrkplc.incorporated to provide workplace decision support services to
organizations, especially those undergoing major change initiatives. He continues functional
responsibilities for global workplace strategy as a consultant to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
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WORKPLACE ROLES AND TRENDS; SELECTED
PERSPECTIVES FROM INSIDE A CLIENT ORGANIZATION
BRIAN K. FERGUSON, AIA, GLOBAL DIRECTOR,
PLANNING AND WORKPLACE DESIGN, PricewaterhouseCoopers
We all agree…
macro-external forces are impacting those who create work environments — the community of designers, architects, planners, real estate consultants and corporate real estate personnel who, collectively,
have the responsibility for defining and producing the “workplace.”
ase®
We also agree on what these forces are — they include technology and its “untethering” of the worker;
globalization; changing workforce demographics and expectations; constantly morphing market
conditions; and social evolutions.
We further agree that certain changes are possible to forecast, based upon current trends, while others
are hazy — the chaos theory in practice. Trends predate events, but fail to accurately predict them.
We have little to navigate by beyond our ability to project that which we know from past experience.
For the design community, the range of responses to these unknowns includes
• scenario planning
• development of laboratories to test solutions and approaches
• a move to broaden the areas of inquiry and expertise — to be more holistic in our view
of our work
• to rethink the very nature of what the designer does, approach it from a systems
perspective, reconsider its composition, relevance and even value
This is healthy. The issues facing our clients are at the DNA-level and the design community needs to
respond in-kind. The more we know, the better prepared we can be for the year 2020.
To that purpose, this paper attempts to complement the prior works with some alternative views from
inside the corporate real estate organization on the subjects of:
the workplace: several unique ways it can contribute value to an enterprise and…
relevant trends in corporate real estate including
• defining value
• disintermediation and some resulting scenarios
• the evolving corporate real estate (CRE) group
The views expressed are based upon 12 years in corporate real estate involving senior responsibility
for planning, design and strategy — the last few years at the global level for PricewaterhouseCoopers.
I believe that the following observations are realistic and will form the basis for meaningful dialogue.
In workplace design, no solution has any intrinsic nature or value apart from the context and purposes
for which it is conceived. Intellectually, we know that, but, as Anais Nin said, “We don’t see things as
they are…we see them as we are.”
workplace roles and trends
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In the changes we are going to be experiencing between now and 2020, the more the
design community succeeds in seeing things
from their client’s perspective, the more
valuable the contributions will be. It is
becoming increasingly clear, though, that the
60s observation that “if you’re not part of
the solution, you’re part of the problem” has
never been truer.
Workplace Contributions /
Selected Opportunities to
Add Value
Domain Alignment
Any workplace solution is defined by carefully understood factors. The better it reflects
them, the more successful it is. When
approached in a fully integrated fashion, the
workplace solution is, literally, the sum of
those defining factors — or domains — which
are depicted below.
focus groups with client personnel; envisioning sessions with the thought leaders; integration meetings; and executive presentations all bring together people and domains
that may have never sat together at the
same table before – and certainly not while
sharing a common interest.
most strategically important contribution.
Properly mandated and facilitated, a workplace initiative can be highly effective in
helping to achieve alignment at all levels.
Frankly, this process of facilitating dialogue
and developing consensus can be a difficult
experience, especially if it involves elements
of a more traditional culture trying to evolve
to meet new pressures.
Organizational change initiatives are common. Unfortunately, they frequently fail to
achieve the stated objectives.
“If the traditional organization resembles
a military battalion, the information-driven organization more closely resembles a
symphony orchestra. All instruments play
the same score in the orchestra, Peter
Drucker notes, but each plays a different
part. They play together, but rarely in
unison.”1
Getting the domains to “play harmoniously”
— aligning them toward one end — is one of
the biggest challenges management faces in
Workplace
Defining Factors -
-
Technology
H.R. Issues
Voice, Data,
Future Direction
Attrition, Recruitment, Retention, Rewards
Organizational Structure
Branding
Business Processes
Client Expectations
Work Place
Market Conditions
Officing Methods
Firm Aspirations
Accommodation Standards
Real Estate Markets/Site
Cultural & Change Issues
A successful workplace solution contributes
to an organization’s health in two meaningful ways. The first way is the product – the
design - and its ongoing success in accommodating the productive needs of the enterprise, its people and their clients.
The second contribution, potentially more
powerful, involves the process one undertakes in arriving at the end product. The
Support Services
Firm Politics
Resource Allocation
wrkplc.incorporated, 2001
Messaging
Client, Staff, Competitors, Community, Mkts.
an organization. That is one reason why
vision statements, aspiration announcements, goal setting, and firmwide value
edicts are so common.
“Real, sustainable advantage comes…
from the way a company’s activities fit
together.”2
Nothing can tear down silos and align
domains like focusing on a tangible reality
such as the workplace, and therein lies its
Organizational Change
John P. Kotter describes:
“The Eight-Stage Process of Creating Major
Change:
• Establishing a Sense of Urgency
• Creating the Guiding Coalition
• Developing a Vision and Strategy
• Communicating the Change Vision
• Empowering Broad-Based Action
• Generating Short-Term Wins
• Consolidating Gains and Producing
More Wins
• Anchoring New Approaches in the
Culture.”3
A strategic workplace initiative is a perfect
focus, even catalyst, for effectively addressing all of the above - especially the last one.
What better way to anchor change than with
a work environment that will continue to
mold behavior and attitudes, and ultimately
culture? In every sense of the word, “workplace” is a verb — not a noun; a living,
breathing doer — not a passive thing.
In reading many books on organizational
development, there are disappointingly few
references to the power of the workplace to
facilitate, undermine, or impact change in
any way. I think part of the reason is that
those who create work environments do not
take their own creations seriously enough, or
view them in their broadest implications.
A “Real Change Leader” is defined as one
who is capable of “…energizing and focusing
people down the line on collective actions
that yield higher performance results
in…three areas. We think of RCLs as unique
linchpins who connect
• marketplace realities
• top management aspirations and
• workforce energy and initiative.” 4
This also sounds like a fair description of
what a well-conceived workplace solution
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does. No one can presume to design such a
place and not, at the same time, see themselves as a change agent — designers are in
the change business, just as they are in the
human resources, branding and other “businesses” which together define the workplace.
Think of it this way - every facility ever created is an incubator for the future firm – an
incubator of behavior, process, message and
culture. It is somewhat presumptuous to
believe that a “good” design can bring prosperity and a happy, whistling staff to an
enterprise, but there is ample evidence that,
if done poorly, it can seriously undermine
other positive initiatives.
“Bad architecture can sap business life in
a variety of ways because the pathology
of office design is so extensive: space
that costs too much to run; leases that
cannot be escaped from in times of
recession; square footage that suddenly
becomes too abundant or too scarce;
cranky building forms that make face-toface internal communication
difficult…design features that insidiously
overvalue status… And, perilously underestimated, is the importance of messages
that are broadcast by architectural
imagery about the values of organizations
and the people who work in them.” 5
“Bad architecture” is that which is not integrally conceived, incorporating and integrating all the domains discussed. A key challenge
for the design community is to further establish their credibility in this regard — their participation as a true partner in the process of
achieving what the client really needs.
Think-Say-Do Gaps
If the three have nothing to do with each
other, then staff cynicism ensues as employees actually come to expect misstatements or
half-truths — certainly not the full story.
The workplace does not mislead. It is what it
is. An organization can speak of flattened
hierarchy and open communication all it wishes, but 30 seconds in the office tells the story.
This role deserves more attention from the
human resources departments and is one
reason they have to be more involved in the
creative process. Their involvement is not
always an easy thing to achieve. Designers
must push harder to involve this key missing link.
Economic Cycle Madness
Economic cycles are killers — a bad dream
that business seems bent on reliving over
and over. When times are good, the focus is
upon revenue and nothing but revenue.
Spending occurs freely in order to achieve
growth — whatever is required. Excess space
is frequently taken on the assumption it will
be needed. Growth is assumed to be a forever thing.
Then the cycle turns downward and the
focus is on profits and the cost reductions
necessary to maintain them, given the drop
in revenue. What was right before is now all
wrong. The predictable layoffs and cost-cutting measures undermine the best human
resources plans to build allegiance, cynicism
is rampant, and leadership credibility is seriously damaged. The enterprise pays a premium for rents when one needs more space
and gives it away at pennies on the dollar
when the demand is down. Cost cutting
becomes the solution to all problems and
It is popular today to talk about the role of
the workplace in staff retention and recruitment. BOSTI6 has made significant observations over many years on the role the environment plays on staff satisfaction, linking it
to productivity and customer satisfaction –
an activity well worth review.
A very different perspective on the role the
environment plays in staff attitude is the role
of the workplace as truth-detector. There can
be large gaps between what management
thinks, what it says and what it actually does.
every element goes under the knife. The
cycle bottoms and starts back up. The whole
process begins again.
Both extremes are flawed in that one cannot
“spend” a firm to profitability any more than
one can “save” it there.
We almost accept these extreme cycles as
the nature of things. While there will always
be economic cycles, occupancy can have a
big impact on how large the amplitude of
the cycle swings are to be.
These cycles and their impact is a significant
dilemma for CRE professionals and are a
major area to be addressed in years to come.
It also represents a major potential contribution for the design profession to help address.
Three Dynamics to Consider
for the Future
Defining Value
The “value” of our services is a subject we all
care about a great deal, but seldom address
directly. We seek to do valuable things, make
contributions. We are hired, fired or honored
based upon some notion of “value.” We know
the results but seldom really understand the
reasons.
A number of years ago, the pre-merger Price
Waterhouse firm asked the executives of
their largest clients a simple, yet profound
question: What is the most valuable thing
that we do for you?
The most frequent answer: Help me make
better decisions.
Sounds logical. How do you do that?
The Client Chain
Designer
CRE
Group
Service
Lines
Firm
Clients
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First, by understanding that help me make
better decisions usually commensurates with
help me succeed with my client.
Everyone has clients and the relationship can
be seen in the simplified diagram on the previous page. The service line owes solutions to
the firm client. The success of the CRE group
in meeting the needs of the service line can
be measured in how well they support the
service lines in achieving their success or
taking care of the firm client.
The designer inherits the entire chain and
the more they can understand of the
upstream issues, the more success they will
have with their prime client, the CRE Group.
The only way to ultimately succeed with your
client…is to help your client succeed with theirs.
The firm client in the chain, will increasingly
define what is “valuable” in the designer’s
activities. The firm client is the “market
force” we spoke of earlier and the more the
designer understands about them, the better.
“There is one valid definition of business
purpose — to create a customer.”7 Keeping
them is no small task, either. Focusing on
their client’s need is the key ongoing activity
of an enterprise and all members of their
team must contribute in tangible ways.
Simply put, if a particular item is not valuable to the firm client, then it will not
remain valuable to the CRE group. Don’t
count on providing that thing for very long.
Expensive design solutions immediately
come to mind, but that’s too easy. Proper
attention to other domains is increasingly
important.
The selling of full cycle services — not just
a product, but the ongoing support of that
product — is a trend that will continue.
Teams from the firm client may “live-in”
your client’s offices for long periods. Those
teams are much more interested in the
efficiency of the space to support their
needs than the materials in reception,
which they may never see.
Disintermediation
Economic cycles aside, organizations are
under increasing pressure to obtain the
highest quality of what they need at the
lowest cost — to find new ways to better
achieve productivity contribution for each
element in the supplier-to-user delivery
chain. Only those elements or service
providers that directly and materially
enhance that productivity will continue to
survive.
commissions are eliminated, renovations
costs are reduced through “comparative
shopping,” redesign fees commensurately
reduced, and even existing furnishings
potentially reused — a scenario which
affects all the main players in the space
delivery chain today.
As we begin to realize the capabilities of the
Internet, “monopolies” on information are
evaporating due to the ability for anyone to
speak instantly with anyone else.
Now, take the next logical step of eliminating even the above service provider. How
long can it be before accounting organizations, groups of banks or any other organizations with similar facility needs, work as
consortiums to pool space needs and usage.
Much as consortium buying occurring in
certain other industries, consultant-free
space-trading is also starting. The cost
effectiveness will drive it.
Disintermediation is the removal of service
layers in a process, brought about by the elimination of information monopolies. To illustrate, I recently received the following e-mail:
As a corporate real estate (CRE) executive
you are no doubt currently faced with the
challenge of maximizing the value of
unutilized space. “X” has launched “Y” the first company-to-company, internal
marketplace providing space sublets,
sharing, acquisitions and dispositions
directly to other CREs.
CRE departments use X’s services to quickly
and anonymously pool their space acquisition, disposition and sharing requests - maximizing availability and reducing the costs of
short-term lease space.
X’s solutions will enable you to:
• Reduce time and costs to locate and
dispose of short-term lease space
• Protect your privacy by anonymously
locating or marketing your space
• Achieve greater market reach and pricing
• More quickly and efficiently manage
the entire transaction process
Join other Global 2000 companies in
shortening transaction times, streamlining processes and reducing costs.
This service proposes to link Enterprise A
directly with Enterprise B so that they can
do space “deals” without the customary
players. To the clients of Enterprise A, it’s
really irrelevant how Enterprise A obtains
effective space, except as the cost to do so
affects the price charged for their goods or
services. They do care about that.
The Internet allows that cost to be dramatically reduced if conventional brokerage
Go one more step and one can envision
similar organizations in the same city
developing space together, including the
advantages of:
• built-in swing areas to allow for
growth and physical separation
• the latest in state-of-the-art voice and
data technology infrastructure (more
state-of-the-art than they could afford
independently)
• systems segregated by software switching to allow for agility in rearrangement
• high-level, common shared services
support
• interchangeability of all components in
the development
• overall superior facilities achieved
through leverage which none could
afford individually
What one needs to be willing to sacrifice in
the above scenario is some degree of “space
branding” and market differentiation based
upon workplace.
Even loss of this differentiation represents a cost advantage in that the workplace, as a decision factor, is removed
from competition for quality personnel.
One is left to compete for people and
business solely on the basis of the things
that are of prime value to the firm client
– product knowledge, management effectiveness, market leadership, application
innovation, speed and responsiveness.
Bottom line: you can wring costs out of the
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elements of a system only so long before you
have to look at the system itself. The firm
client will drive this systemic upheaval,
enabled by the Internet.
In the transitional structure of recent
years, shown next page “Figure 2”, project
management has been fully outsourced.
Only the more senior real estate levels
remain internal, for strategic purposes. The
Service Line Units are still forced to deal
with the infrastructure groups separately,
but some cooperation has begun to occur
between infrastructure groups.
Evolution of the Corporate
Real Estate Group
Ten years ago, a typical corporate real
estate structure, shown “Figure 1”, was
heavy with internal employees and layers
of reporting. Project managers and program directors reported to the head of
design and construction, who reported to
the head of real estate, who reported to
the head of infrastructure, similar to the
diagram below. The only prime team members who were not internal employees were
the real estate consultants or brokers and
most designers.
In the Projected 2020 model, shown “Figure
3”, the entire real estate function is outsourced. What remains is a real estate
coordinating entity as part of what is now
a fully integrated shared services group.
The service line units now deal with one
infrastructure group, probably via a liaison,
to address all their needs. There are uniform accommodation standards, one real
estate approach, and an annual planning
function all managed by a single outsourced primary real estate service provider
for all occupancy matters.
The relationship between the client-facing
service line units and the entire infrastructure group was fractured, with no central
infrastructure organization. The service line
units had to deal with technology separately from real estate or support services.
Those three groups, also, dealt little with
each other. (“That’s not my job,” was a common phrase.)
The real question posed by this model is
“who leads the parade in occupancy?”
What entity occupies the outside primary
real estate service provider box? Or, what
group of entities?
What tasks included in this oversight posi
tion remain as we know them today? Which
ones have morphed into something very different? Which ones are gone?
Concluding Question
All right, so what? What does all this really
mean for the design community, specifically?
That fully depends upon the design community in that the answer evolves totally from
how they envision their role in 2020 vis-avis the CRE groups, real estate consultants,
architects, planners, program managers and
even professional organizations like the new
IDRC/NACORE entity.
What is that vision? I include, without comment, the one current public statement I
could find on designer activities taken from
the ASID Web site:
“What does an Interior Designer do?
• consulting services to help determine
goals and objectives
• generating ideas for the functional and
aesthetic possibilities of the space
• creating illustrations and renderings
• developing documents and specifications relative to interior spaces in compliance with applicable building and
safety codes
Figure 1
Technology
Security
H.R.
Finance
Travel
Procurement
Office Services
Service Line
Unit
Real Estate
Firm
Client
Design
Planning
Project Mgmt.
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
Traditional
CRE Structure and Relationships; 1990
C
C
C
C
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Figure 2
Technology
Security
H.R.
Finance
Travel
Procurement
Office Services
Service Line
Unit
Real Estate
Firm
Client
Design
Planning
Project Mgmt.
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
PM
C
C
C
• allocating, organizing and arranging a
space to suit its function
• monitoring and managing construction
and installation of design
• selecting and specifying fixtures, furnishings, products, materials, and colors
• purchasing products and fixtures
• designing and managing fabrication of
custom furnishings and interior details
• designing lighting and specifying”8
Asked another way, where on the strategicto-tactical meter does the design community
wish to participate? The parts have not yet
been cast for a 2020 timeframe, though
things are in motion. Final role determination will be the result of a conscious, committed, purposeful set of dialogue and
actions, laser-focused on a clear vision and
enlightened with understanding of all the
players, challenges and opportunities.
If the vision is for the design community to
play a major strategic role, my sense is that
profound change in the community is
required — profound change defined as:
“…organizational change that combines
inner shifts in people’s values, aspirations
and behaviors with ‘outer’ shifts in
processes, strategies, practices and systems.”9
work patterns
Transitional
CRE Structure and Relationships
C
Challenges that are this fundamental also go
to the issue of education. A new college
graduate in 2020 is about three years old
today.
Sounds like plenty of time, but other players
in the real estate community are asking the
same fundamental questions. Inaction is the
one course no one can afford to take.
A Final Perspective
Notwithstanding all the foregoing, we cannot lose focus, first and foremost, on the
larger and unique role of design in the workplace and, ultimately, our lives.
“Design is about life. When historic revolutions happen that shake the world and ultimately affect the way we live, design can
provide the power, grace, clarity and balance
necessary to accommodate these stressful
circumstances.
Good design can act as the mediator
between technology and human beings and
is always an advocate of the latter.”10
Mediation and Advocacy – worthy and necessary roles to consider in the dialogue
about what path the community of design
takes to the year 2020.
Ferguson.v2
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Page 9
Figure 3
Technology
Office Services Finance
Integrated Shared Services
Security
Travel
H.R.
Service Line
Unit
Firm
Client
Procurement
Real Estate
Primary R.E
Service Provider
Notes and References
Business 2010; Fred Harmon; Kiplinger Books,
Washington, D.C., 2001.
Michael Porter, Author, Authority on
Competitive Strategy
Projected CRE
Structure and Relationships; 2020
workspheres, Design and Contemporary Work
Styles; Ed. By Paola Antonelli, Publication of
the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2001
Leading Change; John P. Kotter; Harvard
Business School Press, Boston, 1996
Real Change Leaders; Jon R. Katzenbach, et
al., McKinsey & Co., USA, 1995
The New Office; Francis Duffy; Conran
Octopus, Ltd., London, 1997
Disproving Widespread Myths About
Workplace Design; BOSTI, Brill, Wiedman and
Associates, Kimball International, Jasper,
Ind., 2001
Management; Tasks, Responsibilities,
Practices; Peter Drucker, Harper & Row,
New York, 1973
American Society of Interior Designers; Web
site, www.asid.org
The Dance of Change, a Fifth Discipline
Resource; Peter Senge, et al., Doubleday,
New York, 1999
work patterns
Loftness
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Page 2
Photo: Armstrong®
Vivian E. Loftness is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and
head of the School of Architecture. Loftness is an international sustainability and
building performance consultant for commercial and residential building design. She
has edited and written a wide range of publications on advanced building systems,
energy, climate and regionalism in architecture, as well as design for performance in
the workplace of the future.
Over the past 10 years, Vivian Loftness has focused on advanced architectural
research on the performance of a range of building types, from museums to high-tech
offices, and the innovative building delivery processes necessary for improving quality in building
performance. Supported by a university-building industry partnership, the Advanced Building
Systems Integration Consortium, she is a key contributor to the development of the Intelligent
Workplace (a living laboratory of commercial building innovations for performance) and has
authored a variety of publications on international advances in the workplace.
In the Center for Building Performance at Carnegie Mellon, Loftness has been actively researching
and designing high-performance office environments with DOE, DOD, Department of State, GSA,
NSF and major building industries such as Steelcase and Johnson Controls. She has served on five
National Academy of Science panels as well as being a member of the Academy’s board on
Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment. Her work has influenced national policy and
building projects, including the recently completed Adaptable Workplace Lab at the U.S. General
Services Administration.
Loftness
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Page 3
ADDING VALUE: PRODUCTIVITY AND
QUALITY OF LIFE IN FUTUREWORK ENVIRONMENTS
VIVIAN E. LOFTNESS, AIA, PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE, CARNEGIE MELLON
UNIVERSITY SENIOR RESEARCHER, Center for Building Performance and
Diagnostics
The three ASID-sponsored papers on FutureWork 2020 by Andrea Vanecko of Callison, Nila Leiserowitz
of Gensler and Robert Hillier of the Hillier Group simultaneously raise a number of arguments about
future and current work environments. All three papers argue the shift from linear, disciplinary decision
making in design; the need for collaborative scenario building and research; multiple, non-reductionist
alternatives to the definition of the workplace; and quality of life issues that will change the future of
work environments. This response will attempt to capture the common strengths of these arguments
and add dimensions that were not introduced.
Future work environments emerge from multi-disciplinary and
non-linear collaborative decision making.
Andrea Vanecko introduces the importance of a new form of “participatory, coordinated, integrated and
continuous process that builds toward the desired future….toward a non-linear “systems” approach to
design, encouraging multiple design inputs, new communication tools and accelerated methods of
implementation.” She illustrates that although business leaders talk about cross-functional change
processes, most organizations continued to compartmentalize the execution of strategies among their
corporate real estate/information technology/facilities management/human resources (CRE/IT/FM/HR)
departments. Moreover, communication between designers and workers is often lacking, with the result
that in “99 completed re-engineering initiatives, 67 percent were judged as producing mediocre, marginal or failed results. Fifty percent of the companies that participated in the study reported that the
most difficult part of re-engineering is dealing with fear and anxiety in their organizations.”
I would fully agree that the full client team of CRE/IT/FM/HR and occupants is critically needed in the
design of future work environments. However, none of the authors mentioned the critical shift required
in collaborative decision making between the design/engineering and construction teams. In extensive
study of innovative work environments, it is our experience at the Center for Building Performance that
the coordination between design and engineering disciplines is even weaker than the coordination of
the client representatives for these innovative work environments. Not only are the architectural,
HVAC, electrical, lighting, networking and interior decisions often made in a linear fashion, but the
specification, construction, and commissioning of the innovative work environments are also linear and
indeed often unconnected. The result is significant dysfunction for months or even years, especially in
innovative work environments.
For this reason, I would precede Robert Hillier’s list of collaborators - including organizational psychology, behavior modification, cognitive ergonomics, economics, telecommunications technology, group
communication dynamics and demographics – with the lighting, acoustic, HVAC, construction, material
manufacturing decision makers that will be critical to successful dynamic work environments.
adding value
Loftness
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Page 4
Future work environments
require architecture/
engineering/interiors/
construction/management
collaboration to ensure
flexible infrastructures.
Carnegie Mellon’s “intelligent workplace”
team argues that addressing issues of organizational dynamics, technological change,
individual productivity and environmental
sustainability will require buildings and
retrofits that can guarantee that every building occupant, at their individual workstation,
will be supplied with critical services:
Seven basic infrastructures every
occupant/workstation needs individually
• fresh air
• temperature control
• lighting control
• daylight and view, reduced isolation
from outdoors
• privacy and working quiet
• network access: multiple data, power,
voice connections
• ergonomic furniture and environmentally appropriate finishes
With a new generation of materials and systems, collaborative multi-disciplinary teams can
provide these seven mandates over time, creating productive environments that attract the
best workforce, offer personalized infrastructure
and control, and support continuous change in
organizational and technological configurations
through infrastructure flexibility.
It is clear, however, that the dynamics of
space and technology in today’s work environments cannot be accommodated through
the existing building infrastructures or the
linear design processes that create them –
neither the “blanket systems” planned for uniform open-plan configurations, nor the idiosyncratic systems planned for unique office
configurations. What is needed are flexible
grid, density and closure systems – a constellation of building systems that permit each
individual to set the location and density of
ventilation and thermal conditioning, lighting,
telecommunications and furniture, including
adding value
the level of workspace enclosure. Only the
commitment of the full architecture/engineering/interiors/construction and manufacturing
team to collaboratively deliver relocatable,
user-based infrastructures will create new
and retrofit future work places capable of
supporting individual comfort and productivity, organizational flexibility, technological
adaptability and environmental sustainability.
Research and experimentation is critical to future
work environments.
The Future@Work environment of Callison
and ASID revealed “the power of the exhibit
experience to take the fear out of change.”
This learning exhibit evolved from a collaborative, non-linear design process, the
strengths of scenario planning and a recognition that “new resources continue to
encourage experimentation and testing of
new ideas.” Robert Hillier also emphasizes
that “as a way of predicting future organizational and social behaviors, scenario planning is now a well recognized tool” and is
key to multi-disciplinary non-linear design
and system flexibility to absorb change.
Our practice and applied research efforts
agree with this wholeheartedly. There is no
tool so powerful for learning about systems
integration, flexible and adaptive technologies, and merging disciplinary expertise over
time than “living laboratories”. At Carnegie
Mellon University, our living laboratory - the
Robert L. Preger Intelligent Workplace has
been a non-stop collaborative work and
learning environment for well over 1,000
professional and client teams a year – with a
continued opportunity for lessons learned.
One lesson that is clear from our laboratory
is the importance of scenario planning for
multiple spatial alternatives for the dynamic
organization. In a break from conventional
design documents, designing the office of
the future must begin with multiple floor
plans, envisioning years of organizational reengineering and technological change. These
floor plans provide the basis for determining
the flexible infrastructures needed, the grid
of service and the number of nodes needed
for air, cooling, light, data, voice, power.
These floor plans also provide the basis for
selecting the furniture “kit-of-parts” that
will support the dynamic organization without waste. Only a flexible workplace infrastructure — from servicing systems to furniture — will support the constant demand for
the regeneration of workgroup and workstation solutions. With the design of infrastructures that are capable of supporting multiple
layouts and the selection of grids of service
with adaptable and relocatable nodes of
service, it is possible to address workplace
issues both first and last in design.
In addition to scenario building and experimentation, Robert Hillier introduces the
importance of expanding professional
research efforts on such critical issues as:
how the physical workplace affects productivity, creativity and worker satisfaction; the
relationship between work patterns and work
effectiveness; and the impact of city and
regional patterns on workplace change. I
would like to add a number of major pent-up
research efforts based on an NSF Research
Needs workshop held in 1997 and the EVision workshop held in 2000, that formed
the basis for a distributed, collaborative
research institute (thousands of professionals
nationwide from all the disciplines responsible for our built environment).
Future work environments cannot be represented by “reductionist” or singular solutions
but are built on layered opportunities.
All three authors introduced the notion that
“the optimally effective or motivating workplace will change according to the nature of
work, whether individual or aggregated,
while the organization of the workplace will
be separate from the organization of the
work,” (Hillier 2001). “Design solutions for
the workplace are not finite or static. They
must embrace change, ready to adapt to the
future, prototypes within a company’s business evolution,” (Vanecko 2001).
At times, however, the arguments did reveal
reductionist visions that must be thoroughly
studied and debated. Vanecko argues that “less
space will be allocated to individual work,” and
this at a time when individual homes are moving to 700-1000 square feet per person? “That
symbols of status will need to be exchanged”
at a time when SUVs are the hottest selling
cars in the U.S.? And that “solutions included
little dedicated office space, but many choices
Loftness
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Page 5
A distributed, collaborative research institute
to study high-performance buildings,
interiors and community systems in relation to:
Commerce
Jobs
Trade
Human Potential
Individual Productivity
Quality of Life
Organizational Productivity
Environmental Potential
Pollution Reduction
Energy Use Reduction
Reduction in Raw Material Use
Asset Potential
Tourism
Blue Book Value
Obsolescence
Preserving Land and Biodiversity
Health Potential
Sick Building Costs
Healthy Building Gains
Human Safety and Security
Education Potential
Learning in School Buildings
Innovation in Learning
The Next Environmentalists
The Science and
Technology Potential
The Information Age
Face to Face and Digital
of alternative work settings with comfortable,
mobile furniture and lots of available tools. The
emphasis was on group activity and communication; spaces could be divided or opened easily to create places for retreat as well as spaces
for collaboration.” Robert Hillier agrees with
this last assessment that “while workplace
design was traditionally focused on the individual worker performing a set of tasks in a
fixed environment, it is now centered on teamwork and group activity in flexible environments that support rapidly evolving business
strategies and goals.”
Although it is true that the business community is acting on this commitment to collaborative work over individual, there is little evidence that shows that the knowledge workers’
time dedication to the collaborative work
effort exceeds individual concentrated effort,
or even should. Nila Leiserowitz argues for
greater attention to the “collaboration vs. concentration dilemma that dogs the open workplace. “ Yet, even serious attempts at addressing this dilemma are mostly about “looking
different.” Indeed, much richer understandings
about collaborative work are needed, as well
as the ever-increasing challenges facing individuals who are all required to be multitaskers. Careful study of how workers spend
their workweek reveals a significant percent-
age of tasks in which more space, dedicated
offices and stabile furniture will be critical. A
careful study of collaborative work output may
reveal that ad-hoc teaming spaces and meeting rooms only yield information exchange but
not knowledge, with an entirely different type
of collaborative work environment and work
tools needed for collaborative creativity and
collaborative output.
Nila Leiserowitz might be describing these
creative collaborative environments: “This is
the world that Marshall McLuhan prophesied. Our children are more at home in it
than we are. The Japanese give this ‘place’ a
name, ba: ‘a shared space for emerging relationships.’ Its purpose, they say, is to support
knowledge creation. ‘When knowledge is
separated from ba,’ they add, ‘it turns into
information.’ Today, when we’re drowning in
data, knowledge is oxygen.” “Authenticity
and connection – real, physical connection
with one’s peers are what people want.”
Maybe we should “Learn from Starbucks
about making people feel at home in a communal setting,” which may be a far better
collaborative hearth than Hillier’s Kinko’s.
In short, I would like to expand the arguments of all three authors about the nonsingularity of the future. Additive capability
is our future – in the IT world we have desktops and laptops and palmtops and CDs and
DVDs and floppies and more to come – all
tools of a productive worker. The IT creativity
tools seem to have no limits to resources
because of corporate convictions about the
productive worker – neither should the work
environments that house these knowledge
workers and their technologies.
As Robert Hillier argues, there are constants.
“Among them are the need for privacy and personal space, the territorial instinct, the desire
for status and the need for socialization,” and
people will continue to “immerse themselves in
artifacts and memory aids.” In addition to constants, there are also new innovative work
environments and motivational environments
and collaboration environments that the highly
productive U.S. workforce not only can afford
but must embrace. Tom Moran of Xerox Park,
Azizan Aziz, and I have continued to argue for
the additive opportunities of a palette of individual and collaborative spaces, ranging from
individual places, to meeting places, to social
places, to project places to leadership places to
electronic places with shared and independent
elements, what Robert Hillier might have identified as an “interrelated series of motivating
environments.”
In the development of guidelines for the
Advanced Building Systems Integration
Consortium and the NSF/IUCRC industry-government-university collaborative research effort, we
have identified 10 major interior design decisions
that will affect future work environments.
Ten Major Interior Design Decisions
1. neighborhood clarity and shared
services
2. layers of ownership, multiple
work environments
5. functional support for shared
work processes
4. functional support for individual
work processes
3. layers of closure, open/closed
variations
6. layers of mobility
7. layers of personalization
8. infrastructures to support
environmental control
9. infrastructures to support technical
control
10. healthy, detailed, aesthetic
environment
adding value
Loftness
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Page 6
Quality of life, productivity
and sustainability will also
drive future work
environments.
nightmare that isolates individuals and
workgroups. Just like yesterday’s war veterans, today’s high tech/information overload
veterans may demand “simple, direct and
honest efficiency in the material aspects of
the means by which he lives.”
Again, all three authors are consistent in their
assertion that quality of life, productivity and
sustainability will drive future work environments. Nila Leiserowitz and Robert Hillier
define nurturing, whole life environments
with more diverse workforces, with greater
globalization, extended work years, quality of
life concerns and growing socialization needs.
As designers, we will be asked to provide
environments that can sustain human attention, nurture collaboration, ensure health and
motivate a changing population of workers.
We will be asked to balance smart building
technology with natural building technology
to ensure environmental, organizational and
individual sustainability. I will close this written response with CBPD’s definition of the
sustainable environments for FutureWork.
Robert Hillier further argues that “design will
be the tool by which technology is tamed
and brought into human scale” giving people
a greater sense of control over their lives.
Defining sustainability for
This results in a mandate for future work
environments to be “flexible to adjust to the
individual’s preferences for climate control,
lighting, sound absorption, surface heights
and ergonomic seating. In such offices, technology and the obsolescence of hierarchical
work structures will give many workers the
latitude to customize their own environments
to order.” Moreover, “The roles of architecture
and environmental design will be expanded
to encompass not just discrete buildings, but
the larger city and regional patterns of which
they are a part.” I could not agree more.
In fact, I am convinced there is enough evidence as to the individual and organizational
productivity, health, management and environmental benefits of environments designed for
individual and community vitality (reference
BIDS), that I feel we must set aside Andrea
Vanecko’s acceptance that “the bottom line
will continue to be of primary importance.”
Instead, we must prove Nila Leiserowitz’s
assertion that future work environments will
be “filled with natural light and air, too,
from operable windows or a double-layered
skin, with under-floor air to give each person
environmental control. The materials it uses
are chosen to minimize CO2/SO2 emissions,
ensure indoor air quality, protect the environments and allow for future recycling or
direct reuse.” We need to avoid at all cost
the possible future workplace Robert Hillier
describes in the MaxiMog, an environmental
adding value
future work environments
Sustainable design is a collective process
whereby the built environment achieves new
levels of ecological balance through new and
retrofit construction, toward the long-term
viability and humanization of architecture.
Focusing on environmental context, sustainable design merges the natural minimum
resource conditioning solutions of the past
(daylight, solar heat and natural ventilation)
with the innovative technologies of the present, into an integrated “intelligent” system
that supports individual control with expert
negotiation for resource consciousness.
Sustainable design rediscovers the social,
environmental and technical values of
pedestrian, mixed-use communities, fully
using existing infrastructures, including
“main streets” and small town planning principles, and recapturing indoor-outdoor relationships. Sustainable design avoids the further thinning out of land use, the dislocated
placement of buildings and functions.
Sustainable design introduces benign, nonpolluting materials and assemblies with lower
embodied and operating energy requirements,
and higher durability and recyclability.
Finally, sustainable design offers architecture
of long-term value through “forgiving” and
modifiable building systems, life-cycle
instead of least-cost investments, and timeless delight and craftsmanship.
References
Hillier, Robert J., “ Mastering Your Universe:
Balancing Work and Life in the 2020
Workplace.” Future Work 2020, 2001.
Leiserowitz, Nila, R., (Gensler) ,”Future
Imperfect: The World of Work in 2020”,
Future Work 2020, 2001.
Vanecko, Andrea, (Callison), “The Integrated
Workplace”, Future Work 2020, 2001.
Loftness V., et al, “Smart Buildings, Intelligent
Buildings”, in Facility Design and Management
Handbook ed. Eric Teicholz, McGraw-Hill Inc.,
2001, Chapter 12, pp. 12.1-12.41.
Loftness, Vivian, “ E-Vision 2000 Energy,
Productivity, and the Critical Role of the
Built Environment.”, Presented at the EVision Conference held in Washington D.C.
Oct.11-13, 2000.
Loftness, Vivian, Gurtekin, B., Mertz,K.,
Ries,R.,Shankavaram,J., Singh,A., Mo,
Z.,”Building Investment Decision Support
(BIDS)” ABSIC Project 1999-2000.
Loftness, Vivian, Hartkopf, V., Lee, S., Ries, R.,
Singh, A. “Guidelines for High-Performance
Buildings.” ABSIC Project 1999-2000.
Hartkopf, V., V. Loftness, A. Aziz, and S. Lee,
“The GSA Adaptable Workplace Laboratory,”
presented at the Second International
Workshop, CoBuild?99, Pittsburgh, PA, USA,
Oct. 1-2, 1999, and published in Lecture
Notes in Computer Science, No. 1670,
Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany, ISBN
3-540-66596-X, pp. 12-28.
Loftness, V., “Addressing the Big Building Crisis
in Sustainability: Communities, Infrastructures,
and Indoor Environments,” in Dimensions of
Sustainability, ed. Andrew Scott, New York: E
& FN Spon Publishers, 1998.
Loftness, V., V. Hartkopf, A. Mahdavi, S. Lee,
A. Aziz, and P. Mathew, “Environmental
Consciousness in the Intelligent Workplace,”
presented at NEOCON 1994, held in Chicago,
Ill., June, 1994.
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Page 4
FutureWork 2020 Sponsors
Steelcase®
At heart, Steelcase is a work effectiveness company. Our desire is to support designers as
they create environments that energize and inspire the people that work in them. Beyond
their portfolio of award-winning products, they offer knowledge, programs and services
including "Portico" a web-based resource (www.steelcase.com) exclusively for architects
and designers. Steelcase has developed a legacy of providing design professionals with CEU
accredited learning opportunities as well as an investment in student education through
Steelcase University Student Design Excellence, a four-week summer program. Their commitment to the profession continues through active participation and financial support of
AIA, ASID, IIDA, FIDER and IDEC. Steelcase considers the design profession a partner in
their aspiration to transform the ways people work.
Armstrong World Industries, Inc.
Armstrong World Industries, Inc., is a manufacturer and marketer of interior furnishings. Its
products include floor coverings and installation products, acoustical ceilings and grid systems, and insulation for heating and cooling systems. Armstrong also manufactures and markets high-performance gasket materials. Through its recently acquired subsidiaries, Triangle
Pacific Corp., the world’s largest manufacturer of hardwood flooring and a major producer of
hardwood cabinets; and DLW Aktiengeselschaft, the leading flooring manufacturer in
Germany, Armstrong now produces high-quality wood florring and wooden kitchen and bath
cabinets, commercial carpet, linoleum and sports surfaces. In 1997 Armstrong, Triangle Pacific
Corp., and DLW Aktien-gesellsschaft had combined sales of approximately $3.56 billion. The
combined companies have a total workforce of 20,400 employees worldwide.
Ziff Davis Smart Business
The monthly magazine for top business managers who are actively investing in technology to benefit their bottom-line. Ziff Davis Smart Business is written for business
leaders, in the language of business, who know that integrating technology into core
business functions is the key to growth. Ziff Davis Smart Business gives readers the
information they need to develop optimal strategies and practices that will give them
a competitive edge.
The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID)
ASID is the definitive resource for professional education and knowledge sharing, advocacy
of interior designers’ right to practice and expansion of interior design markets. As the
largest organization representing interior designers, ASID has over 30,500 members.
ASID is an organization that:
• defines interior design by what its providers do, not who they are
• is vital to the success of interior design providers, their partners and customers
through shared knowledge and collective action
• gives interior design providers the tools to understand and perform beyond
customer expectations
• is the catalyst for understanding and managing the changing working and living
environments
ASID provides services to the interior design profession, the public and its membership.
The Society promotes design excellence through professional education, market expansion,
information sharing and the creation of a favorable environment for the practice of
interior design.
Cover
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Page 1
F
The American Society of Interior Designers
608 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E. Washington, D.C. 20002-6006
Phone: (202) 546-3480 Fax: (202) 546-3240
E-mail: [email protected] www.asid.org
2
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