Private View

Last night was the private view for our exhibition. It was really good to see everyone's work finished and presented.

The interactive lego "build an office kit" part of my project got quite a lot of attention, some people seemed to have tried to follow the task, some just wanted to play with the lego!

Final Project: Exhibition

On Monday I handed in the final part of my masters project and during this week we have all been setting up our exhibition which will private view next Friday and then be on display for another week.

This is my area:

I am displaying my three final boards which summerise the outcome of my project and my A3 booklet which summarises the whole year in detail.

I will also be displaying this box of lego bricks which I hope people will interact with by designing their own office spaces according to the key above.

Build an Office Kit

My idea for the future of office spaces is that businesses will have an important role in designing their office.
For this reason I have developed a "build an office kit" which could be used.
I have used lego to represent the different types of spaces and will have the lego available at my exhibition so that visitors can have a go at designing an office themselves.

The Office as a Town

I have been working on the analogy of designing an office as a town with a building envelope being the town walls, the internal structures being the buildings within the town, and the circulation space and informal meeting areas being the streets.
I will use this diagram to introduce the idea before showing these images to explain it further.
I will develop a terminology to show the similarities between the town and the office.

Images explained (from left to right)
1. a map of a town
2. the map is coloured to show possible uses and sectors
3. the map has now become the office

Key:
Gate Keeper / Reception
Town Hall / Meeting Areas
Town Square / Socialising and Dining Area
Business Sector / Desk Work Area
[none] / Private or Quiet Work Area
Industrial Sector / Workshop
Entertainment Sector / Relaxation and Games Rooms
Residential Sector / [none]
Retail Sector / Cafe and Kitchen

Initial Renders

I made some initial renders to test out the look for the spaces. I started with the top floor which is the kitchen, dining area, relaxation room and games room.

I have now started the first floor which is the main work area.

I plan to do another visual of the informal meeting area on the first floor and then two of the ground floor which is mostly meeting rooms and is more open to visitors and clients.

Future Offices

I took inspiration from this project when thinking about the future of office spaces.
Although I have made a design based on a standard building I think that the best idea for the future would be to design and build office spaces with the use of the space in mind.
My idea is that a large building envelope would be built initially and then smaller units, designed for specific uses would be placed inside creating an internal "outside" space with internal spaces within this.
This "work village" could house several businesses with private work areas and communal areas for cooking and eating and relaxing.

Here are two examples of how this could work. The colours are as follows:

Large meeting room

Small meeting room

Individual meeting room

Kitchen & dining

informal meeting area

Relaxation area

Work area

Games room

Quiet work area

Dividing Screens

I have been thinking of ways to provide division within my space to stop distraction without causing complete separation.

I saw these perforated screens which were part of the UK Pavillion at Aichi expo in japan in 2005 (link) and I liked the use of a gradient of pattern to produce different layers of transparency.

My idea is to use strong paper screens in between the desks cut at a gradient opposite to the one above (most dense paper at the bottom, most dense holes at the top) which will allow for privacy when sitting working but will allow sight lines across the room when standing.

I would also use rotatable multi coloured tube lights to project light up onto the screen from desk level. This means that these dividing screens will be the colour of choice of the person working at each desk.

Here is a rough model I made to demonstrate the idea.

Building Model

I made a basic model of my building out of card to help me to understand the internal spaces when I'm designing.

I have not yet added any of the glass walls. I will do this when I buy some acetate.

Pressure Sensitive Floor

These floor tiles contain a layer of liquid (or two non-mixing liquids in some cases) which respond when people walk over them.
http://blabitalia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/b-surfaces_brochure.pdf

This video shows a single colour version in use http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnjRG7QO2aY&feature=related
I think this would be great to have in the circulation areas of my design to add some playfulness to getting from one place to another.

Touch Sensitive Tiles

I found these tiles today which respond to temperature and change colour.
I would like to use them in my project for the tables in the informal meeting areas and social areas.
They will create a talking point and fun activity.
http://www.movingcolor.net/products_touch_sensitive.html

Also just out of interest watch the gif on this page showing similar tiles being used in a shower! http://www.movingcolor.net/products_northern.html

Personalised Work Space

Here is a set of examples showing a system I plan to use of projections of images onto desks (similar to Inamo Restaurant but projected onto a translucent surface from underneath rather than above). I also want to show that choosing seating furniture is also important.

What Is Work 2

Updated version of this diagram.
I think this one is clearer and more immediate.

Sick Days

I read this article today: Link

Which contains this quote which I find very interesting in support of better office philosophy and environments:

“40% of incapacity benefits (the biggest source) attributed to mental ill health and stress. Indeed, the 2009 Boorman review for the NHS into health and wellbeing indicated savings of over £555m could be made from reduced sickness absence if healthier work environments were created."

Capitalism and Abraham Maslow

I've been reading this book about capitalism in relation to my project. Particularly the chapter "Capitalism and Human Happiness" which discusses whether a world where the purpose of our lives is often to make money can really make us happy.
It discusses the problems with this, in particular that once you make enough money to feed yourself you then want to make enough to clothe yourself and you no longer appreciate being able to eat...etc.
The author then refers to Abraham Maslow's pyramid of human needs.

http://www.timlebon.com/maslow.htm
This shows the different levels of need and how we progress from the bottom to the top and cannot move onto the next level unless the current one is fulfilled (eg: you are unlikely to worry about what people think of your outfit if you are starving).
This is interesting when looking at the workplace, as the ultimate goal of work is to use our full creative and intellectual potential, however we are often denied basic needs within the work place.
In summary, if a workplace is too cold/hot, or if we do not feel we have friends within the workplace, or our worth is not recognised, we cannot reach our full capacity of productivity.

Who Uses Which Spaces

I made this diagram to show which kinds of people use which spaces in an office. This will help to explain the kind of atmosphere each space should have.

Attitudes

This is an updated version of this diagram showing attitudes in the workplace of the past and future.

Balance - Amended

I think this diagram describes better what I was trying to say with my previous "balance" diagram.

The purpose of this is to show that to achieve a successful environment there must  be a balance between utilitarian and personal qualities, between functional and comfortable.

How Offices Work

I have taken the example of journalism to create this diagram which maps out the communication and exchange between departments and categories.

The purpose of this is to show how important communication between departments is, as well as within them. It also shows how the company might be structured.

Balance

I made this diagram to try to show how a balance between factors will produce the most successful workplace environment.

*Edit: see this post for updated version

What Is Work?

I made this diagram to try to explain people's motivations for doing the job they do.

The purpose of this is to show that people have many different reasons for working and that these reasons lead to different attitudes.

Workplace Philosophy

In Alain De Botton's book "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" he talks about changing attitudes towards work.
In Aristotle's time he believed that work was for slaves and animals and that the only way to live a higher level of life was not to work and to spend time on leisure activities such as enjoying music and literature.
Later Diderot and D'Alembert described how only true life satisfaction can come from earning a living and that work and productivity will give a person pride in their achievements which leads to a much richer life than a life of leisure and self indulgence.
I have tried to show these two attitudes manifested in different work ethics of 1) The Boss 2) The Employee and 3) The General Attitude.

*Edit: Updated diagram here

Survey Results So Far

Here are the results to my survey so far. I've had 21 people complete it and have picked 9 to concentrate on here to show the variety in needs between the different office types.

I hope that this diagram will make it easy to quickly see the types of spaces needed for the different types of office spaces.
The idea is that companies would list all the types of spaces they need and number them in a similar way to show how important they are. In this way I, as the designer, can decide how to allocate space.

Final Stage: Office Areas Survey

To start the final stage of the MA I made a new survey to find out what kinds of areas within an office space are most important to different professions. The survey can be found here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QW8C2SM
I hope to make a diagram like the one below to show the importance of each space to each type of company.

I hope that in this way the results will be visual and easily read. I will also make a pie chart or cumulative bar chart for each to show how important each is as a fraction of the whole.

Canvaro Flexible Desks

I have been researching office features which allow flexible space which the worker has control over. I found these desks which are height adjustable so that workers of different heights can sit comfortably and can also stand to work if they want to.

I think this is such an excellent idea, as sitting at a desk all day can cause back pain and bad circulation - being able to stand to work for even just an hour twice a day would really help.

The height range (shown in green) is 720 - 1200mm

Model of building

I've been working on a 3D model of my building in its current state. I built it on sketchup and rendered it in 3DS Max. I will apply the textures later, for now I just wanted a simple model to show volume and layout.

New Building

After a meeting with my tutor I realised that picking the most horrible building around for my site wasn't the best plan because, although it gives me a totally blank canvas to work with it also means there is only a certain amount of potential to be drawn out and I feel I still wouldn't be totally happy with the result in the end.
For this reason I have picked a new building, one with a lot more potential. It is between Vauxhall and Kennington in London. Here it is:

I will do further site analysis and draw up more detailed plans based on the ones provided, then I can get to work on the beginnings of the design!