How Offices, Schools and Restaurants benefit from Urban Design insideBuildings
It has been said that Central Park is New York's "living room." New technology firms and 21st century schools compete in creating collaborative workplaces forming "neighborhoods" connected by "streets" leading to "commons" or "town squares." Flexibility and adaptability are king, blurring the lines made by walls until inside is out and outside is in. Nature is part of this game, first with buildings set in nature (the office park) and then with nature in buildings, like in the huge tent-like structure proposed by Bjarke Ingels (BIG) for Google in Mountainview.
It can be confusing to follow the many iterations of forms, from urban to suburban back to urban, from undesignated spaces to specialized spaces back to undesignated ones. Closed offices open up, then fill with cubicles, then become open offices again. We move from specialized classrooms to open classrooms, to flexible learning studios with moveable walls and learning streets. Houses with rooms along hallways become open plan houses, combine to form McMansions with some of both, then collapsing into all-in-one micro units.
What does it tell us about the state of society, technology, planning and design if we use urban design terms to describe interior space arrangements and room names to describe urban design?
This article is an attempt of getting to some of the bigger developments that are behind the relationships described above and the terms we use to describe them. There appears to be little literature on this except for what is written about office, residential or school design specifically. Thus, my explanations about the suspected cause and effect for this new terminology and its relationship to societal trends remain anecdotal, speculative and explorative.
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Uber design by SHoP Architects The building is designed as a kind of vertical city, divided into "neighborhoods" with a circulation spine on the Third Street side called "the Commons." [...] the idea is really that every neighborhood, every engineered neighborhood is connected to this interior street called the Commons." (Christopher Sharples, Principal SHoP Architects) |
The terms neighborhood, street, commons or community create associations with cities. When evoked to describe the insides of office complexes, malls, and schools, one can assume that cities, urban "place-making" and the interaction of citizens in the use of urban spaces is supposed to serve as a model for organizing buildings. What is it that makes it attractive to use urban planning terms for building design? What patterns and values encountered in the city do building designers aspire to?
In a time before the urban renaissance, workspace designers evoked the language of the outdoors, opened offices up to form "office landscapes" (Bürolandschaften).
You can thank the open office movement for starting that conversation, turning concepts such as collaboration and transparency into convention. But the new buzzwords on every workplace designer's tongue are incubation, cross-pollination, symbiosis and co-working--concepts that are causing even more walls to come down and hierarchies to flatten further. In today's parlance, the corner office is no longer seen as a prize. (Entrepreneur)The flattened hierarchies have especially attracted the new technology giants Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google and now Uber vying for the "creatives." The random gathering spaces with ping pong tables, date boards or pinball machines have become legend along with the talk at the water cooler. In fact, IT companies were invited when the Department of Defense convened thought leaders to brainstorm the elements of the "21st Century School". It was the leaders from Cisco and similar industries who brought their criteria for the modern workspace to education. Flexibility, connectivity, and collaboration are the buzzwords that went straight from their mouth into DoD's Ed specs for their many schools on military bases.
Formal and informal areas are accommodated— ranging from traditional whole class instruction, smaller group project areas, quiet areas, and a casual lounge environment. In addition, support for teachers is provided with staff planning, development and meeting areas. The focus of the Neighborhood spaces is to reinforce collaboration, and project‐based learning. Technology will be integrated throughout the spaces. A Neighborhood includes a hierarchy of different sizes of instructional spaces. The Learning Hub is sized for larger gatherings rather than one single class and is central to the Neighborhood. (Department of Defense school program)
Buildings reflect society, no doubt. Let's back up a bit.
Hard to imagine, but the intergenerational farm house with its separated place for the retired parent generation, its division between weekday areas and Sunday areas, and of course, a strict distinction between areas for farm owners and the people employed on the farm was once one of the prevailing forms of habitation. Cities existed but were small until industrialization brought about the mass production of tenements for industrial workers and their families that had flocked from the countryside into the industrial, overcrowded cities.
Then later with suburbia, the stream of people reversed once again until the lure of living in a green and quiet setting turned once rural areas into less and less appealing suburbia in which houses were designed around the stay home mom, the commuting dad, the car and the idea of the nuclear family with wet-bar that can occasionally entertain friends. Residences in suburbia turned outside in one could say. While the urban dwelling was a communicative building on the outside, sitting close to the street and to neighbors allowing frequent interaction in all directions, it emphasized privacy inside with its defined rooms which all had doors and were connected only by narrow hallways. By contrast, the suburban house opened up inside, eliminating walls and blurring boundaries that once were sacrosanct, like the separation between living room and kitchen until there was an almost open floorplan (except for the bedrooms). But the suburban house became non communicative on the outside: The front door was left merely as a symbol, displaced by an entry from the garage, the front porch was replaced by a rear patio, the distance to the neighbors grew and people watching turned into TV watching, first in the living room and then, even more secluded, in a media room in the basement replacing the social act of seeing a film in a movie house.
Finally, in its most recent turn, urban living has become all the rage again with loft housing, townhomes and penthouses. Even the traditional urban house has found a new life as an export article for new urbanist developments in suburbia, porch and all.
Schools, went through a similar cycle. Once the pride of urban communities, they degenerated to shadows of their former selves once they became suburban windowless one story rolled-out pancakes surrounded by acres of meadows, ballfields and parking. Suburban schools were far from being the centers of their community. Instead, they were located convenient for school buses in between towns or villages. But even though schools became more secluded and their architecture as featureless as dairy barns, they, too, opened up their interiors for the open classroom landscape under the premise of team teaching and exchange among classes and teachers. Today school programs in cities and in the suburbs or countryside employ versions of the "21st Century Learning" and use urban language to describe the relationships of their spaces.
We had touched already on the office building. It too had moved from a proud and ornate downtown
existence into isolated suburban office parks with no other access than by car. The office campuses have no relation to the street or even other nearby office "parks," yet inside, the formerly neatly divided office spaces with doors opened up into the already noted open plans and "office landscapes." Within this new adaptable environment, the cubicle was born. Supposedly a flexible and moveable innovation, it became a fixed staple that is just as stubborn as the four walls of the traditional office room. Today we read about the death of the suburban office park and observe how companies return to urban locations to offer their employees amenities and places to go to during lunch hour even though the interior of buildings now are described of having streets, commons and relaxation spaces.
The maybe biggest transformation occurred in retail. Urban mom and pop specialty stores often located below residences (mixed use!) experienced their first competition in the urban multi-story department stores of often extraordinary glorious design (Wanamaker in Philadelphia). But then, retail followed residences and workplaces to the suburbs and practically exploded across the landscapes to form what we now euphemistically call commercial corridors. The big bang in retail was so powerful that it hasn't come under control to this day although every American has more retail space available than any other citizen in this world. Of course, somewhat opulent malls notwithstanding, the standard model is the featureless architecture of the strip mall and the big box store. Inside, yes, yet again, open plans, flexibility and lately a pseudo urban shop within a shop concept that mimics main streets. Yep, here, too, the latest step is the renaissance of the urban store, the suburban retail wolf dressed in urban sheeps clothes. It is possible now to find multi-story Targets and Walmarts, sometimes even with offices or housing above.
As we have seen recently in my article about modernism, the aspirations that led to the American dispersal model were not only copied worldwide, they were not intended to be anti social. Quite to the contrary, the urban flight started with a social promise of a better life with cleaner air, more space and a healthier environment. It was only logical, then, that the dispersal model used the form code and stylistic language of modern ideas such as form following function and expressions of democracy on the outside through transparency (glass walls, picture windows and the like) and inside through the opening of walls, hierarchies and fixed arrangements in favor of openness and flexibility.
We know the failures now. The small modern nuclear family stuck in the suburban house produced unhappy green widows, alcoholism and a rapid decline in social capital. The escalation of the dispersal from the residence to everything else brought environmental degradation, traffic congestion, and non-sustainability to ever larger systems and on the flip-side, failing, and declining cities.
In the current and final stage of these spiraling movements it is urbanity we aspire to, even though to this day only a relatively small percentage of development actually occurs in cities. The cutting edge design of retail, housing, schools and offices, though, can be found in cities. But the architecture is far from reverting back to the urban hierarchical and closed arrangements of the interiors of the historic originals. Aspirations of the new urban architecture are still decidedly modern and democratic but more eclectic and diverse then in the original modern movement. Openness everywhere: Loft designs have occasionally opened even bedroom walls, at times the last bastion of seclusion, the bathroom, sees its walls made translucent so that light and sun is carried into the deepest corners. Offices have finally ditched the infamous cubicle allowing chance encounters beyond those at the water cooler. Urban retail may best be exemplified by the Apple Store: Ephemeral, high-end finishes, the product itself becoming an art object like in a museum.
The urban hipster restaurant is a place of openness as well, with hard surfaces all around and increasingly, the communal table as an expression of the sharing economy. Outside bike and car sharing, inside table sharing. Another manifestation of openness, chance interaction and the joy of the personal encounter, initially cherished by the designers of workplaces for creatives, is the ubiquitous trend towards outdoor eating spaces. No matter how narrow the sidewalk and how unforgiving the climate, Americans have discovered the joy of watching people while eating, something we have long admired in our favorite holiday destinations whether they are Barcelona, Paris or Miami Beach.
Maybe it is too audacious to arrive at sweeping conclusions after these observations. Let's try it anyway!
Open workplaces in a highly interactive and diverse setting, residences sprinkled into downtowns and formerly strict office districts, urban schools full of interaction with their surrounding communities, retail that celebrates service, the customer and the goods, restaurants in which we mingle, diversity in land uses, ethnic composition and income of neighborhoods, all that can only be good to re-build a stronger social capital (that according to "Bowling Alone" had nose dived not long ago). The more we get to know each other, the less fear, the more trust and the lesser the inclination to wall ourselves away. The aspirations for interaction, chance encounters, communication and unstructured exchange reflect how things get done now, in live, learn, work and play environments and the mesh up of all that we increasingly find.
Hard to imagine, but the intergenerational farm house with its separated place for the retired parent generation, its division between weekday areas and Sunday areas, and of course, a strict distinction between areas for farm owners and the people employed on the farm was once one of the prevailing forms of habitation. Cities existed but were small until industrialization brought about the mass production of tenements for industrial workers and their families that had flocked from the countryside into the industrial, overcrowded cities.
Then later with suburbia, the stream of people reversed once again until the lure of living in a green and quiet setting turned once rural areas into less and less appealing suburbia in which houses were designed around the stay home mom, the commuting dad, the car and the idea of the nuclear family with wet-bar that can occasionally entertain friends. Residences in suburbia turned outside in one could say. While the urban dwelling was a communicative building on the outside, sitting close to the street and to neighbors allowing frequent interaction in all directions, it emphasized privacy inside with its defined rooms which all had doors and were connected only by narrow hallways. By contrast, the suburban house opened up inside, eliminating walls and blurring boundaries that once were sacrosanct, like the separation between living room and kitchen until there was an almost open floorplan (except for the bedrooms). But the suburban house became non communicative on the outside: The front door was left merely as a symbol, displaced by an entry from the garage, the front porch was replaced by a rear patio, the distance to the neighbors grew and people watching turned into TV watching, first in the living room and then, even more secluded, in a media room in the basement replacing the social act of seeing a film in a movie house.
Finally, in its most recent turn, urban living has become all the rage again with loft housing, townhomes and penthouses. Even the traditional urban house has found a new life as an export article for new urbanist developments in suburbia, porch and all.
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| openness, flexibility, diversity in school design |
Schools, went through a similar cycle. Once the pride of urban communities, they degenerated to shadows of their former selves once they became suburban windowless one story rolled-out pancakes surrounded by acres of meadows, ballfields and parking. Suburban schools were far from being the centers of their community. Instead, they were located convenient for school buses in between towns or villages. But even though schools became more secluded and their architecture as featureless as dairy barns, they, too, opened up their interiors for the open classroom landscape under the premise of team teaching and exchange among classes and teachers. Today school programs in cities and in the suburbs or countryside employ versions of the "21st Century Learning" and use urban language to describe the relationships of their spaces.
We had touched already on the office building. It too had moved from a proud and ornate downtown
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| the office landscape (plan view) |
As we have seen recently in my article about modernism, the aspirations that led to the American dispersal model were not only copied worldwide, they were not intended to be anti social. Quite to the contrary, the urban flight started with a social promise of a better life with cleaner air, more space and a healthier environment. It was only logical, then, that the dispersal model used the form code and stylistic language of modern ideas such as form following function and expressions of democracy on the outside through transparency (glass walls, picture windows and the like) and inside through the opening of walls, hierarchies and fixed arrangements in favor of openness and flexibility.
We know the failures now. The small modern nuclear family stuck in the suburban house produced unhappy green widows, alcoholism and a rapid decline in social capital. The escalation of the dispersal from the residence to everything else brought environmental degradation, traffic congestion, and non-sustainability to ever larger systems and on the flip-side, failing, and declining cities.
In the current and final stage of these spiraling movements it is urbanity we aspire to, even though to this day only a relatively small percentage of development actually occurs in cities. The cutting edge design of retail, housing, schools and offices, though, can be found in cities. But the architecture is far from reverting back to the urban hierarchical and closed arrangements of the interiors of the historic originals. Aspirations of the new urban architecture are still decidedly modern and democratic but more eclectic and diverse then in the original modern movement. Openness everywhere: Loft designs have occasionally opened even bedroom walls, at times the last bastion of seclusion, the bathroom, sees its walls made translucent so that light and sun is carried into the deepest corners. Offices have finally ditched the infamous cubicle allowing chance encounters beyond those at the water cooler. Urban retail may best be exemplified by the Apple Store: Ephemeral, high-end finishes, the product itself becoming an art object like in a museum.
 |
| Share tables in modern restaurant (Denver) |
The urban hipster restaurant is a place of openness as well, with hard surfaces all around and increasingly, the communal table as an expression of the sharing economy. Outside bike and car sharing, inside table sharing. Another manifestation of openness, chance interaction and the joy of the personal encounter, initially cherished by the designers of workplaces for creatives, is the ubiquitous trend towards outdoor eating spaces. No matter how narrow the sidewalk and how unforgiving the climate, Americans have discovered the joy of watching people while eating, something we have long admired in our favorite holiday destinations whether they are Barcelona, Paris or Miami Beach.
Maybe it is too audacious to arrive at sweeping conclusions after these observations. Let's try it anyway!
Open workplaces in a highly interactive and diverse setting, residences sprinkled into downtowns and formerly strict office districts, urban schools full of interaction with their surrounding communities, retail that celebrates service, the customer and the goods, restaurants in which we mingle, diversity in land uses, ethnic composition and income of neighborhoods, all that can only be good to re-build a stronger social capital (that according to "Bowling Alone" had nose dived not long ago). The more we get to know each other, the less fear, the more trust and the lesser the inclination to wall ourselves away. The aspirations for interaction, chance encounters, communication and unstructured exchange reflect how things get done now, in live, learn, work and play environments and the mesh up of all that we increasingly find.
Moreover, the blurring of walls and boundaries, the diversity of uses, the flexibility of largely undefined spaces, all this foreshadows a future in which work leisure and living are not only spatially less compartmentalized and separated than today but may happen concurrent or in a much less neatly separated way than tradition described it.
There should be no complaint that the "zoning" of our life is ceding to "mixed use" just as the suburban single use succumbs to diverse urbanity and community. The strict separations of the 20th century industrial life did not only alienate people from work, from life and from each other, they were throughout history far from being the normal way of existence, nothing but a blip really. The "good life" is very much also the good city in which work and leisure, production and learning, enjoyment and sustenance all are close to each other and integrated. Diversity and integration are cherished instead of separation, segregation and exclusion.
Urban design and architecture are finally not only borrowing each others terms but the architectural aspirations of openness and flexibility, for a while seemingly incongruously placed into suburbia, are now returning to where urbanity should occur, to cities. It is, then, quite appropriate to describe the interior of buildings in design terms that express the virtues of the city.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
edited by Ben Groff, JD
Related articles on this blog:
From Quantity to Quality - Is Retail Coming Full Circle?
The (American) Office.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2014/04/how-modern-office-shapes-american-life/8871/
Buerolandschaft (History of the Office)
Learning Commons brings education into 21st century
Buerolandschaft (History of the Office)
Learning Commons brings education into 21st century
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