| The Changing Workplace | |
Apple Computer's new research and development campus in Cupertino, California, integrates the diverse needs of the R&D engineers who are most productive when provided with discrete spaces for collaborative and individual work. 80% of the interior space is devoted to private offices, and 20% has been allocated for team activity. Located off circulation routes and directly outside private offices, these team spaces hold casually arranged furnishing, wich can be reconfigured by the staff as desired, and various communications media such as floor-to-ceiling white boards (2); more intimate meeting areas are located in private and shared offices (3) Another workplace Strategy is the nonterritorial office, where small workstations are used by a company's mobile staff as needed. However attractive as a means to cut corporate real estate costs, the relatively confined nonterritorial workspaces must be completed by other spatial amenities. For instance, Michael Brill of BOSTI designed a nonterritorial prototype for 67 satellite offices of a major office machine manufacturer; his proposal includes both small, nondedicated workplaces (called Phone Booths, Cockpits and Temporal offices) and more generous and comfortable common areas, outfitted with the range of office equipment found in airport buisness lounges. A third strategy, and one of the most radical, calls for the elimination of hierarchy-driven standard office planning. Chiat/Day, the ad agency that commissioned Frank Gehry to design its Santa Monica, California, headquarters has now brought in Lubowicki/Lanier to gut the regimented interiors and replace them with a "virtual agency" where creativity is best fostered by cross-fertilization: with no dedicated offices , the building, wired for all current and potential technologies, will house myriad team-oriented and common spaces; at the heart of the project is the club house with playful furnishings casually arranged for a free exchange of ideas This ad agency is known for its innovative planning in its offices. Their New York headquarter pushes the concept of nonterritorial offices a little further: the workers are given a table on rollers that they carry around the office wich is entirely wired and has outlets all around the place. This means they can bring their own "office" to a meeting in a common area and they can go to more seculed areas to work individually. An other interesting feature is their conferences rooms that has absolutely no furniture: you either bring your table or you stand up. It removes all the formality and hierarchy and encourages casual discussion.They even realized that meetings were more productive when standing up: meetings were shorter and more work was done in the same amount of time. |
1) Apple R&D campus,
bldg 1 2) 3) Chiat/Day offices, Santa
Monica nonterritorial prototype plan cockpit and temporal offices![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() use of mobile partitions![]() |
| retour vers précédents architecturaux | source: Progressive
Architecture vol. 75 # 3, mars 1994 & The Architect's Journal |