Courses:

For Whom the Workplace is Intended

This is an interdisciplinary workshop, not a design workshop in the ordinary sense. It is certainly intended for graduate students in architecture but also for students in the Center for Real Estate (CRE), and for students in other related disciplines, who are interested in getting the most out of the design process but are not themselves necessarily designers. The main qualification for taking part in the Workshop is an interest in, and an urgent desire to do something about, specifying the type, quality, image and performance of the new wave of speculative office buildings that will be needed in the next cycle of economic recovery.

The workshop will address an important part of the general question vigorously posed by Ada Louise Huxtable, the architectural critic of The Wall Street Journal in her 7 January 2003 article on the proposals for the redevelopment of Ground Zero: "However impressive the twin towers were in sunlight or moonlight, whatever symbolism is now falsely attached to them through a catastrophic act, do we really need to make the same mistakes again?" Behind this question lies Ms. Huxtable's sense that however brilliantly architects design, and whatever patterns of user demand are emerging, the constraints of the program for the WTC site, the inertia of unrealistic financial and political expectations will be very hard to overcome.

To a European architect like myself, living once again in the US after a thirty year gap, a more personal version of the same question occurs. I have experienced over the last three decades an extraordinary sequence of improvements and innovations in the design and specification of office buildings in London, Frankfurt, Stockholm and Paris. These new ideas are all responses to changes in economic, social and technological circumstances, e.g. the globalization of business, the democratization of organizational culture, responses to various energy and environmental crises, the growth of new professions such as Facilities Management and, above all, the massive impact of distributed information technology. It is amazing to observe how little the design of the US speculative office buildings seems to have changed in the same period. Can it be really true that nothing has changed here? Yet the same basic developmental model persists. The same office buildings are being built over and over again.

The questions the workshop will address are:

• What has and has not changed over the last three decades in the context of office development in the US?
• What are the causes of the apparent current lack of interest in product development and renewal in the office market in the US?
• What likely changes, e.g. in tenant and user demand, in business culture, in locational choice, in financial and funding practice, in leasing arrangements, in technology, in constructional technique, could justify and stimulate innovation?
• What commercial incentives would it take for developers to take advantage of such changes?
• What innovations in new building features, products and services for office development would be likely to result, especially if emerging user demand were to be taken seriously by suppliers?

There is no exam. Each student's work will be evaluated on

1. ongoing contributions to the workshop sessions including readings,
   
2. demonstrated ability to critically evaluate current development practice,
   
3. ability to explore how design can be a bridge between supply and demand issues and
   
4. imagination, initiative and practicality demonstrated at the final presentation in early May.

For the final session of the workshop each student (or pair of students) would be expected to develop a case for an innovative feature, product or service in the form of a presentation to an appropriate developer (such as Gerald Hines) or service provider (such as Regus). The presentation will include a market analysis, a thorough description (but not design) of the proposed feature, product or service supported by a well argued and coherent business case justifying the innovation. Since the presentations will be given at the last class before an invited audience consisting of notable figures in the office development world, student ideas will have to be cogent, realistic and well worked out to grab attention. The standard of presentation and argument will need to be equally professional.

The build up to the final presentation will be in the following stages:

• An exploration of the office development process as it is currently conducted in cities such as Boston and New York;
• An analysis of the reasons for the relatively conservative positions of developers and suppliers;
• An exploration of factors for change;
• The development of the presentations.

It has been proposed that the results of the workshop could be presented after the end of term to one of the property industry conventions, such as the Realcom event in Chicago. The decision whether to go ahead with this idea will be made early in the term.

Work may be presented by pairs of students, if there is a cogent reason, for example, a partnership between an Architectural student and a student in the Center for Real Estate.

• Understanding of an important field of architectural and commercial endeavour;
• An exploration of the relationship between design and emerging user requirements;
• Development of analytical and presentational skills;
• Contacts with a variety of visitors from within MIT and, more importantly perhaps, leading developers, brokers, product and service suppliers and architects;
• Insights into possible joint research projects to be conducted jointly by Architecture and CREE;
• Personal product development opportunities.

This workshop is the fourth of a series being conducted by Francis Duffy, visiting professor at MIT and founder of the international architectural and consulting practice, DEGW, which specializes in the design of working and learning environments that respond to changes in user demand.
 
Four initial public seminars (Spring 2001) set the scene for the three year series of workshops. The First Workshop (Fall 2001) examined innovation in the design of the workplace through a series of case studies. Interesting differences both in process and end product were recorded. The Second Workshop (Spring 2002) focussed on 'Missing Products' - the main task was for students to define and specify services and products for 'New Ways of Working' that are still missing from the catalogues of conventional suppliers of office products and real estate services. The Third Workshop (Fall 2002) was an evaluation of the performance of the newly renovated MIT Aero/Astro laboratory in relation to a series of very well defined pedagogical objectives. Each student created and tested a means of measuring an aspect of building performance.