The study of nature – of which humans are a part – is the study of change. It’s not only the shark that must keep moving in order to survive, it is every living and non-living thing in the universe. Much of the most meaningful change, from the cellular changes in all living things to the rotation of the Earth on its axis and around the sun, we don’t notice all that much, except on a macro level: we see cuts healing, the change of day to night and the various seasons, etc.
For centuries scientists of all types have been deeply engrossed in the study of these changes. Yet, on an immediate level for us, the study of changes in our work environment is only beginning. It is almost embarrassing to admit that much of the population in our country still believes that interior design is nothing more than decoration (not to disparage the work of decorators and their often beautiful creations). Since the 1960s, however, Environmental Impact Assessments have become important in connection with many projects affecting the general environment. This is the inevitable and obvious acknowledgement that we are not separate from the environment, i.e., nature influences in a major way what we are and will become, and that what we build has an impact on nature.
It is a happy surprise then, that interior designers are increasingly attempting to assess the impact of their designs on the related people and activities – most particularly in specialized environments such as healthcare settings, the workplace and residences for vulnerable or challenged populations. In these settings, the idea of progress in molding interior environments takes its rightful place. The interior design profession knows this, as promises of increased wellbeing and workplace productivity are commonly featured in marketing efforts, both from interior designers and contract furniture manufacturers.
One essential element of progress is the expectation that insights and desired results will be shared and authenticated through duplication. Over the past decade or two, interior designers and contract furniture manufacturers have been much more forthcoming about the effects of their goods and services in workplace design. The series of presentations at NeoCon by Gensler Houston, tracking major themes in office design, has been a consistent thread. This effort has been led by Dean Strombom and Sven Govaars who, from 2011 – 2016 have given a series of NeoCon presentations tracing their evolving thinking.
Now as everyone gets geared up for NeoCon 2017, including Messrs. Strombom and Govaars for presentation number seven, a cursory review of their first six presentations might help assess some aspects of progress in the workplace. (As an interesting side note, it was the humanists in the 14th century who brought the idea of progress firmly into Western Culture; an idea later picked up and immeasurably exploited by the scientific community. The leader of the “progress” movement, the Italian poet Petrarch, proclaimed that, in an effort to surpass the literary greatness of ancient Greece and Rome, one must first reacquire the learning of the past.)
In chronological order, then, the Strombom/Govaars presentations evince a shifting of the focal point in workplace design, primarily from space utilization and cost, at the beginning, to people and their activities and, in particular, employee engagement and experience at the present time:
2011 – Space Optimization for the Way We Work: A consideration of the “connection between space optimization, the way we work and business performance.” The discussion addressed various means to “optimize” space, including space reduction and usage, in large part to reduce facilities costs.
2012 – You’re Not Listening – I Need an Office: Drawing on the Gensler Workplace Index, attention shifted from “place” to “people”; in sum, let place be formed around people and their activities rather than requiring people to adjust to a preset work environment. Here, the Gensler team invoked the work-zone idea, which comprises several activities: focus, learn, socialize, collaborate, restore.
2013 – Fracking Workplace – Optimizing Human Potential through Design: Continuing with the focus on people, the fracking concept was used to continue to separate “work” from “place” in viewing the workplace. This led to redirection of measurement, from the easily determined, but not necessarily critical, cost of space and furnishing to the more difficult-to-measure but centrally important factors such as productivity, employee attraction and retention, hours worked, and profitability. In connection with this, the Gensler team introduced software, the Gensler Calc, to help measure the positive impact of creating better workplaces.
2014 – Happiness by Design – A Capital Idea: The new year gave the folks at Gensler Houston a chance to eat their own dog food. They were re-designing the Houston office and decided that the research opportunity was too good to be missed. The office documented the experience at https://www.FlyonG6.com, setting up a chart to show the correlation between workplace design factors and their influence on physical, emotional, cognitive health. An important lesson: the central importance of change management to smooth the path to a new way of working and shaping perceptions of what the changes mean personally and for the company.
2015 – Vuja De – The Disruptive Workplace: This was a consideration of the effects of disrupting traditional office design ideas by giving workers choice and control over where, when and how they work. Change management is an important factor, but here, acceptance of change is facilitated by the suggestion that opportunity is being provided rather than things being taken away. Employee self-respect is enhanced as management trusts employees to determine how and where to be more productive and to find better wellbeing for themselves.
A revolution may be the result of new behaviors, but there is no doubt that new tools resulting from techno-science developments lead to new ideas and new behaviors.
2016 – Free Range Workspace – People – Experience – Freedom: Free range means the ability “to move toward our most productive settings and to move toward the settings that make us feel better when we are working.” The shift is from “Where is my desk?” to “My desk can be wherever I want it to be for this moment or for the day.”
Of course, Gensler Houston is not the only source of information sharing. Indeed, since Herman Miller perceptively reckoned that the “systems” ideas developed by Robert Probst in the 1960s had to be accepted by other manufacturers in order to encourage client adoption, the proprietary grasping of knowledge has loosened considerably. That’s a very good thing since organizational facility managers put a lot at risk – as well as make their work more difficult – by adopting new and untested workplace designs and non-standardized furnishings.
Many will recognize that the idea of an open office was not an invention of the late 20th or early 21st centuries. In fact, the open office, with a few closed offices, was the norm throughout the “white-coliar” period before the systems concept was introduced, the difference being that in the most recent versions, the old rank and file arrangement was greatly relaxed and, often, members of the C-Suite joined fellow workers in the open spaces.
One might also wonder why the Free-Range Concept was not adopted much earlier on. After all, the rank and file of military units on parade readily gave way to a free-flowing non-uniform approach when in action. In each case, however, the formation was suitable for the activity in question.
However obvious the idea that workers should be able to choose where and how they work, there are many reasons, mostly technological, for why this type of design was not adopted earlier. First, there was a general feeling that the highly structured early 20th century Tayloristic time-and-motion approach was the way to efficiency, the same type of thinking that gave rise to the successful (for the time) idea of vehicle assembly lines.
Next, the evolution that gave rise to the office professional was accompanied by a gradual shift in the regard for the individual and his/her competence and dedication. Through this very significant psychological shift, the necessity of maintaining organizational control and intra-organization communication was, and continues to be, an important theme. In this regard, the development of techno-science, wireless communications, portable computing devices with remote information access along with software for tracking personnel and furnishings inventory have played vital roles. Only in the past couple of decades have wireless intra-organizational communications been fully accepted, only now to be challenged by software hackers and cyber pirates.
In passing, we also note that concepts of space utilization and attendant design responses have gained acceptance in no small part through technology such as Steelcase’s Room Wizard and similar developments and, in fact, have been one response to recessionary times.
Through all of this we see the ascendancy of science and statistics over an area too long dominated by impressionistic aesthetics and related forms of “creativity.” One of the heartening and promising aspects of the Strombom/Govaars work is that while both gentlemen have architecture degrees, Mr. Strombom is a design leader and Mr. Govaars focuses on workplace strategy and the very important area of change management. In addition, their work has been to plumb the data collected by the Gensler Workplace Survey, a project that continues to grow and inform the Gensler work. Notably, data does not explain itself. Data must be organized to become information, which then must be interpreted to become knowledge. Often, it takes months, even years, to understand what a data-set means.
Statistics is an essential aspect of their work and will provide a firmer foundation for interior design and interior designers who become familiar with its nature. It is not necessary that interior designers know how to compute standard deviations or to do a Bayesian analysis, but they will have to know what these measures signify.
Moreover, without some knowledge of statistics, designers are wandering in a foreign land without a compass. To prove progress is to be able to measure the results of one’s work. Designers must be in a position to respond intelligently to questions about measuring results and must be keenly aware that life is stochastic, not deterministic. Among other things, this means that statistics measure populations, not individuals within populations. This means that improvement is measured by comparing differences relative to a base and on a recurring basis…meaning that results will always be affected by environmental changes, responding to variables running from economic epochs to management changes.
Designers need not fear that an increased emphasis on data will negate the value of their aesthetic creations. On the contrary, appropriate data will transform the idea of aesthetics from mere “decoration” to a very purposeful aspect of any interior design. Yes, the effect of aesthetics can be measured too, as colors, forms, natural scenes (including visible natural environments) and lighting effects are varied.
It has been my long-time contention that interior design is one of the most challenging of the design professions; one that is in its formative stage. It is impossible for any interior designer to be fluent in all the knowledge areas necessary to optimize the workplace, especially now that the profession is becoming increasingly people-oriented.
Well, architecture and interior design have always been people-oriented, putting aside those structures designed to house animals. The difference now is that, at least with regard to interior design, the profession is becoming much more person oriented, and thus must take into account a plethora of individual characteristics and differences.
The Strombom/Govaars team has continued its work over the past year and are prepared for NeoCon 2017. This year’s presentation, Don’t Fence Me In – Smart Connected Buildings, Spaces, People, will focus on how organizations can create better work environments based on the new rules reflecting worker input. Employee engagement is a key factor in productivity, which appears to be improved by a fluid workplace in which employees decide for themselves where and how they will work. (For more background on the Gensler Houston work, go to http://freerangeworkspace.com, and enter the password: neocon2017)
The Strombom/Govaars work is hardly done and won’t be within the foreseeable future. The “Free-Range” concept is a natural gateway to systems thinking in workplace design. Over the past 50 years or so, chaos and complexity theory has brought a great deal of order to, well, apparent chaos. In addition, the related study of self-organizing behavior can be much better considered when employees are free to organize and as the technology for information bonds well supports the system not proximately joined.
Finally, as has been noted many times, workplace design does not stop at the building shell. One important element yet to be addressed by Strombom/Govaars is remote work, something that has become an important aspect of today’s workplace and has been greatly facilitated by technological developments. While many studies have supported the value of remote work, and recent technological developments, especially by Steelcase (see, Thunder), companies such as Yahoo and now IBM have brought or are now bringing remote workers back in to offices in order to stimulate communication and innovation. (See: Fast Company-IBM-Remote Work)
In both the Yahoo and IBM cases, management was/is faced with a need to turn-around their businesses. They did/are doing something dramatic; this is likely to produce positive and negative results in the short term. The effects in the long term and the wisdom of these moves have yet to be determined. For Yahoo, the move did not turn the company around, but in any event, results occurring in desperate circumstances do not easily translate to more normal times.
The idea of progress as an aspect of interior design is essential for the development of the field. Too often, novelty has been the measure of achievement rather than measurable effects. That makes the profession fun but does not enhance its promise nor promote its importance. There is no doubt that workplace design has made important progress over the past 50 years. Measurable progress, however, is needed to put the interior design profession on an exponential growth path. Fortunately we see necessary elements being put in place.