Study of Environment, Department of Building Science, University of Liverpool, 19655 pp. 113-21.)
It seems then, that neither flexible partitions nor office landscape, really works. Neither creates space that is both well-adapted to specific work arrangements and truly flexible. A clue to an altogether different approach to flexibility comes from the fact that organizations which use converted houses as office space have no difficulty with this problem at all. Indeed, it appears that these old buildings actually provide more real flexibility than the apparent flexibility of modular partitioned offices. The reason is simple. In these old houses, there are many small rooms, a few large rooms, and many partially defined spaces, usually interconnected in a variety of ways.
Though these spaces were designed to support family life, they turn out also to support the natural structure of work groups: there are small spaces for private and half-private offices, slightly larger spaces for work groups of two to six, usually one space where up to 12 people can gather, and a commons centered around the kitchen and dining room. Furthermore, within each space there are usually a variety of walls, half-walls, window seats, which allow for changes within the rooms.
Although the u'alls cannot be moved at a moment’s notice—the house is genuinely adaptable. Changes in work groups can be made in a few minutes, at no cost, just by opening and closing doors. And the acoustic characteristics are excellent—since most of the walls are solid, often load-bearing walls.
It is occasionally possible to build an office or a workspace like
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a house—when you know enough about the working group ahead of time to base the mix of rooms and larger spaces on their specific nature. But, far more- often, tire work groups which will occupy the space are unknown at the time the space is built. In this case, no specific “house-like” design is possible. Instead, it is necessary to design and build a type of space which can gradually, and systematically, be turned into this needed house-like kind of space once it is occupied.
The kind of space which will create this possibility is not “warehouse” space or “office landscape” space but instead, a kind of space which contains the possibility that people need, in the form of columns and ceiling height variety, to encourage them to modify it as they use it. If there are columns, so placed, that a few partitions nailed to the columns will begin to form differentiations and rooms within rooms, then we can be sure that people will actually transform it to meet their needs once they begin to work there.
As far as the geometrical layout of the columns is concerned, we have found that it works best when there is essentially a central space—with aisles down the sides—and the possibility of forming the bays of the aisles into workspaces. The illustration below shows the general idea, together with the ways this pattern may be transformed after a few years.
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Of course, you can add rooms of different sizes and combine spaces to follow this general outline in an almost endless variety of ways. In one case they may be rather simple, with bays laid out in rows. In another case, the bays may twist and turn, with odd sized rooms and spaces in between. The details are irrelevant. What matters is the general position of the columns and, of course, the guarantee that they are placed in such a way that
BUILDINGS
there is plenty of natural light inside—light on two sides of EVERY ROOM (159).
Therefore:
Lay out the office space as wings of open space, with free standing columns around their edges, so they define halfprivate and common spaces opening into one another. Set down enough columns so that people can fill them in over the years, in many different ways—but always in a semipermanent fashion.
If you happen to know the working group before you build the space, then make it more like a house, more closely tailored to their needs. In either case, create a variety of space throughout the office—comparable in variety to the different sizes and kinds of space in a large old house.
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| possibility of many different sized rooms |
Light is critical. The bays of this kind of workspace must either be free-standing (so that there is light behind the alcoves), or the entire bay must be short enough to bring enough light in from the two ends—light on two sides of every room (159). Use CEILING HEIGHT VARIETY ( I 90) and COLUMN PLACES (226) to define the proper mix of possible spaces. Above all, lay the
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workspace out in such a way to make it possible for people to work in twos and threes, always with partial contact and partial privacy—small work groups (148) and half-private office (152). Place a welcoming reception area at the front—reception welcomes you (149); and in the common areas at the heart arrange a place where people can eat together, everyday—communal EATING (147). . . .
. . . according to the pattern city country fingers (3), there is a rather sharp division between city land and rural land. But at the ends of city fingers, where the country fingers open out, there is a need for an additional kind of structure. This structure has traditionally been the suburbs. But. . .
•$* 4$4
The suburb is an obsolete and contradictory form of human settlement.
Many people want to live in the country; and they also want to be close to a large city. But it is geometrically impossible to have thousands of small farms, within a few minutes of a major city center.
To live well in the country, you must have a reasonable piece of land of your own—large enough for horses, cows, chickens, an orchard—and you must have immediate access to continuous open countryside, as far as the eye can see. To have quick access to the city, you must live on a road, within a few minutes’ drive from city centers, and with a bus line outside your door.
It is possible to have both, by arranging country roads around large open squares of countryside or farmland, with houses closely packed along the road, but only one house deep. Lionel March lends support to this pattern in his paper, “Homes beyond the Fringe” (Land Use and Built Form Studies, Cambridge, England, 1968). March shows that such a pattern, fully developed, could work for millions of people even in a country as small and densely populated as England.
A “lace of country streets” contains square miles of open countryside, fast roads from the city at the edge of these square miles, houses clustered along the roads, and footpaths stretching out from the city, crisscrossing the countryside.
I. Square miles of open countryside We believe that one square mile is the smallest piece of open land which still maintains the integrity of the countryside. This figure is derived from the requirements of small farms, presented in the argument for CITY COUNTRY FINGERS (3).
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. . . this pattern helps complete all those human groups and institutions which have common areas at the heart (129) in them, and most of all it helps to complete workshops and offices and extended families—the family (75), self-governing workshops and offices (80). In all of them, the common area will draw its strength from the sharing of food and drink. This pattern defines it in detail, and shows also how it helps to generate a larger social order.