The New Planning Paradigm

The New Planning Paradigm

Over the last few decades there has been constant rethinking and changes in the way offices are designed. The changes have been quite significantly affected by changing demographics, real estate trends, technology and the shrinking globe. Today, we are presenting the latest trends in this ever changing office design concept as seen through our eyes.

Today’s office looks different than ever before as it is a blend of the old and familiar with the new and ever changing. Today more than ever the need for flexible and chameleon office interior components are essential to prevent rapidly dated spaces. The need includes flexible furniture solutions which include space division, storage and worksurfaces that can easily morph aesthetically and functionally to cater to the new planning paradigms emerging continuously. The only constant we live with is change, change and more change.

Diverse Workforce
The North American workforce in the 60’s and 70’s was primarily White with businesses owned and operated and by White Anglo Saxon Protestants. Males dominated the workplace and women were still entering the workforce in junior roles. The inclusion of other ethnicities and cultures was limited and the needs of the workplace were quite unique. The workplace was one where clear, strong and harsh management methods were generally accepted and strict behavior was seen as strength.

The late 70’s and early 80’s saw the inclusion of Afro Americans into the workforce along with a growing Hispanic population in corporate America. However this was still restricted to start-up positions as opposed to senior management or ownership. The 80’s and 90’s showed the growth of the new business person; who was from all walks of life – they were women, Hispanics, afro Americans, Asian and the worker pool included all different backgrounds. The 2000’s are perhaps the most heterogeneous of all these, where no culture or ethnicity is seen as unique or an anomaly; rather capability rules growth and progress in today’s workplace. What that means to us in design today is that we have to consider all shapes, sizes and cultural preferences before proceeding with our design project.

Population Distribution
To further our discussion on the diverse workforce is this chart which depicts the population distribution in North America. There is an emergence of a huge and growing minority population which stands at 33% of the total population. Most of these ethnic populations are still homogenous and not mixing with other cultures; an aspect that will change over the next few decades. 45% of all the children under 5 years of age are today of a racial or ethnic minority group. This should give us a fair idea of what tomorrow’s office will look like. Long has this change taken which today includes the highest position in the US being represented by a minority – the President of the United States of America. Again this is a testament of the changing demographics and acceptance in a society not bound by the age old fallacies of race and culture, but by capability and the strength to persevere against all odds.

Real Estate Prices
Adam Smith’s theories on Capitalism stated that land was one of the greatest assets as it is a tangible and scarce resource. Unlike many other resources land is not infinite and possession of this resource is essential to build and lease as it will always increase in value decade after decade. We see the changing scenery of building design. The familiar large spaces and open areas of the past where Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie homes or Corbusier’s out of the box structures comes to mind. The endless interior spaces allowed designers to create pure timeless designs with no consideration to scarcity or function. It was a time when there were private offices for all staff even though it was dysfunctional because adjacencies were not worked out efficiently. This abundance and sheer perfection of architecture was a familiar site which slowly disappeared with escalating real estate prices in New York, Boston and other metropolitan cities. Knowing that interior real estate is extremely expensive and scarce, today when architects design structures, they have to be mindful of the amount of usable interior space their building design will generate. Open spaces around buildings in the large concrete downtown jungles is but a hope from the past. Designers struggle to balance open spaces for comfort with the compact interior spaces needed for today’s office.

Office Statistics
There has been a shift away from ownership as the way businesses operate to leasing becoming more and more popular. This is because real estate is impossible to afford in most prime downtown areas and rapidly changing economies do not confirm the status quo of the business entity. Growth and downsizing go hand in hand in today’s business environment and businesses need the flexibility of moving to larger or smaller spaces if need be. Thus, there is the emergence of leasing versus owning.

An emergence of suburban business areas is also becoming popular where workers need to drive to work and require large parking areas or the space needed is large to house large numbers of people or to attach an office to a manufacturing facility. For example, Inscape in Canada is situated 40 minutes north of downtown Toronto so that the corporate office can be attached to the large manufacturing plant. Office vacancy rates fluctuate depending on the economy, but all in all downtown cores are more populated as a percentage of available space than suburban areas. With increased environmental awareness and the desire to reduce our carbon footprint, there has been a shift to reducing travel to our places of work. Access to public transportation is increasing in importance as we see a move back to downtown cores in metropolitan areas.

Aging Infrastructure
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for North America is that most infrastructure related construction was done during the turn of the last century – late 1800’s to early 1900’s. The bridges, skyscrapers and technology are from a century ago and have started showing signs of aging and decay. The collapse of the Minneapolis Bridge for example was a testimony that the old infrastructure is now collapsing and we have to replace the old or remodel them to avoid the complete disintegration of our base communication channels. Can you imagine what happens when a primary bridge into a city such as New York or Washington, DC is closed and access to the city is stalled? Mass scale chaos such as this affects the movement of goods and services into and out from the city – causing inconvenience and interrupting the flow of business.

A chart showing bridges in the US reveals that 28% in California and 43% in Pennsylvania are classified as obsolete and structurally unsound and gives us an indication of the challenge ahead for our governments. The potential for large scale damage to property and lives is unimaginable and today’s designer has to keep in mind that we must plan keeping in mind that similar situations are faced by us within the aging buildings from the past as well.

The monumental landmark of the 1930’s with the competition of who will build the tallest and the grandest building of all was the talk of the city of New York. A city where the downtown high rise core seems to go on for miles was one of the largest centers that the business community has ever seen in its history. From skyscrapers to opera houses and churches and shopping plazas; New York is a city of dreams where people from all cultures, nationalities and backgrounds came to assimilate into this great melting pot. However today all these buildings pose widespread challenges to modern designers; dilapidated structures which are in need of serious repair, obsolete technology which does not allow for easy upgrades to today’s world and safety measures which were never designed for a turbulent and changing 21st century.

Technology
Perhaps the most rapid and significant change in planning spaces is the advent and metamorphosis of technology in the workplace. Imagine the design of old office workstations – they were designed to house rotary telephones and typewriters for administrative staff. Homes with cutting edge technology had record players which needed to be wound up for power similar to a clock. When you look at Frank Lloyd Wright’s desk design for the Johnson Wax building in the 1930’s, it was revolutionary with planes to house all the available technology in those days. A well thought of design which allowed space to house piles of paper and card indexes and the telephone and typewriter plus adequate storage at an arms distance.

Today’s technology is getting smaller and sleeker and more powerful and wireless. We can harness the strength of millions of typewriters in a small MacBook Air and a complete computer in an iPhone or Blackberry. What has this done to the design of workstations and interiors of spaces? No longer can separate layers be designed into the furniture because along with changing sizes and shapes of technology, fewer technology pieces can do the function of separate pieces of technology from the past.

Raised Floors, wireless, flat screen computer monitors are all instrumental in changing the design of the modern workstation and office interior. The workstation keeps getting smaller and smaller and from the days of the 14’x12’ private office we are down to 6x6 and 6x8 stations in an open setting with low dividers. When computers were not available, the desk design was rectangular with a return to house phones and typewriters; then came the CRT which started getting bigger and more powerful and the revolutionary design of the corner worksurface began. Almost every office had a single way of designing cube farms; a corner worksurface with two return worksurfaces with the worker always looking into the corner to allow for the extra depth needed by the CRT’s. Then came the flat-screen and here we are; back again to the rectangular desk with the side credenza of storage or a worksurface. All that was old is new again; only the interpretation is different. The private office with floor to ceiling walls was replaced with the 72” high cubicle with desks; the 64” high cubicle with a corner worksurface to today’s benches in which no visual or acoustic privacy exists.

The early days with no computers or a few PC’s has moved to the age of the LAN and WAN and the age of cables. Perhaps the most daunting job within an office interior became cable management and manufacturer after manufacturer of furniture and walls and storage looked at intelligent ways to manage data cables. The advent of systems furniture with AO1 was never an answer to modern technology; but a way to provide ergonomic solutions within a space with height adjustable components and then later answering the need for open office plan as designated by the Quick Borner Team. As the 80’s progressed, cables started getting more and more complicated to handle with connection of cable from each monitor to a central server and interference of data when electrical conduits were located close by. The Data room looked like a wire sculpture with a dizzy array of cables. Soon came the advent of the category cables with voice included with computers and the reduction in the number of cables required per person.

Perhaps the fastest growing awareness is seen in the environmental responsibility of individuals and corporations. From the age old reduce, reuse and recycle stems the new paradigm of regulation and finally, responsibility as the stakes of doing business. Building rating systems such as LEED have become popular in addition to product certification such as Cradle to Cradle which take manufacturing to the basic level of raw materials and their original sources. Also seen is the level of both awareness and action that workers are ready to undertake today, which is at record highs of 44.5% in a sample corporation. Ratings for corporations have become common place and that decides the customer’s persuasion to buy in one store over another.

Savvy marketers have long studied product life cycles and the need to enhance and upgrade products over time to keep them relevant. It also helped marketers to understand when a product underwent phases such as growth, maturity and decline and when the trigger needed to be pulled on a product and a new one was to be introduced. These phases are affected by changing technology and mostly customer preferences. Marketers today are however faced with shallow customer preferences that value products for short periods of time and want the next best thing immediately. For example furniture was a lifetime investment and many times passed down generations. Today within three years change is demanded because no longer is the current furniture trendy. Automobiles have a life of typically four years which is the life of the lease and then the user moves on to the next best automobile. Computers become more and more powerful each year and lower the unit costs and completely obsolete previous generations as older computers cannot cater to changes in programs and websites. Computers 10 years ago came with 20 GB hard drives and 128 MB RAM. Today 600 GB is standard with a 1 GB RAM. Playstation 1, 2, 3 and still more to come prove that gaming toys are a phenomenon of the future and is as prevalent in kids as in adults.

Branding has once again become instrumental to the success of companies with the advent of the Generation Y’s who are extremely brand conscious and will prefer one product over the other based on their perceived brand image. The Gen Y’s have led protected lives thanks to their Gen X parents who provided for their Gen Y children by sacrificing their own extravagances including purchasing branded products. New statistics show that households with Gen Y children spend more than ones without. Gen Y’s will spend more on image, quality and value for money than any of their previous generations by over 10%.

The working of multiple generations within the office causes great challenges and opportunities to today’s designer who has to design keeping in mind multiple preferences. For example needs for privacy while working are high when catering to boomers, less with Gen X’ers and low with Gen Y’s. This can be interpreted as private offices for boomers, cubicles 7’ high for Gen X’ers and 3.5’ high or benches for Gen Y”s. Yesterday’s office was more regimented and treated all workspaces as one size fits all versus today’s workstation design which is more dependent on corporate strategy and work needs for collaboration and teaming. Hotelling and office environments which feel more like home with a residential feel have become common and replace the formal and hierarchical office of the past. High real estate prices have led the cube to get smaller and smaller and the environmental regulations such as LEED drive the panel heights lower and lower. Today’s Gen Y’er of course grew up listening to music on an iPod while working on the internet and talking to a colleague about work related issues and is not distracted doing so in a low height environment. Within the next decades this generation and the Millenials will dominate the workplace and designers and manufacturers have to recognize these changes when thinking about new product development and innovation.

A comparison in the substance of each generation is explained in the chart by identifying them by age and name and mentioning specific identifiers such as Gen X’ers taking family and parenting seriously versus the baby boomer generation.

Just when we think that we have dealt with a lot of changes in the existing paradigm comes the issue of globalization which adds a complex mix of cultural differences to the equation. This starts with the issue of outsourcing from developed economies to developing ones mainly BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and growth of a service economy in developed countries. The result is the moving away of manufacturing from these developed countries such as United States, leaving behind an economy that starts experiencing job losses and finally a backlash against the lower priced developing country products. We can see this in the US where most manufacturing stared moving to BRIC and the service industry dominates the mix of industries providing employment. However the backlash is severe – the “Buy American products” motto is becoming prevalent and boycotting of overseas products as a way to attract back manufacturing and trying to eliminate the rust belts created by outsourcing strategies is gaining momentum.

Organizational structures have evolved over the decades. Organizations today need to manage knowledge workers who bring innovation to the table without having to go down a hierarchical model which was much slower to react than a flat or matrix structure. Organizations had up to 20 layers few years back to four or five levels today in order to effectively manage innovation and communication throughout the organization. This also prompts us in the direction of new environments wanting to be more collaborative and open to furniture solutions such as benching in order to improve the sharing of ideas and rapid innovation working in teams.

Uncertain future leads to the emergence of new thought provokers such as eastern sciences such as Feng-Shui and Vaastu. It also values the need to connect back to nature and emphasis on natural light and ventilation within a workplace. This is seen in the use of intelligent building technology which incorporates entry of lots of day lighting, as well as use of natural ventilation versus air conditioning to both cool and heat buildings.

In conclusion we realize that the office of today is undergoing a major metamorphosis and even though the elements represent connections to the past; the products are different and are designed to cater to evolving technology and user preferences. For example, a bench looks similar to office planning in the 60’s but with technology management and storage needs of the 2000’s. There is an emergence in non cube environments using storage as spines removing redundancies such as panels to carry technology and using electrified storage in its place. A small kit of parts to plan open and closed spaces with adequate access to technology and supporting changing user preferences has become the price of entry. Responsible design and an acceptance of diversity in the workplace open new avenues of creativity for designers. Timeless and bold architectural elements are becoming popular, old is new again and minimalism is core to good design. Let us learn from the past and respond to the future with better spaces and furniture solutions by moving towards the New Planning Paradigm.