C3 - ressources - prel. design

Teaching and Research Project
Groupware and Telecommunication
in A/E/C

BEYOND THE OPEN PLAN:NEW SPACE PLANNING CONCEPTS TO SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONAL, TECHNICAL AND ENVIROMENTAL CHARGE

Vivian Lofness, Volker Hartkopf, Susan Nurge, Derek Rubinoff

Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics

Carnegie Mellon University - Spring 1994

2. Cluster Open Plan

While open planning was becoming the norm in the U.S., the workers in Germany and the Quikborner Design Team had recognized the weaknesses of the vast open plan and the speculative/profit pressures that continued to reduce individual control and personalization with ever increasing acreage's of cubicles. Much of Europe and Scandinavia had already legislated against the deep floor plates, setting maximums of 20 feet (7 meters) from any workstation to a window wall, simultaneously setting maximums on workgroup densities.

The resulting open plan configurations might be labeled cluster open planning, housing from 7 to 35 people in a partitioned workstation configuration, with no individual more than one workstation away from a window. The cluster open plan places more emphasis on the scale and articulation of the floor plate to allow for more communicable workgroup sizes and increased contact with the natural environment.

Cluster open planning continues to offer the benefits of reconfigurability, as well as worker communication and interaction, while diminishing wayfinding concerns, acoustic concerns because there are fewer people overall, 'is well as the concerns about access to windows and views. Cluster open planning principles, combined with the right to windows and views for each office worker, has resulted in a resurgence of the articulated building in Europe, with significantly increased window area into outside gardens or internal atria (Figures 14a & I4b).

These articulated buildings have also led to a reconsideration of the massive central core feeding long horizontal runs of services. Most: cluster open plan buildings have distributed cores, with easily reconfigurable services fed directly to the individual workstation over short distances. What makes the renaissance of articulated buildings most viable today is the significant advances that have been made in enclosure systems. These advances translate heat loss , into energy – leading to efficient internal load balancing, solar gain into power generation, and glare into effective daylighting.

One of the advantages of planning clusters of a limited neighborhood of workstations with increased access to windows and cores, is the opportunity to vary the office configuration – from open plan, to shared closed offices, to fully closed offices – with adequate access to services and wayfinding. In the Ministry of Social Welfare and Employment in Amsterdam,-Herman Hertzberger designed multiple layout: alternatives for the neighborhood workgroups within the pods of the extensive, articulated Headquarters building (Figure 15).

3. Closed Offices

3.1 Individual Closed Offices

Individual closed offices, where individual workstations are fully defined by full height walls and doors, still remains the office choice of executives. These offices offer visual privacy, acoustic privacy and security, as well as the ability to individualize the furniture and arrangements of furniture to personal taste.

Closed offices are an indication of status and are typically serviced by individually controllable thermostats and lights, as well as windows with views and window controls. The level of user control and empowerment is very high. Though square footage can vary from a low of 60 square feet to a high of 500 square feet, the two corporate complaints about providing closed offices is the amount of space needed, and the possible isolation of workers that might result in poor communication.

Studies of productivity for concentrated individual work (such as research, writing and computer programming) indicate the highest performance in closed offices as compared to open plan workstations where disruption is much higher (Figure 16).

3.2 Shared Closed Offices Single occupancy offices are the most dominant form of closed office in the United States, typically housing executives, managers, directors or senior. researchers. In Europe, however, 2 to 4 person shared closed offices are frequently planned, for space savings, teaming of small workgroups, and for sharing equipment. Indeed the shared closed office is a dominant space planning strategy in Europe today. The new Daimler Benz headquarters building in Stuttgart-Mohringen creates small workgroups in shared closed offices. These shared offices are arranged along short: corridors that converge at nodal atrium areas, designed for improving inter – group communication and shared services (Figure 17).

3.3 The Combi Office A new variation on the closed office is the combi – office where individual closed offices are reduced in size to afford a greater number, frequency and type of shared work are is. One of the earliest and most successful examples of combi – office planning is the SAS Headquarters building in Stockholm (Figure 18).

SAS sought a new workplace design where the 1500 employees could interact spontaneously, crossing departmental boundaries. In this building, small individual closed offices open directly onto a wide street filled with a variety of interactive meeting spaces, shared equipment spaces, and relaxation/recreation spaces.

Each of the individual closed offices has natural daylight (a mandated standard in Scandinavia), operable windows, and individual control of light and temperature levels. The quality of work life in the SAS Headquarters is almost unsurpassed among corporate headquarters.

Siemens Headquarters in Munich, Germany also demonstrates the combi-office approach to space planning. In a building designed to be relatively narrow and long, small private offices line the perimeter but offer light to the shared work areas in the center through glass walls and doors (Figures 19a dc 19b).

Operable windows and blinds allow individual control over daylight and ventilation, and innovative Siemens track lighting allows focused high light levels in the shared areas. The central shared spaces are defined by thick movable partitions containing multi-media equipment, shelving for references, display boards, and interactive work tools.

The combi – office has also been successfully introduced In the United States. The Apple Research facility in Cupertino, California arranges numerous small closed offices around shared team work areas. Although the individual offices are small to free square footage for shared work areas, each office has a window and door, individually switchable lights and dedicate air. Workers in this facility claim that their teaming efforts are most effective because they also have individual workspaces to retreat to for concentrated work and production (Figures 20a & 20b).

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