Studying the design of workplaces comes from focusing on the methods of the business, nature of the business, various practices and work of the business…and then there’s the actual look at the individual’s who make up the work team and how best they perform their work in any given business environment.
It is NOT a cookie cutter process. I have been watching the morph of open-office design. Mid-century modern approaches adopted these grand, open landscape layouts and then the pendulum swung and private offices were the thing to attract employees. We’ve seen Mad Men replicate this era and it prompted a sexy nostalgia for social scene depicted as the workplace norm. 
The era and advantages provided by the privacy in those private offices…..
Attracting employees is an art unto itself. Extracting their productivity, once you have them is next. But what is certain as the pendulum swings again is that what has been in recent years the seeming popularity of the open, group work areas, the lack of privacy intended to generate collaborative productivity. And inasmuch as there are bonafide circumstances and business environments which nurture and benefit from this design approach, the pendulum left so many business practices and employees out of the equation for success.
At the start of 2012 Susan Cane wrote a book titled QUIET. It discusses her observations and interpretations of introverts versus extroverts. It address many aspects of what this distinction is all about and the environments that encourage and those that intimidate or hamper productivity. These observations addressed personal issues such as self esteem as part of the recipe for success. But this blog is concerned with the reasons for certain physical design approaches in the workplace.
The emphasis has seemed to be upon pitting the opposing personalities against each other and directly or indirectly favoring the bold and unreserved extrovert over the meek and quiet introvert but it is not about that, the real design picture and life picture should be greater than that as there are many personality types that make-up an effective workforce.
Steelcase has identified a Privacy Crisis. They have performed studies to better understand the design of the workplace in its many iterations. I recently took a continuing education class addressing this very point and it was so interesting to apply recent observations in my own collection of design projects presenting some of these very issues. A credit to Steelcase for bringing this to the fore but funny how the pendulum has swung once again. True that as one of the leaders in office and specifically systems furniture, they have had ulterior motives in studying what the next “trend” will be.
Semi-privacy….work…study??? Cost.
It’s good business to create things that will attract buyers and users but I found that some of the cool little pods that are new to their collection are more fun than practical and the rationalizing by the sales staff is often humorous in their attempt to make it relevant, desirable, and necessary.
I do like the idea when design has a good functional function – and yet I am frivolous enough to LOVE design for design’s sake…but when it is SUPPOSSED to function – it makes me crazy when it is primarily if not entirely frivolous!!!! Get that? Now the BEST is frivolous that REALLY FUNCTIONS…ponder those examples…I will after I finish this!!!
I regress…my point here is to recognize the need to establish the balance between the collaborative design of an open team-thinking workplace with the need for privacy to focus, regroup and refresh. And in the case of certain very productive individuals, just get their work done.
I have two examples that in my own practice brought these issues to the design table. One was an accounting firm where conversations with clients about their financial dealings warranted privacy. Having a client later walk through the office and realize that some of their own conversations might have occurred in open areas where privacy was not respected would be a poor business decision and poor business practice. The second example was similarly based around client’s financial planning and preferences at a non-profit organization. An open area where discussions of an intimate and personal nature might take place would not be appropriate. Although at first glance the attraction of a common area where employees could enjoy each other’s camaraderie and interaction, it did not benefit their productivity nor did it benefit the end result which was the confidentiality of the client’s financial planning.
So, sometimes it is the nature of the work to be done. Sometimes it is the enhancement and facility of the team effort. Sometimes it is the style of the employee doing the work and their best environment for productivity. In the last instance for individual’s personal style of private productivity there are many considerations of interfering distractions… whether it be noise – some enhances the working environment and other distracts terribly – or movement and peripheral activity, distractions come in many forms.
Good design will always be sensitive…sensitive to the object of the design (client and sub-clients as in employees), context of neighboring elements, applicability and efficacy of the design for its intended purpose.
One thing Susan Cain said stands out, “The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting.”
It truly is a wonderment for all ages. This architecturally magnificent building designed in 1859 by James Renwick, in the then chic Parisian Second Empire Style, is the elegant backdrop for a most progressive and creative collection of present day modern artists’ works. Diverse examples, of spectacular displays using simple materials, brought to life in forms unexpected – of grand proportion and thrilling magnitude. Although my learned and previewer cousin had introduced me to the exhibit in advance, it captivated and engaged beyond my expectations.
The glitz and bling make such a striking, formal, contemporary statement in this expansive volume that it startles with joyful contrast. The artist, Leo Villareal of whom I had heard in advance, was originally from Albuquerque – where we now call home. A remote desert origination transplanted into the fast pace of the urban centers of the east coast resulting in this shiny experimentation with light, form and wonderfully reflective surfaces. Villareal melds basic high-tech coding to use his own algorithm of the binary system 1s and 0s communicating to the lights when to turn off and turn on – yet sequences that are never exactly repeated .
It’s not just your linear code of characters that is read on a screen – here it is an artistic experience shared by all who look up in this gallery’s exciting exhibit.
Large scaffolding at the end of the room suggests the manual installation that was required to suspend this wondrous drape catching light and glowing with golden aura. 
We were at once drawn into these cozy nurturing cubbies of what appeared to be nature – not forms created by man. Nature. Organic and raw, elegant and graceful winding toward the far reaches of the very high ceilings. Like a sculptor who says that the stone dictates what it wants to be and how he carves it – Dougherty knows that the long willow branches have a true will and bend their own way challenging him to work with them toward that goal of partnership with nature. The beauty is in the end result. People of all ages wandered in and out, peeking through window-like openings pretending to be exploring an enchanted forest of wonder.
Have you ever experienced Tent Rocks? 
Have you ever looked upward and around and through the magnificent forms created by nature eroding the earth’s strata revealing layers of color and creating spires of rocky towers? It is a magic land just south of Cochiti in a very unexpected pocket of nature’s magnificence in our Land of Enchantment. And the spires that artist Tara Donovan created with stacks of index cards – an overwhelming accumulation of millions of index cards suggest grey spires replicating nature’s wonders in the canyons among the spires of the Tent Rocks. 
It’s as though a photographer captured this natural formation in black and white. Donovan’s interpretations are tones of grey as a result of the stacked white index cards with slivers of shadow sucking away light in between each of them. Clustered and staggering in height, the “Untitled” towers are inviting to walk amidst and pass between, winding around them like a tourist or explorer or perhaps inhabitant in ages past and present as they have stood for ages.
How could a human working only by hand – without computer generated machines digitally fabricating such perfection create this finished piece that we are studying with such wonder? How can this fine tedious seemingly impossible count of thousands of threads be executed with such grandeur and grace by one mere mortal? 
The artist Gabriel Dawe transcends our ability to comprehend the exactness of his beautiful accomplishment with extraordinary patience, precision and creative foresight to imagine the end result and bring it to fruition. It is a wondrous, luminous sculpture of rainbow colored threads inspired by the skies of his native Mexico and current home in East Texas. The fine weavings also inspired by his Mexican heritage are interpreted, stretched and exaggerated here reflecting the light and spectrum of color from its base to ceiling. 
of grain and color just for the sake of design. Yay!!
However, while the wind wildly whips our towering 30 foot plus blue spruce tree and all the other new green growth from tentacles of wisteria vines to our precious peach tree and fragile red buds, we ascend to the kitchen and talk about building a fire.
the weekend of Matthew’s graduation from Stuart to little flowers and birds leftover from samples we commissioned for a donor wall at the Albuquerque Community Foundation by artist Meg Butler to chucks of Mexican Talavera and brilliant colors from other pieces and places the palette and random pattern began to take shape.
The characters have large saucer-like eyes belying their Japanese origin. Their story-lines appeal on many levels for all ages.
From over-sized dangling flowers to disco balls sparkling from the rafters, the place is alive with static animation. Well, monitors too airing the vary anime of this initial topic!
From beverage bottles to bears, pink kitties to hair and make-up lotions and potions, games and costumes – yes you too can dress-up like a bowl of Ramen Noodles or an egg yolk named Gudetama.
Thank you Katrink for this amazing experience we shared for your birthday!!!
Like reaching into a hole or looking into space, and not seeing the boundaries well. It s a brain thing. If the brain reads dark, it suggests a depth of space and therefore more than is really apparent. This is often used in ceiling treatments. Having a low ceiling appear higher, when painted dark, due to the illusion of depth.
