Architecture of Work

Cedric Price’s East London Fun Palace (top)
BIG and Heatherwick’s Google Campus proposal (bottom)

1. title
Architecture of Work

2. what
This thesis sought to question the typical design of the office tower in relationship to the changing context of the city, businesses, and the worker.

This thesis is looking into the new relationships between architecture and work culture in light of the current information revolution. The modern city have been built with clear zoning distinctions, from residential to commercial to industrial zones, whether if inherited from historical urban fabrics or from industrial revolution of the past century.

The rise of the information society have eroded these clear distinctions, as technology has surely been transforming the relationship between work and man. The technological trends of the 2000s have seen the culture of work transforming. With the virtual environment increasingly integrated with work (ie. Skype, virtual conferencing, etc), giving potential for workers to become nomadic and siteless, negating the ‘commute’ or ‘office’; thus decentralizing the city.

In contrary, giant companies such as Apple and Google sought to keep workers by providing all the necessary services within their company ‘campuses’ (ie. recreational activities, beds, restaurant, or even daycare), not unlike Cedric Price’s Fun Palace proposal though controlled by a corporate overlord.

Other workers are increasingly working freelance in adapted workspaces such as co-working spaces or cafes or re-adapted post-industrial buildings, in contrast to the typical corporate, hierarchical Grade A offices in CBD areas.

Much of the work for architects today is to design a tall iconic tower consisting of a core and maximized floor area (or perhaps with a commercial podium). However with the changing technological context of work, architects now have the opportunity to address these issues in other ways. This thesis sought to look at alternatives for architects to design for work.

3. why
This is a thesis that looks into questioning existing relationships regarding ‘work’, inwardly and outwardly.

A. Business and the City
The economy of the modern city is inevitably tied to their Central Business Districts or the ‘financial district’. Here lies a huge concentration of retail and office buildings, whereby the urban densities becomes the densest at such areas. White collar workers commute daily en masse during rush hour to congregate at these district, through the cities’ transportation infrastructures (often constructed to serve these districts), to begin their day of production at tall, large office buildings.
These districts because of their central location drives up land value and often drives the commercial developments of the city, generating much of production of new buildings in a city.
This is a developmental method that is ingrained in many modern city developments that works hand-in-hand with real estate, planning, zoning and infrastructure.
Many office building design is, thus, located within this context of the city and is designed under this developmental framework. Are there alternative urban models that can be pursue here?

B. Business Operations
The clientele the occupies offices are businesses. Businesses of various natures, sizes and operations utilize a floor/ a unit within offices to conduct their operations. Businesses’ goals are to turn in a profit from their activities. A study will be undertaken to best understand the specific needs (if any) that various businesses utilize office spaces.
Activities/ programmatic studies will be studied for businesses of various typologies: large corporate offices, small offices, co-working offices. Knowledge of how businesses operate will be conducive for designing.

C. Ethnography of the Worker
Though businesses are the ‘entities’ that occupy offices, the white collar worker ultimate inhabits and carries out the operations of the business. The worker will be examined in relationship to the physical and social life of the building. The worker is the enabler or the operator here (or cog in the machine). In contrary to the top down operational/ organizational understanding of the way in which the business occupies office buildings, a bottom up social/ humane analysis via the worker will provide an interesting counterpoint to understand the office building.

D. Future Trends of Work
The definition of business, the worker, and the work are constantly evolving with technological trends. The technological object have long been a contentious issue for corporate design and continues to be so as businesses evolves. The trend of automation will affect the workplace, perhaps even negating the worker, drastically cutting down the need for a workforce. Trajectories to the future will be explored here to speculate any potential impact to the current development/ organization framework of the office.

4. how
Through analysis of work in the context of the city, businesses, and the worker, modifications/ interventions will be introduced to rethink the office typology.

4.1 Research

1. Business and the City (L)
   1. Tertiary/ Quaternary sector for major developed countries
   2. Defining commercial zones that are embedded within cities

      Drawings: City mapping studies 

2. Ethnography of businesses (M)
   1. Business entities
      1. corporation
      2. limited company
   2. Startup entities
   3. Office operations in terms of different types of businesses
   4. Productivity principles
   5. Relationships between companies

      Drawings: Business production flowchart studies

3. Ethnography of workers (S)
   1. Working conditions
   2. Schedule (wake/ commute/ office space/ lunch time/ office space/ dinner time/ leisure space to offset effects
      1. relationship to infrastructure and peripheral units
   3. The telos of working in an office (office culture/ raison d’etre)
      1. alienation of labour
      2. relationships to fellow workers

         Drawings: Diagram studies 

4. Case Studies
   1. typology of office buildings
      1. BOMA: Class A, B C
      2. Real Estate/ Leasing, etc
   2. How, the different types of, companies inhabit these buildings?
      1. company compositions within towers
   3. typology of office units
   4. factory spaces
   5. co-working spaces
   6. corporate campus (https://www.architectural-review.com/archive/typology/typology-corporate-campus/)

      Drawings + Models: Typological Studies

5. Future trends in work, in automation
   1. technological automation
   2. computer, apps, automations ~ jobs, talents, lives
   3. Basic universal income
   4. The technological object in the workplace
   5. Planned obsolescence

      Modification of previous diagrams 

4.2 Design

1. Site analysis
   1. city analysis
   2. district analysis
   3. block analysis
   4. client analysis
2. Testing (informed by analysis)
   1. Massing studies
   2. Programmatic studies
   3. Operational studies

F. Annotated Bibliography

• Castells, Manuel. Networked Society
• Frampton, Kenneth. Labor, Work and Architecture
• Grey, Christopher and Jana Costas. Secrecy at Work: The Hidden Architecture of Organizational Life
• Harwood, John. The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945-1976
• Martin, Reinhold. The Organizational Complex
• Mills, Charles Wright. White Collar: The American Middle Classes

• Eisele, Johann and Ellen Kloft eds. High-rise manual : typology and design, construction and technology. Boston, MA: Birkhauser-Publishers for Architecture, 2003.