Office buildings need to be driven differently to perform better in the 21st century!

Aashish Karode, Architect, Urban Designer, 
Principal Design and Planning Services
Design Atelier Architects

Design isn’t only about making things look pretty! Instead design is a way of thinking - of user centered principles, of determining people’s true, underlying needs and delivering features, products and services that help create great longevity and meaning, and help people have a great experience! Design combines an understanding of people, technology, society and business. To make a difference, today’s buildings and workplaces must promote workforce productivity while operating efficiently with regard to water, energy, and recycling, in addition to being user/people-centred.

When people refer to design as if it were decoration, I feel offended. I resent it when architects working on Interiors are sometimes called decorators. This is a problem for me not because decorators are “lesser” professionals, but really because the idea of reduction of the design discipline, to mere decoration is troubling because it diminishes my ambition for all that projects can be with applied design thinking. This is also disturbing because so little is known about what design actually is or can be. The production of small beautiful objects is only a small component of modern design; to me the idea that design be driven only/mainly by ideas of style and appearance at the expense of understandability, of control, of pleasure, of usage, is to give up invoking a truly powerful design ambition to be influential in making a real difference. To convey that a designer’s sole aim is to make things beautiful, or to make things cheap, or easy to produce is to forget to make things functional and responsive, aiding understandability or ensuring ease of use.

Designers today work on problems like design of cities, or solutions to healthcare or transportation systems. The main, fundamental, and well established principles of good design like visible innovation, environmental responsibility and economic responsiveness through strategies for energy renewability and sustainability. Also aesthetic principles like clarity, depth, scale proportion, emphasis, contrast, and discoverability, where it is always possible to discover what selection of actions are possible and what their selection would result in. There can be so many experiential dimensions that drive design and its technology to serve the most important priorities of performance. These principles are almost always common sense and experimental sciences have opened up the power of testing ease of use, like in the world of computing and now in the post Apple universe, the whole world should know and have an appreciation for what design is and what it can do.

Historically, office buildings had one business objective: to be built and run as economically as possible. While value remains important, tenants and owners alike have begun to demand flexible office buildings that address a wider range of performance drivers and even organizational or business objectives. This shift in thinking has added new demands to the design and development of office buildings, and the demands continue to grow. Today’s buildings and workplaces must promote workforce productivity while operating efficiently with regard to water, energy, and recycling. They must convey corporate identity and promote employee well-being while respecting the bottom line by providing efficient and flexible spaces. Essentially, today’s office building must achieve exceedingly high levels of performance to be successful.

In office buildings, the user experience/user needs can broadly understood in 4 new driving categories that design must respond to.

Pride Drivers: A focus on development of an identifiable address, identity through signage and value added high quality architecture and construction, for example the creation of a great entrance experience adds great house pride, great security systems, reception systems and facilities, way finding signage and ease of user experience. Activity based settings and in premises universal access spaces (Cafes, People Places, Gardens, Landscapes security stations, pickup and drop off points, parking, safe driveways and pedestrian spaces) where clients consider the whole building experience as their own.

Environmental drivers: include a suite of factors like sustainable energy needs, carbon footprint, daylighting/natural lighting, renewable energy, high-performance building envelopes, climate and environmental mapping, and a focus on systems integration. Like renewability, innovative building technologies are to be looked into to affect the Indoor air quality in the context of an ever increasing urban air pollution.

Economic drivers: include a focus on operational or life-cycle building costs as well as continued attention to construction costs; an understanding of “next generation” tall buildings and the system thresholds that come into play for “super-tall” buildings; a need for flexible floor plates; a focus on development identity; and the value-add for high-quality architecture.

Work drivers: better work environments make happier people. The new work drivers include changing demographics, new ways of working, the rise of mobile working, new measurements of productivity and effectiveness, 21st-century amenities and expectations, and a focus on occupant experience and comfort with spaces and work areas tailored to the user needs.