1Q 2010 Edition: The New Workplace

“Work”, as we know it, has become unfettered by time and place, spilling out of the 2-by-2 cubicle, the 5-day workweek. And so if tasks associated with work cannot be contained as before, this begs the question: what happens to the workplace? Should an office interior also feature a jogging track to burn off calories between meetings? Should we expect to see landscaped terraces spiralling up the office tower, a feature that was once the prerogative of resort architecture? Is the office chair better designed, more ergonomically sound, than the furniture at home?

The answer, optimistically, is, yes…sometimes.

In their reflections on the evolving workspace, guest writers Carlos Montana and Andrea Garcia examine how office interiors have evolved, inside-out, shaping and reshaping the meaning of “workspace”. Looking from outside-in, Calvin Low, in a second commentary, discovers that the office building has its own agenda. It wants to be a landmark, a corporate icon, a “tower of power”, as he calls it. The sad truth, he notes, is that not since Foster’s Commerzbank building in Frankfurt, completed in 1997, have we seen a step forward in the evolution of the office building.

There have been, however, some noteworthy experiments on adapting this typology to the tropics. Tan Beng Kiang revisits Menara UMNO by Malaysian architect, Ken Yeang, and its bioclimatic predecessor, the Mahaweli Building by Sri Lanka’s Geoffrey Bawa. Both buildings were crafted outside-in, with passive ventilation strategies for the office interior. Neither is used as designed; occupants decided that they needed air-conditioning, never mind that these buildings won accolades for being designed to do precisely the opposite.

Solaris in Singapore—also by Ken, also in tropical conditions—no longer tries to be fully ventilated, even though parts of the building’s interior are not air-conditioned. The SA Water Headquarters in Adelaide is another example of an office building that thinks and acts Green.

It could be argued though that the more sustainable approach is not to build anew; simply reuse an existing structure. This issue features several adaptive reuse projects—a church, a bank, a car park—retrofitted into stylish office interiors.

For a sneak peek of the 1Q 2010 issue, visit www.futurarc.com.