Meet the LEO A DALY team: honorable mention in the Office Building, Collaboration and Flex-Work categories.
Kristina Crawley, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP, Vice President, Global Commercial Practice Leader
Daniel Yudchitz, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP, Associate, Director of Design
Andrew Ransavage, Associate, Computer Animation Specialist
Check out their submission:
This is a theoretical project envisioned by the team.
When disruption is constant, design solutions must be pivot points, not end points. This is the key insight behind Fix-Activate-Calibrate-Tune (FACT), a workplace design framework focused on future management. In brief, FACT is a strategy for designing workplace environments that evolve continuously throughout their lifespan.
CHANGE: THE META-TREND: The last five years have been marked by constant social, technological and economic change. FACT is a meta-response to this meta-trend. THE PANDEMIC is a “point of no return” for many preexisting workplace trends, calling into question the validity of a consolidated, static office. HYBRIDITY has emerged as a post-vaccine strategy for retaining the workplace’s role in innovation and company culture. WELLNESS concerns are now transforming design trends and attitudes toward the workplace. TECHNOLOGY has introduced new ways of collaborating and challenged traditional notions of workplace planning and utilization. SOCIAL JUSTICE awareness has introduced new priorities for companies, creating a platform for change that will affect the future workplace. THE GENERATION GAP has created volatility in how office space is organized and used. Design elements valued by decision-makers today may lose relevance tomorrow.
WHY COME TO WORK? FACT begins by asking a fundamental question: “Why do we come to work?” Any effort to reinvent the workplace must at least provide unique value over the home office. In answer to this question, FACT offers three categories of space for use as programmable areas:
- LIVING ROOM – In a post-vaccine world, company cultures must be rebuilt. Living-Room-type spaces fill that need, providing common platforms for social and professional connectivity.
- LAB – In-person collaboration outperforms virtual connection when it comes to innovation. Lab-type spaces enable the energy and camaraderie needed to tackle creative challenges as a team.
- OFFICE – Privacy, confidentiality, and heads-down focus remain crucial and often unavailable in a home-office setting. Office-type spaces facilitate intense creative focus, task-driven work, and sensitive conversations.
THE CONTINUUM OF FLEXIBILITY FACT distributes these programmable area types across a Continuum of Flexibility comprised of Fixed, Calibration and Tunable elements. FIXED elements, like MEP systems and heavy equipment, cannot be easily moved, but set the stage for the flexibility that surrounds them. CALIBRATION elements, like demountable walls, workstations, casework, Zoom pods, and tech installations, are semi-fixed for ease of renovation. TUNABLE elements, like furniture, deployable toolboxes, fabric dividers, dynamic acoustic fixtures and digital displays, can be easily reconfigured by the user – daily, hourly, on a whim.
Living Room, Lab and Office spaces are deployed along the continuum, not as individual rooms, but as swappable pieces of an overall mosaic of space. Their proportions are chosen during initial planning, but their tactical expression and specific use remain fluid throughout the life of the space. Why FACT? FACT formalizes a spatial strategy for dealing with change. For owners, it offers a comprehensible method of planning, programming and reallocating space over time. For employees, FACT provides a compelling reason to return to the office, a healthy environment while there, and an asset for connection, innovation and execution.
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To celebrate their win, we connected with the team to see how their idea evolved since it was submitted.
“The premise of our submission centers on change and anticipating the need for the workplace to flex and adapt due to changing environments. As we approach fall and the rising delta variant infections, we anticipate the type of modular design outlined in our submission to evolve to accommodate decreased capacity and act as a resource for a company, with a stronger focus on short collaborations, meetings and fewer full-day or fuller capacity requirements.
As we have been navigating a changing deliberate return to the workplace, we are starting to live in this hybrid space. With some employees remote and some in the office, the importance of acoustics and hybrid connectivity between people in the office and remote have emerged as key design drivers that we are continuing to develop. We are investigating ways to further refine acoustic and technology performance, while maintaining the flexibility of a kinetic kit of parts.
We have expanded our thinking about the ever-changing workplace to an understanding of larger ecosystems at the scale of a building, city or region and how the concepts of tuning and recalibration can be applied in other contexts.”
Comments from the Jury:
I love the thought and Innovation that this project shows.
I definitely think it makes sense, especially for the building industry to consider, when we’re in a position where people don’t necessarily know what the future of office is going to be in a year, or a year and a half and it allows a company to be able to adapt and change as needed.
🏆 Did this submission earn your vote? Vote for the People’s Choice award here! 🏆
Voting ends September 24th – one vote per person.
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