Office Building Scheme Analysis - Essay Example

Burolandschaft or “office landscape” was intended to enhance the flow of communication and making decisions. Organizations used free-standing panels that could be repositioned. The offices of the CIS building were the early examples of Burolandschaft in the UK. However, it was not adopted on a large scale.

Robert Probst of Herman Miller introduced the ‘Action Office’ system in the USA in 1964. The goal was to create a system that permitted employees to work sitting or standing and to provide them with display spaces for work in progress and with adequate storage facilities (Pulos, 1988: 338). Office furniture should be a help in promoting productivity and privacy in office organizations. The approach focused on sets of components designed to permit individual discretion in office design, assuming high levels of autonomy (Worthington, 1997: 29).

The British office situation bears little resemblance to that of the rest of Europe and the buildings have more in common with their counterparts across the Atlantic. The American influence of the British office design is to be expected, as a large number of American architects, space planners, and developers are working in the UK (van Meel, 2000: 57). The British office market adopted American-style deep office floors with air conditioning and raised floors. The plans tend to have central cores and all secondary functions are concentrated in a single core with vast areas of office space wrapped around it. They are believed to be cheaper to build and reflect the interest of the corporation for efficiency and flexibility. The open plan layouts have glazed partitions that are used for visual control, giving the managers the ability to see their employees. On the other hand, they reflect a very open management style.

The office design was changed forever when the personal computer was introduced in 1980. Orbit (Organisations, Buildings, and Information Technology) studies were done to respond to the demand for Information Technology. It explained the direct and indirect impact of Information Technology on office design.

The office building design is today a far more complex procedure than it used to be, and it will be more certainly complicated shortly (Burton, 2001: 7). Computer technologies affect the office building industries. As light affects mood, different lightning systems and equipment are installed in different locations, creating a flexible office environment. The shape of the interior spaces is also taken into consideration as the surfaces of buildings set the boundaries for sound. The shape of interior spaces and the texture of surfaces determine the pattern of sounds ray throughout the space (Clements-Croome, 2004: 59). Universal footprints that can be reconfigured to meet the needs of different work styles have been incorporated. In accommodating the relentless demands of technology, all offices started to look alike (Myerson and Ross, 2003: 9). Today, architects and designers are working on designs that will set some of the trends for the next 100 years.

There are several cases and studies about workplace designs that give importance to territorial values, supervisory cultures, and economies of scale. It is not that the office interior is on the way to becoming obsolete as it rarely betrayed the inner workings of the company.

The Narrative office projects commit to making the office environment a substantial tool in the business of brand differentiation. The spaces in which the employees work become prime platforms to communicate and represent brand values and are a way to banish the bland office interior.

The Nodal office is a response to the inflexible and isolating culture of the buildings as hierarchical places for work. It represents the logical conclusion of a technology-driven trend to liberate work from the workplace. The Nodal case studies describe imaginative new offices that provide a fixed point and offer a resource for networking, coaching, training, and sharing knowledge. The employees can communicate with each other without commuting to and from the office buildings at set hours and without physically connecting to the buildings by phone.