a r r a n g e m e n t
The office proper -- the workplace -- is a stacking of six identical floors. These floors are large uncluttered areas without any permanent impediments (structural, mechanical, or electrical).These floors are "generic": there are no provision made for corner office, perimeter office, or back office. They are as effective for operation of one gigantic department or many small ones. They are adaptable for any task-oriented "temporary department" on-demand.
They are capable to stage all kinds of imaginable office ideologies from the totally open office landscape (burolandschaft) to the totally enclosed office cells.
Each floor can absorbed interior space-planners' latest dreams (and nightmares) -- the continually changing business "processes" -- from gridded "ice cubes," random cubicles, luxury workstations, organic desks, reconfigurable furnitures; "teaming" rooms," "common areas," "villages" and "neighborhoods"; radiating plan, point-grids, parallel strips, haptic landscape, chaos theory etc. etc.
perimeter core
All service cores -- escalators, elevators, restrooms, mechanical shafts, electrical storages -- stand outside the office floors. They are not, however, "disengaged" from the office floors. On the contrary, the circulation and service cores are "juxtaposed" against the workspaces by "colliding" or "detaching" them, and by locating them to one side only, on the north-side of the floors.This arrangement allows both the office floors and the circulation/ service cores to have "equal" status (rather than "service" and "servant" spaces). After all, both volumes house "work" areas. The juxtaposition is intended to increase their exposure to each other.
The office floors are permanently "exposed" to circulation (and service) areas, and vice versa. Office floors' activities are clearly visible from the daily up-and-down, in-and-out movements of the people in the atrium. The workspaces are permanently being "gazed at" by circulation areas, as they are in turn gazing over the river at downwtown skyline on the south.
People movements -- as choreographed in the arrangement of the escalators -- are not strictly "functional" (i.e. always covering the shortest distance possible), but involve strategic "detours" to invite more greetings and meetings between travelers and locals. Transitory stop-overs, or break-areas: floor-kitchenettes/ cafes, are accordingly placed at these junctions, on direction or level changes and intersections.
Daily exposure, sightlines, visibility -- hence familiarity -- reduce division between floors and encourage impromptu contacts among ranks. These casual face-to-face contacts invite candid interchanges, open free-flow of communication, creative sharing of ideas.
smart-plan
For office floors to remain flexible, "smart" building services are required and appropriately deployed. Perimeter core is the first step. Plenum floor is the second: tempered air, electricity, and information bits come to the workspace from below, through raised-floors, directly to the "human zone" -- the precise location where they are needed most.Both of these steps "free" the floors to be occupied in any configuration. The services can be replaced and or modified at will to suit any particular office arrangement. The control of these services can also be tailored according to their use: personally, section-by-section, floor-by-floor and so on.
Generic, large, tall, light, and airy, these flexible lofts -- "K-Mart on computer floors" -- are perhaps the sensible office of today.
Smart plan is unpredictable plan.
© 1996, 1997 Agus Rusli / Rusli Associates
. . . next : curtainwall/ drawing-list -- text: non-hierarchical skin
. . . back to site/ building organization -- text: linear volumes, extruded zones
. . . skyline-silhouette -- text: discontinuous urbanism
. . . floor plan, section
. . . atrium, core-building
. . . building's north-west profile
. . . ALCOA contents-page