Description
We are used to seeing architecture as a series of objects, and discussing it in visual terms. However, architecture’s most far-reaching practical effects do not take place on the level of external appearances, but on the level of the space in which we give our material world form and character. Architecture structures the spatial system in which we live and move. In so doing, it is directly related to social behavior. Architecture supplies the preconditions for patterns of movement, of encounter and of avoidance. In this sense, architecture determines our day-to-day experience much more pervasively than one would think, judging by the way we concentrate primarily on its visual characteristics.
In this connection, in his 1992 book Liberation Management, Tom Peters stated that the management of space is perhaps the least noted – but the most effective – tool in bringing about cultural change, in accelerating innovation and promoting learning processes in widely dispersed organizations. While we plague ourselves interminably with questions relating, for example, to furnishing and equipment requirements for the office spaces allotted to staff occupying different positions, none of us pays any attention to the most strategically important question – the parameter relating to interpersonal contact.
How do spatial configurations initiate social behavior? Which spatial correspondences being about particular social or organizational realities? Every social and organizational reality has a spatial dimension, and every space or spatial configuration has a social, organizational dimension. One can see this very clearly in monasteries and convents. In the past, monasteries and convents were important centres of learning. The two parameters for intellectual activity are concentration and communication. In monasteries and convents, the spatial correspondences of these two behavioral types are translated into the cell for concentration and into the cloisters for communication. Even if our perception of a building is based on its external appearance, its materials and its proportions, we must never forget that all buildings come into being as a result of social behavior and subsequently initiate social behavior themselves.
If isolated production sites are no longer representative of the enterprises of today, since they are now profiling themselves as open centres of innovation, we have to react to this spatially. How does innovation arise? In a long-term study, Tom Allen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has established that 80% of all innovative thought results from personal communication. In business, it is therefore necessary to generate new knowledge from available information through direct communicative exchange. Particularly in view of the advances in the technical means of communication, the value of face-to-face communication is steadily increasing, and the parameters relating to coming into contact with each other are becoming ever more important. Konrad Lorenz once put it very graphically: “At best, information is the manure in which knowledge can grow.”
In today’s enterprise, we have to develop and design patterns of innovation, structures of knowledge, and organizational structures, and we must design the corresponding spatial configurations too, so that direct, face-to-face communication can take place between the right people at the right time. Wrongly designed or inappropriate spatial configurations create an obstacle to the desired social behavior.
The challenges that face us at present can no longer be solved by spheres of responsibility, but accountabilities, no longer by partitioning off, but by informing, no longer by information monopolies, but by flows of information, no longer by strict rules, but transparent control loops. In order to make this clearer, four corporate behaviors with their corresponding spatial dimensions can be described. Of course, these rarely appear in their pure form, but always more or less concurrently.
An Enterprise is not Functional Unless its Staff Talk to Each Other
The real quality and character of an enterprise or an organization is not the result of just the sum of the individual performances of its staff, but is determined by the degree to which it is interconnected, and the exchange of knowledge between staff and departments too. It is only when the enterprise manifests internal transparency that it can develop into a living organism that is capable of learning. However, this social behaviour must be defined and lived out. For this, hierarchical organizational models are certainly no longer suitable, for they are arranged so as to process predictable courses of events.
Enterprises that are capable of transformation and innovation are more likely to be organized in a network. In a network structure, the number of connections is much higher than the number of participants. To a very large extent, the free, direct, unplanned exchange of information is possible.
The different spatial dimensions of the two organizational forms, hierarchy and network, are significant: for a hierarchical arrangement, for example, the office organization of central corridor and individual offices is the right structure. Every employee performs his individual contribution in a Taylorist organization of division of labor. For a network, the spatial correspondence is the form of the combination office, for example, the non-territorial office, or the group room. Here free encounter and face-to-face communication is not only possible, but promoted.
An Enterprise Develops when it Talks to its Customers
The enterprise expands its spatial dimensions when it not only opens inward, but also opens outward, beginning a dialogue with its customers. The proximity to customers is the first step to connecting an enterprise with the market. Information can be augmented exclusively through exchange. A corresponding spatial formation that creates this proximity and enables encounter and exchange is the street, for example, as the place of knowledge exchange, of dialogue and free movement. There the flux of the market and social life can permeate the organization.
An Enterprise is Successful when it Listens to its Customers
Innovations do not leave the enterprise as ready-made products, but instead go through a process of development that is dependent on the feedback effects of the market. It is only the direct feedback from the customers that brings about constant learning and growth through knowledge. This presupposes not only dialogue with customers, but also includes their expectations and demands. If an enterprise takes the customer seriously as a partner, not only selling products but also supplying behaviors, values and identities, it develops into a customer-driven company.
Thanks to the direct link between market and enterprise, the customer has the opportunity to exercise an influence on product design and to help determine it. The customer becomes the co-author of the enterprise. The corresponding spatial formulation of this linking is the agora, for example. In its communicative potential, the agora surpasses the street. In an agora, in a forum or on a market place, there is a freer, more open form of communication, because movements in all directions and at all crossing points are possible everywhere. It is there that the free exchange of communication, encounter and the development of new thoughts and behaviors are concentrated: in the agora, not as a representative entrance hall, but as the enterprise’s constitutive space and its focus.
An Enterprise Becomes a Global Player when it Creates Public Space
The enterprise becomes part of society and exercises a leadership function when it opens up toward society. In certain segments, it thus takes on the task of the transmission of values and addresses a broad spectrum of social themes.
Today, more and more enterprises are becoming increasingly responsible – globally, ecologically, culturally, and socially. They take part in panel discussions on subjects such as mobility, health, safety and security, entertainment, and the generation of knowledge. In the global economy, they function as global organizations with local nodal points. In this context, cities turn out to be suitable public spaces in which control functions, global markets and the production facilities of enterprises on the cutting edge are concentrated. When enterprises join forces with an existing town and integrate themselves into its living structure carefully and sensitively, it leads to the corporate structures being commingled with the public structures. On the basis of this symbiosis, the enterprise visibly takes on a social role and responsibility and is thus the driving force behind a large part of urban development.
Entrepreneurs as the Architects of Change
In January 2000, Bill Gates named himself “Chief Software Architect.” As such, in his new role, he wants to bring about the changes in his enterprise that have been made necessary by the market. Here, the word “architect” is used to mean the creative designing of the new, of change itself – the architect not as builder of buildings, but instead, the architect as master builder of the future and of success.
Those who bring about big changes are usually architects in a double sense; they design the future according to their ideas, visions and images, and they manifest them in buildings. They know about the great and lasting influence that buildings have. Buildings not only create floor space, they determine social behavior through their organization of space.
If the influence of architecture is left to chance, a great opportunity is lost. If this influence is left only to architects, although beautiful buildings will indeed be built, they will not always express the identity of the enterprise.
Entrepreneurs have to consciously desire the social conditions implied by their messages. We no longer live in a context of unconscious cultural values, but instead, we have to consciously design this context anew each time. Entrepreneurs are the architects of change and as master builders, they design the future in dialogue with the architect.
Originally published in: Jürgen Adam, Katharina Hausmann, Frank Jüttner, Industrial Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.