Chance meetings at the RAND
(Via Dr.Fish) Archrecord has an interesting article about the design of RAND Corporation Headquarters (the nonprofit policy research institution in Santa Monica, California). It describes these curious figure-8-shaped headquarters:
DMJM Design took a page from RAND’s own playbook. It organized the building within a figure-8-shaped floor plan: the figure 8, according to RAND’s mathematicians, increases the probability that researchers from different departments will have chance encounters with each other in the hallway. This shape, moreover, corresponds to RAND’s nonhierarchical, egalitarian organization—and, to boot, its internal circulation pattern lacks dead ends.
RAND’s website also describes more thoroughly these issues:
While the headquarters is modern in design, its central design theme is based on ideas first expressed in 1950 by a RAND mathematician, John Williams. He proposed a design that would facilitate more interaction between staff by increasing the odds of “chance meetings.” Today, that theme is carried through with elements such as a system of interconnected bridges and stairwells that are unusually wide to encourage impromptu discussions among employees.
Why do I blog this? this is an interesting (and classic) example of how architecture can structure certain behavior.
January 18th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I wonder if we are sometimes making too much of the way architecture shape us, shapes its users? I recently read about this large consulting firm who had fine architects come and talk to the users of the future building in an attempt to facilitate more knowledge sharing and informal (and valuable) smalltalk and socializing. Accordingly the closed offices were abandoned in favour of an open floor plan (a classic), but no sign of knowledge sharing. Why? Because the economic structure of the organization was beneficial to individuals, not groups - in other words, you were not payed to share knowledge, but to come up with results - the incitement structure was based on individual efforts, not on groups or sharing as implied by the architects and the company. The company was still hierarchical in terms of economic structure, benefit structure etc. Nevertheless, the company prided itself of its innovation and ability to facilitate knowledge sharing. Pure bullshit of course, but part of every major company’s innovation discourse these days. What I’m trying to say is: Are we being too optimistic about the ways architecture (physical or digital) enables people to share, to socialize etc. Do the true challenges not lie elsewhere?
January 19th, 2007 at 5:19 am
Architecture, like all mechanisms of control, does have the ability to shape our environments but also inevitably has a layer of indeterminacy about it. Clever architects can exploit the latter. The writings of Bernard Tschumi (another Swiss!) are probably your best bet for this. In any event, I wanted to mention Michael Kubo’s essay on the Rand Corporation. See Verb Connection” for that.