]office[ architecture+technology (2012) EUIM "Ion Mincu" University Publishing House, Bucharest, isbn 978-606-638-020-1

]office[ architecture + technology Marina Mihăilă

Romanian National Library CIP description MIHĂILĂ, MARINA Office : arhitectură + tehnologie = Office : architecture + technology / Marina Mihăilă. - Bucureşti : Editura Universitară "Ion Mincu", 2012 Bibliogr. ISBN 978-606-638-020-1 71 72 ISBN 978-606-638-020-1 © Marina Mihăilă © 2012 “Ion Mincu” University Publishing House Bucharest 18-20 Academiei Street, cod 010014 http://editura.uauim.ro/en/ Editor: Elena Dinu Translation: Cristian Bănică Cover and design: Marina Mihăilă Edition supported by: Arhitectonik 2000 Bucureşti www.arhitectonik.wordpress.com

contents

first part | from idea to demarche | 7

second part | ]office[ architecture + technology | 29

general bibliography | 103

dates and illustrations | 109

©Marina Mihaila | www.architectasartist.wordpress.com

Mihaila, Marina.(2012) ]office[ architecture + technology. Ion Mincu University Publishing House, Bucharest, ISBN 978-606-638-020-1. Ch1:First part – From Idea to Demarche, pp.7-28.

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first part

from idea to demarche The idea of ‘office’ is somehow intriguing: it is so often used in management, marketing, real-estate denominations, but also to describe professional positions or architectural terms. The list of issues and discussions that an office building generates to its placement within a European city, as well as the disputes between professionals – usually conservationists - and investors, led me to the idea of a deeper exploration of the phenomena that generate these long debates about urban space. Inserting a new object of architecture in an already constituted urban space, and the rules by which ‘the new’ should be judged and shaped is a first interesting and thoroughly prepared topic. Inserting buildings of a preponderantly office use, connecting and directing the urban management forces in this sense, is a second topic that is more about thinking the structure and overlapping the urban layers. Setting up a high point in the form of a tower in such a site is a third issue, one that ignites the spirits. Justified by the ‘instant’ development of the city, started within the real-estate policy and sustained by the local property government policies, this debate is lost from the start in the favor of the urban-space1 values conservatives.

1 Explanation: lack of arguments and complex laws and a state of permanent crisis urban space, combined with the lack of coherent policies real estate leads to permanent aggression against building fund.


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The rhythm, the performance and the method by which the global economy has acted in different territories led to top-down city policies as the result of the globalization of cities as metropolitan bodies; but it also led to bottom-up effects by policies enacted by economic interest groups or multinational corporations and not lastly by the sustainable thinking that considers the limitations of planetary resources and a more careful consideration of their use. In this idea, the land within the city, connected to services, to infrastructure, to the urban – public - social space, but also endowed with a historical – memorial – emotional value/ heritage, is an asset that does not devalue, and therefore a safe and profitable timely investment– all mentioned features being constituents of its price stability. In the context of our century the neighborhood has gained connotations of social and economic standard, financial safety factor for owned or used assets. The terms, theories and realities of the economic boom-bust cycle have become applied principles leading to repercussions in of all our lives, changing the real estate and construction market and, confusing financiers and money-makers and ultimately changing the dynamics and localization of the global labor market. Returning to the idea of ‘office’, this way of practicing a profession and formulating of work space became a current work-life standard in 20th century and an almost imposed norm in the 21st century. The reasons could be global: the rapid growth of world population, the depletion of natural resources, the development in industrial automation along with the decay of the small craft industries due to cost inefficiency and climate change, the rapid decrease in rural and poor area population– through migration, the attraction of people to the cities, and as a result to the corporation or services office type occupations.


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The exhibition “Global Cities” presented at Biennale di Venezia in 2006 and at Tate Modern Gallery2 in 2007 has shown some interesting statistics in the field: - for the first time in 2007, 50% of world population lived in the cities (in the big cities of the world); - the forecast for the next 10 years was that 70% of the population will live in the cities, considered to be urban magnets; also the percent of the city residents that were born elsewhere is growing exponentially. - the main global cities have major problems because of their territorial size and their rate of expansions, but also particular issues of form and structural context, requiring solutions for density and cultural diversity; - residential density: Mexico City 5800 res./km², Cairo 36500 res./km², Londra 4500 res./km², Mumbai 34000 res./km². 3 According to “Global Statistics”4: - the world population has increased from 2 billion in 1950 to nearly 7 billion in 2010, and will grow to over 9 billion by 2050; - Europe’s population is somehow constant in the specified period of time, unlike the Asian population which will double in the same interval; - the world most populated cities: Tokyo 36.7 million., Delhi 22.2 million, Mumbai 20 million., Sao Paulo 20.3 million., Ciudad de Mexico 19.5 million., NY 19.4 million., Shanghai 16.6 million., Calcutta 15.6 million., Dhaka 14.6 million. 5 – and Europe’s most populated cities: Istanbul 10.5 million., Paris 10.5 million., London 8.6 million., Madrid 5.8 million., Barcelona 5.1 million. 6

2 Tate Modern Gallery Londra, Expozitia ‘Global Cities’ – Size, Speed, Form, Density, Diversity, Commissions / sursa: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/globalcities/default.shtm (2009) 3 Idem, source: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/globalcities/density.shtm (2009) 4 GEOHIVE – GLOBAL STATISTICS / POPULATION STATISTICS / source: http://www.geohive.com/ (2009) 5 Idem / AGGLOMERATIONS 750 000 INHABITANTS/ source: http://www.geohive.com/earth/cy_aggmillion2.aspx 6 Ibidem.


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Concluding, here are the general trends: the rapid growth of the global cities, the need of the cities to develop emergent economies to sustain the growing urban and social system , the need to connect the cities to the world global system in order to insure the survival of the metropolitan system; the need to develop a system of internal policies, among which the development of built environment and social infrastructure are the most important, the development of a labor market adapted to the size of the metropolis and to the average qualification; creating better premises for investments and attracting investors, increasing the GDP per capita - through the measures outlined , taxation, duty and PPP . The city is therefore a more and more performing organism, interested in developing investment, real estate and labor market policies. Applied experience shows that housing policy is an obligation of the local government that should aim to control the cost of land, infrastructure and construction, but also of residential investment. And that this is very important insure some balance of internal trends – a city that allows itself to loose control over the prices of the land/plot , will never succeed to ensure reasonable residential investments, and in the same way, will never succeed to control the real estate market and urban life standard. Likewise, without economic control, even if professionals define protected (heritage) areas in city centers, these will never become effective without real policies targeting the cost of property (land), as the bottom-up pressure of the financial (f)actors will become too high. Briefly put, when uncontrolled increase in urban land value happens, this leads to an artificial increase in the land package + investment, and automatically decreases the amount of protection available for the elements and urban spaces architecturally valuable. Why? A relatively high land value entails a tendency to increase the investment value in order to satisfy managerial and financial


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indicators. An building investment that does not amount at least to the cost of the land becomes a not profitable one, or in economic terms, the investment has to be sought in the perspective under which land value increases steadily throughout the life of the building – this standard means 50 years. The increase of the investment parameters resides in the post-execution costs per square meter, from here results a tendency to accrue the gross area of the building, which results in an additional pressure on local congestion along with the growth of urban population. Profitable investments generally refer to non-residential buildings category, the most profitable category being the ‘office’ – the result of multinational companies’ policy to rent/lease rather then ‘own’ the office space. Besides this tendency there is a reversed investment trend, namely the preference of the private investment funds to buy “turnkey” office buildings already fully leased, providing investors with sensibly better returns than the bank interest rates. Thus, the big corporate employers in need of office space either downtown or in other prime locations, along with the necessity of stabile and constant private investment, placed in real-estate market of an uncontrolled policy, find themselves ready at hands of investors or developers, the latter often having well trained financial skills. Conceived as an active economic chain, the heritage or the cultural statute of the urban space rapidly looses ground in favor of accumulation of office space area. The conservatives critic the investors, the investors shrug their shoulders, and the work place is laid down as a massive urban-office form becomes a problem of the city, of the community or of perspective , being ultimately an expression of the missing real estate policy and of the lack in the local administrative negotiation. This pressure occurs also where there are established urban practices and policies; the pressure of the investors and money-makers is one of today’s global issues, often the latter receiving unsustainable advise from the urban space professionals. Similarly, cities face a problem of the sustainable resources and lack of sufficient jobs; local governments are forced to negotiate and to


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accept compromises. However, without a good governance of the resources, the atmosphere and the local value loose to globalization, and the authentic brand and the attraction of the local spaces disappear. Thinking about the idea of 'office' in itself, as a space that 'invades the city', the concept of the authentic cultural space raises yet another question: where is the balance? What should be done? ‘Office’ = insertion of working space in urban areas. The point of departure in this study is the ‘new office’. If ‘office’ defines generically the bureau, meaning that workspace, where the office activity takes place, the 'new office', is the sequence that defines the generalization of typologies cumulated as common amenities, specialized design and information technology facilities but also as social and creative technologies. Once Francis Duffy 7 (1999) has redefined the concept of the years 2000, naming it as: ‘new office’ – the bureau (space of the bureau) and its creative extension in the work place, the term tends to capture new attitudes towards creativity and lightness – as it is reflected for example in the corporate attitudes expressed through new living and working concepts: Google, Facebook. Office is the space in which actual work of the contemporary officer is taking place, offering him a more specialized and more complete environment to serve his professional and human nature. Although initially the information technology (IT) tended to standardize the office worker from all areas, offering him as standard instruments the computer, printer, fax, telephone and the work station – composed from desk and chair, in time, the design and corporate technology evolved, understanding that the progress of the company depends on the individual, initially

7 Francis Duffy, author NEW OFFICE, Conran Octopus Group, London, UK, 2002.


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approaching the relaxation features of the space in order to stimulate creativity, then the sports features in order to “get out of the cubicles’, the ‘office’ slowly becoming an almost ‘urban’, complex and multi-connected space. Direct or virtual space socialization has become essential for the creativity, competitiveness, efficiency and technological progress. The concepts of ‘playful’ and ‘joyful’ are included in the ‘new office’ concept of the future; seriousness and clear set conceptual, visual or virtual limits are to be avoided. Put simply, we all ‘care’ about the space we work in, and in most of the cases we use a computer in our work, with dedicated software, we have permanent access to the internet and social networks, both at the workplace and the virtual space, either through new online work group systems, or even through socialization networks developed on the web – as Messenger, Skype, MSN, Facebook, LinkedIn, chat. We can learn fast, directly from the virtual space, where diverse information are at our disposal, or indirectly by collaboration, We can interact and innovate at a rapid pace. More than ever ‘job’/’work’ is a label that gives a clear idea on the type of work and the scenography of the workplace, but also about the type of socialization occurring in office space –either real or virtual. ‘OFFICE’ = ‘NEW OFFICE’ Even if the new office is located in a spatial unit of an office tower, office park, of a ‘small office’, or a ‘home-office’, it includes the same listed features, and tends, along with technological upgrades to rapidly for efficiency. The architectural envelope is only determined by the modeling of the concept of individual work and of the company, deriving from one another But what is essential in the formulation of the new work space / the new office? The modeling of the envelope and its architectural form, and the dedicated reference to the urban space? The conceptualization from the architectural stage of the interior atmosphere and of the impact on individuals? The idea of the


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architect regarding the living scenario imposed by the corporation/company, brand, or a new idea of experimental work? Is the external form of the building important? What happens when the technological design prevails? How is the building modeled: starting with its interior or climatically, sustainably, ecologically, or based on the design brief? Analyzing the formal modeling considerations, I distinguished two types of trends: external and internal formulation of ideas, visions and general concepts. The premises of the formulation are: ‘OFFICE’ = WORKSPACE INSERTION IN URBAN SPACE ‘OFFICE’ = ‘NEW OFFICE’ ‘OFFICE’ = WORK/ JOB 1/ TRENDS OF EXTERIOR MODELING, ARCHITECTURAL, URBAN, PERCEPTIVE, OF DESIGN AND ATMOSPHERE. 2/ TRENDS OF INTERIOR MODELING, HUMAN, SOCIAL. Office is a cumulative term developed historically through successive trends and events. It is related to specialized work and it requires specific training. => Historically cumulative term. The officer – the office clerk/ worker, office and economical trends pertaining to historical development, global financial trends and globalization, understood momentarily and deriving from historical evolution. The office building differs from one period of time to another. But it generates specific spatial typologies: the Bank headquarters – from the Palazzo to the Skyscraper; the Stock-Exchange: the galleries with goods trading, commerce, negotiations; Business centers; Towers – office in the centers of the cities; Corporation – and corporation HQ; Corporatist-City; Insurance and brokerage corporations; Office Parks; Local private companies, governmental and local agencies : the ministries, local administrations, embassies; Office-City areas – insertions on large areas in the city; City Development – as a


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lifestyle, daily 24 of 24; Tower typology – Skyscraper – High-Rise – Skyline – Mixed Use – Vertical City = all coming from the office typology and office life, but gain valences of urban of urban representation, multiple functions, and mark of the new global brand that is defined by the new figures and the lines of the new landscape. The height and the size are forms of urban representation and financial security – the office building is a visual insurance of the investor. What makes this evolution of office forms possible is the development of TECHNIQUES and TECHNOLOGIES, and the present demonstrates their applied efficiency. Without technology and related technological research, the urban ambitions of representation would not be possible – neither the financial, nor the built ones. Somehow in the office building these are aggregated into a unique idea – that of technological and economical power. A stable bank will erect a headquarters as big and high as possible, with its own brand embedded into the name of the building and the construction itself will become a guarantee its economical assets. Massive buildings are a business in themselves - parts of the capital value are valuated and sold regularly to preserve the level of the ' office business '. The level of the building equipment is to be found in the real estate standards, but also in standards of landscape, urban centrality, facilities provided to the to the office worker and to the company, standards regarding the level of rent fees per square meter, maintenance services, etc. From the moment the building has its business plan in the economic on-paper form, the price of the building begins to successively increase, even before it is constructed. It is all about the financial-economic engineering technology of the building. The insurance of the building is usually included in the basic package of the management analysis. The technologies of the present demonstrate that sustainability is not a fairy-story, but a method to maintain and constantly increase the value of the building, in the sense of defining the most advanced specifications possible at its construction, so that the rate of technological degradation is as low as it can in years, and the price of


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the investment to continue its growth dynamics. The inclusion of energy generation or carbon foot-print reduction technologies are not only measures of performance and energy efficiency but also means to significant reductions of property taxes applied by local administrations as incentives in such cases. And when these performant giants generate not only public space for the city and themselves, but also energy , parking places, green areas, things tend to become ideal not only at a conceptual level, but also from a financial perspective vis-à-vis the investment costs and the subsidies the local administration is willing to offer. Ecology statistics show that over 70% of carbon dioxide is produced in the world as the result of building related activities and the concrete production technology used in construction as one of the main reasons. Thus, the conclusions flowing one from another, put on paper, mathematically and financially, at prima facie, the office tower, in any of its declinations from tower to high-rise, seems to be a solution. A solution understood as a possible energy and environmental giant, such redefined by the contemporary financial engineering, willing to invest and reinvest in the set up technology as many times possible for profitability. But here the things are on the edge: as industrialized society needed as much as manpower as well as many consumers for the increasing number of products, the office buildings have their mathematical limits in the same equation that generates profitability. Surnames super-heroes, these skyscrapers can define cities through multi-developments, called ‘Eco-Warriors’, or by a free translation ‘warriors in the name of ecology’ or ‘intelligent cities’8. The new trend is to promote high-rise that are benefic characters, true urban heroes, either in of new or old type cities. Or which, defined by multiplication can form cities that are havens of oxygen, vegetation, ecology, planetary reservations in every way possible.

8 I refer to many known theories from the 2005-2012 competitions, but also to the book “Smart Cities – ECO – WARRIORS”, authors CJ Lim and Ed Liu, Routledge 2010.


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Discussing this point, Skyscraper Museum NY 9(2012) promotes a map of green ecological, sustainable or even energy efficient skyscrapers, rated based on the American LEED standard. But which could be the CONCEPTS underlying these phenomena that take the form of horizontal-office, vertical–office, vertical or horizontal mass developments, office parks, mixed functions or mixed amalgams and novel uses of the primary forms of office? There is no doubt that a technology of architectural concept fabrication already exists in this case. A technology that is able to use given urban parameters, techniques of adaptive contextualism and interpretations of urban nuances so that the result is justified and justifiable. And of course it goes without saying that this concept is completed or revolves around a central idea of ecology and sustainability mandatory for the period we are going through. The means of the architectural concept are based on public reactions to the urban and particular produced images, but also on individual or mass anthropological response. The utopia and the manifesto, already known as means of creation and production of the concept, are used not only directly by architects in formulating principles that lie at the base of the buildings, these are used, as I was saying, towards new research directions namely in formulating new lifestyles, new styles of use of known volumetric and functional forms. Employed together with the contests of ideas, the utopia and the manifesto acquire also nuances of sociological documentation, taking the pulse of the architects, designers and urban planners as specialists. The office tower, or the office headquarters as a major urban volume, gains not only the mixed use given by Le Corbusier in Unite D’Habitation at Marseille, but also the meaning of a complete vertical city – Millennium Tower Tokyo Bay or Burj Dubai UAE, as

9 As are defined by the Skyscraper Museum and the American LEED technology. Source: http://www.skyscraper.org/home.htm (2009)


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well as new roles as ecology tower, zoo garden, or vertical cemetery, prison, vertical farm or garden. Or even, after Rem Koolhaas initially reformulates it as urban arch at CCTV 10 in Beijing, it becomes in the competitional challenges of eVolo 11 NY, a continuous manifesto to determine all horizontal, vertical or massive possibilities of form and function, of new ecological attributes – of healing or regeneration for the contemporary global city. The new esthetic is a permanent competition of ideas and new limits of understanding and use of architecture. The modern methods of sedimentation of vertically arranged functions and their connection to essential points of the city, transforms the concept of the city into a mechanism of permanent agglomeration and stacking Therefore, the conceptual searches become in fact a research of new forms, new esthetics and mixed functions, supported by private organizations, international construction companies, research funds for the environment and resources, social sustainability, but also by the governments of the developed countries, directly interested in solving the problems of exponential demographic growth of the cities, and together with this the problem of the availability of residential and work space in the areal. The theories and manifestos from the past to the present are also not forgotten; every international thematic exhibition and the Venice Biennales promote the finding of new ideas and attitudes together with the participating architects and architecture practices. The installation, the experiment, the pavilion are scaled productions of the promoted ideas. Not omitted are also the global politics, activism of the organization against poverty, universal access to education, human rights, discrimination, sustainability and balanced

10 OMA – Rem Koolhaas / source: http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_projects&view=portal&id=55&Itemid=10 (2009) 11 eVOLO – architecture competition organizer -SKYSCRAPER COMPETITION, Editor of many books and periodics for towers, skyscrapers and high-rises: „Housing for the 21st century” 2009, „Skyscrapers of the future” 2010, „Cities of tomorrow – envisioning, the future of urban habitat” 2011 - / source official website Evolo NY : http://www.evolo.us/ (2009)


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regional development, tradition in the context of globalization, rural and identity development, major issues that are taken into account in the formulation the enounced statements. The facilities offered by the development of computer assisted design led to the substantiation of a new method of forms, surfaces and volumes generation: digital, parametric and algorithmic architecture along with the generation of new models formulated with the aid of fractal functions with mathematical-structural applications or volume generation, but also of the new construction materials. Most if these new conceptual technologies use the digitized approach as the beginning of the study, but the architect is the one that formulates initial algorithm or creates a ‘script’ based on which the site tendencies, the context and the urban forms can be run in different ways and the opportunity sought. Architects are increasingly taking into greater account the resumption and translation into architectural language of natural forms - from structural shapes, skeletons, exoskeletons, spines to the networks deriving form vegetal world or human structure - putting into practice the essence of these conclusions from static and dynamic formulation, to the nuances of detail between the different parts, and the technological generation of the new materials required by this ‘new architectural organism’. Zaha Hadid, Greg Lynn and Wolf Prix teach the personal manner and style of investigation and architectural generation at the Academy 12 of Applied Arts in Vienna. The AA School 13 London and the Pratt Institute 14 NY are other schools of architecture that are primarily interested in conceptual education of the architects (future architects).

12 Site University of Applied Arts Vienna / http://www.dieangewandte.at/jart/prj3/angewandte/main.jart (2009) 13 Site Architectural Association School of Architecture / http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/ (2009) 14 Site Pratt Institute NY/ http://www.pratt.edu/


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The trend is that the specialists have to be capable of multicriterial research and before all to be able to enounce theories. The future sounds complicated, and the statements have to be efficient and to raise diversified problems, putting behind the professional or architectural ego. The context and contextual-ism are not anymore constrains, but parts of the brief, in a continuous motion, formation, tendencies and play. Last but not least advanced architecture is a principle enunciated IaaC15 - Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, and here the center of education is also a research institution. The art is another tendency to asses the structural forms, and architects-engineers like Cecil Balmond do take this seriously into account when enouncing principles of spatial-geometrical economy or theories based on numbers, points or networks of notions. According to current trends of concept formulation, architecture can be an art of message and speech, and it is important to give the space sense, memory and value. HIGH-SURFACES16 is a notion developed by the author, in the context of the current doctoral study. The idea emerged while working on arranging the notions related to more and larger surfaces developed horizontally and/or vertically. I would say that the need for surface derives form contemporary issues: the rapid growth of world population, fast pace of urbanization, the increasing problems related to environment, ecology and the automatic creation of lever-concepts to deliver solutions, the massing of functions and the tendency of englobing all the functions of a city into a building in order to insure punctual increase of ‘momentary’ surfaces. High-surfaces is a function of two unknown variables: technology and the concepts underlying the statement. A notion-enounce is

15 Site Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia / http://www.iaac.net/ (2009) 16 High-surfaces is the license of the author, Arch. Marina Mihaila. I found this term to explain the link between concept and technology in evolutionary sense. I presented the term in January 2009 at the doctoral study with the same title “Working with/in New Office – concepts and technology” UAUIM Bucharest.


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desired to answer the issues and tendencies the study identifies and analyses. This is a result of the values and relations that are established between the territory-related problems and the factors that are acting from the exterior, momentary and aggressive. The relationship between the concept and technology determines the possibility or the impossibility for the high- surfaces existence in the built reality. Looking back, high-surfaces exist from before known times, and it announces the myriad of the vertical tower-city from a period when the idea of a city-metropolis and the necessity to develop vertical surfaces appears for the first time – the case of Babel Tower. The trends of massive surfaces or height developments are not fully understood in terms of justifications and ambitions. But these are models without which the present and the nowadays discovered solutions would not have been possible. High-surfaces is related to the need of developing active surfaces in terms of uses and activities, possible also as a form of representation, wherever the available ground area no longer offers an answer to these requirements. The study of the mass (large) surface developments is a tendency of the contemporary research in the fields of urbanism and architecture (MVRDV, OMA), technological and sociological because of the rapid growth of the world population. Furthermore, the questions and the results of this research are present in the virtual world, the world of film, comics and cartoons. As the modeling and the enunciation of the concept is a notion of working with the new office, the human perspective on the work place enounces the premises of working in the new office. The human perspective17. The levels of the competition and salaries requires more and more involvement in working life, increasing the working hours, mostly professional socialization and the extension of working hours into the private space and time space and private time. Moreover, it can

17 An explanation of the author for choosing thesis title: “Working with/in New Office - concepts and technology” – the double modeling.


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mean a lifestyle in which the individual, once integrated, is unable to extract himself out for various reasons. More then ever, the lifestyle ‘sells’ in the office space promoting characters and leaders, enrolling and launching fashions with the desire to impose, advance and direct, by designating the space trend-setters. The individual is in present not only in his profession, acquired through invitation and experience, but also in his professional capacity in the company hierarchy and in the space hierarchy. His position, of the bureau and the work station in the company space, says everything about his activity, number Of superiors and subordinates, how important is his opinion or personality inside this small economic society. The office space is merely a mirror of the hierarchical conformation and discipline of the company, generating a space discipline based on design, form, details, color and accents from other activities – the usual non-alcoholic drinks bar, the coffee and discussions table situated in open-space, green garden for relaxation, space for smoking or for smoking and socializing – understood as means of segregation and opening the debates within the office. The competition is supported by design, and is encouraged. The relaxation can also be a competitive way, but more often it is a mean to gain the loyalty of the individual for the interests of the company. The brand defines the individual as early as the 50s, the working style and type of team are established through lucrative measures; the competitions between brands are taking place not only in the realm of economic ideas and figures , but also directly through individuals, in the public space, through the setting of distinctive elements . The development and analysis of the new of social market typologies and consumer trends enounce theories as NETOCRACY18 (Bard & Söderqvist, 2002). – the generation of human networks by individuals who manipulate in the world of ideas and goods, and who’s purpose is no longer the creation of companies oriented on

18 NETOCRACY, author Alexander Bard, Publica, Bucharest, 2009.


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brand cohesion , but on the notion of CONSUMPTARIAT, the control over or ideas and consumers . Being really smart and a performer in information technology is to create a network, as Alexander Bard puts it, not only at the level of multinational company , by imposing as a trend setter , but means the creation of a elite and populist network, capable of enrolling and collecting small benefits from a large number of individuals. Mass collaborative networks developed on the principle of socialization, as stated in WIKINOMICS19 (Tapscott, 2010), are another trend of the information and telecom technology in this case. The enrolment and the benefits com from the communication facilities offered to those who spend long hours in the office space, and who discover an important part of working sources and resources in the virtual space. Solitary bureau work creates an imperative need for communication, and presently, the communication is more easily found in the virtual space rather than the real office space. Members of the same office – real-physical office – communicate sometimes easily via online chat than direct verbal conversation. The solitude and individualism of office work that reach high levels, lead to fast manifestations of communication, without the fatigue of the oral transmission of information. In addition, in the office space, any written information is a report and a proof of work and creativity, that can be verified and used when required. Going back to mass collaborative networks, the need for socialization and entertainment pushes the individuals to be permanently connected to websites and virtual spaces like Facebook, Skype, yahoo-messenger, MSN, LinkedIn; they can retrieve information, get advice from the members of the same community that are listed as friends, or can socialize considering the lack of time for physical–direct contacts, as this time has already been filled with work.

19 WIKINOMICS How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, authors Dan Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams, Publica, Bucharest, 2010.


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The internet and these networks are present on mobile phones, easy to access at all times, so the officers can work continuously, even in their time off or during holidays. The separation between the private and the office space is now practically a very thin line.

FIG 1 | Schematic principle representing the issues questioned in research “Working with/in New Office – concepts and technology” author Marina Mihăilă.20

20 Schematic principle representing the issues questioned in (Ph.D.) research; there have been enounced and researched the hypothesis and unknown dates of the New Office: -History – office/ officer as modeling factors, -Office – Technologies and technological concepts, -Office – Concepts – working with New Office, -(High-Surfaces)-values of concept and technology, -Utopia/ Society, -Human Perspective – working in New Office, – source and concept: the author Arch. Marina Mihaila / The scheme shows the research was thought, and specific, and notably the issues related to the contemporary building modeling, but also the possible one in the future, from interior, and also from the exterior of its modeling.


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‚Working with / in new office’ is the concept of the doctoral study: a cumulation of historical modeling factors, of the principles and technological tendencies continuously improving, of the concepts leading to new manifestos, of the methods or research and design attitudes, together with human factors that shape the interior and urban spaces. Utopias and dystopias are also present, as positive and negative experience, alternately and successively in formulating the ideas that structure the present doctoral work. The office building modeling comes also from within, from the activities that shape its interior and from the human segment included in it, but also from exterior, from the stylistics and architectural concept, from the city configuration, but also from the global tendencies that manifest at the level office work life trends, urban life, society, politics or potential future definitions. Modeling methods come from previous forming, but also from future experiments, from a plurality of observations, trends, manifestos, utopias, dystopias, or even manipulation of space and activities for their refinement. The working space of the present is in a permanent technological search as the office building needs to adapt continuously. The city and the urban life are as well in a permanent setting and globalization, while the modeling of the office building has to answer the urban demands, non-aggressing and supporting valuable constituted space. The workspace of the future and the building to contain it are the interesting parameters that the present study tries to place in a formula easy to operate and control, in the search of a definition of possible opportunities or threats. The chapter of the doctoral thesis take on these hypostases and perspectives regarding the office space: its origin and becoming - brief history and premises, office technologies, concepts - present depiction working with new office, high-surfaces – the concept of


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office becoming belonging to the author21, that puts in equation the values of the concept and of technology, the human perspective – the current depiction of working in new office. Already the tower developments include surfaces (areas) of the most diverse functions. A further development could only contain the whole range of cultural services and facilities, leisure amenities or parks required by the presence of a bigger community. Practically we are dealing with the mergence of a new kind of city – the city within a building or a structure of new type, building, machine and ecosystem with tendencies of autonomous functioning. The tendency that manifests would be that such machine-building22 giants will seize important sites or the majority of existing voids, at least initially, before moving into setting free of constrains. Initially motivated by the insertion of office space, the NEW OFFICE building is a construction with complex functionality, multi-structured into thematic layers, or it is sequentially whatever the city needs it to be. The private life, like any other function, can be ingested easily inside this package. For any function there could be its vertical or its autonomous extension. Between the private and the public life the limits are consistently thinning or even disappear as the two coexist in the same envelope. Or considering the city as a graph of matrix surface, the new insertions that could fill the voids are alike the MetaCity Datatown information city of MVRDV: in the points of spatial void – whether physical or parametric - can be achieved very high values of the HIGH-SURFACES23 function (a license of the current study), populating the city till the exhaustion of this method of verticality. However in the long run, verticality cannot be achieved under a scenario of constant steady growth. Probably at some point the

21 Concept of high-surfaces is the license the author of this work, Arch. Marina Mihaila. 22 I am referring here to architectural objects of any scale of the – from the simple tower to super-high-rise building 23 License of the author.


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height limits will not longer be overcome - at least not in a theory of gravity as it is currently understood. Following up on this scenario and addressing these utopian ideas, high-surfaces could have ‘cloud city’ or horizontal skyscraper valences. Or, of cubic type homogeneous mass as the Schweitzer imagined by MVRDV in Skycar City.


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]office[ architecture+technology (2012) EUIM "Ion Mincu" University Publishing House, Bucharest, isbn 978-606-638-020-1

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