145 BULK STORAGE
. . . this pattern helps to complete any house for a small FAMILY (76), SELF-GOVERNING WORKSHOPS AND OFFICES (80), and individually owned shops (87). More generally, it is needed to fill out every building complex (95).
In houses and workplaces there is always some need for bulk storage space; a place for things like suitcases, old furniture, old files, boxes—all those things which you are not ready to throw away, and yet not using everyday.
Some old buildings provide for this kind of storage automatically, with their attics, cellars, and sheds. But very often this kind of storage space is overlooked. We find it neglected, for example, in carefully designed buildings, where the designer is watching the square foot costs closely and cannot justify an extra room that is not “living space.”
In our experience, however, bulk storage space is terribly important; and when it is not provided, it usually means that some other space becomes the receptacle for all the bulky, marginal things that people need to store.
How much bulk storage should be provided?1 Certainly there should not be too much of it. That only invites us to keep old things that we have long since finished with. But some bulk storage is essential. Any household or workshop or cluster will have old furniture to store until it can be fixed, old tires, books, chests, tools that are only occasionally used; and the more self-sufficient the household is, the more space it needs. In the extreme case, it is even necessary to have space for storing building materials! The amount needed is never less than 10 per cent of the built area—sometimes as high as 50 per cent—and normally 1 5 to 20 per cent.
BUILDINGS
Therefore:
Do not leave bulk storage till last or forget it. Include a volume for bulk storage in the building—its floor area at least 15 to 20 per cent of the whole building area—not less. Place this storage somewhere in the building where it costs less than other rooms—because, of course, it doesn’t need a finish.
Put the storage in the apex of the roof if the roof has a steep pitch—sheltering roof (117); if there is a sloping site, put it in a basement—-terraced slope (169), ground floor slab (215); otherwise, put it in a shed which can perhaps be made into a cottage later—rooms to rent (153). No matter whether it is an attic, cellar, or shed, it is usually good advice to follow north face (162) and situate bulk storage to the north of the building, leaving the sunnv spaces for rooms and gardens. . . .
| then the same for offices, workshops, and public | |
|---|---|
| buildings. | |
| 146. | FLEXIBLE OFFICE SPACE |
| H7- | COMMUNAL EATING |
| 148. | SMALL WORK GROUPS |
| 149. | RECEPTION WELCOMES YOU |
| 150. | A PLACE TO WAIT |
| 151. | SMALL MEETING ROOMS |
| 152. | HALF-PRIVATE OFFICE |
146 FLEXIBLE OFFICE SPACE
. . . imagine that you have laid out the basic areas of a workshop or office—self governing workshops and offices (80), office connections (82). Once again, as in a house, the most basic layout of all is given by intimacy gradient (127) and common areas at the heart (129). Within their general framework, this pattern helps to define the working space in more detail, and so completes these larger patterns.
♦J*
Is it possible to create a kind of space which is specifically tuned to the needs of people working, and yet capable of an infinite number of various arrangements and combinations within it?
Every human organization goes through a series of changes. In offices, the clusters of work groups, their size and functions, are all subject to change—often unpredictably. How must office space be designed to cope with this situation?
The standard approaches to the problem of flexibility in office spaces are: (i) uninterrupted modular space with modular partitions (full height or half-height) and (2) entire floors of uninterrupted space with low ceilings and no partitions (known as “office landscape”).
But neither of these solutions really work. They are not genuinely flexible. Let us analyze them in turn.
We discuss the partition solution first. In a na'ive sense, it seems obvious that the problem can be solved by movable partitions. However, in practice there are a number of serious difficulties.
1. If partitions are made easy to move, they become lightweight and provide inadequate acoustic insulation.
2. If the partitions are both easy to move and acoustically insulated, they are usually very expensive.
14-6 FLEXIBLE OFFICE SPACE
3. The actual cost of moving a partition is usually so high that even in highly “flexible” and “modular” systems, the partitions are in fact very rarely moved.
4. Most serious of alclass="underline" it is usually not possible to make minor changes in a partition system. At the moment when one working group expands and needs more space, it is only by rare accident that the working group next door happens at this same moment to be contracting. In order to make room for the expanding group, a large part of the office must be reshuffled, but this causes so much disruption that many office managements adopt the simpler solutions—they leave the partitions as they are and move the people.
5. Finally, it is in the nature of office space that certain informal, semi-permanent arrangements grow more -permanent over time (for example, furnishing, filing systems, “ownership” of special spaces or windows). This makes the occupants resistant to change. Though they may be willing to move when the growth of their own working group is at stake, they will resist moving strongly, as part of any general office reshuffle, caused by the expansion or contraction of some other working group.
The modular partition system fails because the partitions become, in effect, ordinary walls; yet they are less useful than real walls for defining territory and for sound insulation; and what is more, the partitions do not necessarily satisfy the need for a semi-enclosed workspace, discussed in workspace enclosure (183). It is clear, then, that systems of movable partitions do not really solve the problem.
The office landscape solution, since it has no partitions, is more genuinely flexible. However, this system is only suitable for types of work which require neither a high degree of privacy nor much internal cohesion within individual working groups. Moreover, studies by Brian Wells have made it clear that office workers strongly prefer small work spaces to larger ones—see small work croups (148). Wells shows that, when given a choice among different sized offices, people choose desks in small offices rather than large ones. And he shows that working groups in small offices 'are much more cohesive (defined by a larger percentage of internal sociometric choices), than the working groups in large offices. (Pilkington Research Unit, Office Design: A