10 Office layout process

1. Introduction

We aim at an office which is perfectly adapted to you and your work. We should like to help you make your office as finely tuned to you and your work habits as a classic carpenter’s workshop. In the carpenter’s workshop, each piece is gradually built and fitted, over many years, until each tool fits just where it belongs, and each surface is just the right size and height for the carpenter’s work.

Something to aspire to for software design. This means large parts of the developer-designed and -built parts need to leave massive room for configuration and customization.

I notice my own disdain for configuration and customization here. I’d rather have a tool that provides good defaults and adapt to that a little, than to spend lots of time and effort into crafting my very own custom tool and workflow. One reason is that it seems fragile. Each time I have to update my tools or the infrastructure they run on I risk that something with my customization breaks and needs to be changed — likely at a time where I don’t want to do that. There’s also the issue with the act of changing configuration and customization is only done infrequently, so making those changes requires extra time to figure out how to do it — each time you do it. However, I know many people who made incredibly extensive customizations to their tools and are extremely happy with it, clearly not weighting the downsides of customization as much as I do.

I think my main issue with this is that higher customization effort means I’m becoming more dependent on the tool. I lose the freedom to try out other tools instead. Well, it’s not really the freedom I lose, but the requirements I have for alternative tools are higher, to the point where they become so ridiculously high that other tools won’t be able to replace all my custom workflows I now rely on. Thus leaving me with a local maximum, increasing the barrier for me to explore alternatives that might lead to a much higher local maximum elsewhere.

Many modern offices do not have this quality. Typically, there is a more haphazard arrangement of available pieces of furniture. The process of work is not reflected in the layout of the office. It is not a truly comfortable place to work. And, certainly, is is not a deeply efficient place to work.

I wonder if that is because knowledge work — the work mostly performed in offices — is not as well defined as work that requires specific techniques and tooling?

The carpenter’s workshop referred to above is the end product of years of gradual, painstaking adaptation. It is important to recognize that the state of mind in which the carpenter is able to achieve this is a very humble one. He is never trying very hard to make a “perfect” environment for himself. He is never under the illusion that he can reach anything perfect. He just keeps trying to make it a little better all the time. The state of mind in which you can arrive at a layout for an office which works well for you is low key and rather slow.

3. How your office works

You need to start by getting clear what your office is. What we mean by this is that you must get clear what is the essence that makes it your office (as opposed to someone else’s), that will make it easy for you to work there, that makes it unique to you.
Our experience is, that when someone understands deeply what their own needs are, and how their own office works, then this office will almost always become something special, something very comfortable, and something which is — probably — unlike any other person’s office.

What you really do when you work

One way to get clear about what you do is to pay attention to the following list of processes that may play a role in your work. Rank order them according to the relative importance they have in your own work.

Dream about your ideal working conditions

Now start going through the short list of key processes, one by one, in the order you have ranked them. Start with the first one. Ask yourself which place or occasion you can remember where this particular kind of activity was working most beautifully.

You therefore have the greatest chance of recreating a similar quality of process if you can identify the actual circumstances in detail, and reproduce them.

Define the essence of the dream condition for each process

Now, if you have a vision of the dream condition for each process, write down the key essential elements which made it happen. This is hard to do. To do it, you must construct the essential elements in the form of a center. What this means is that you identify the key physical elements which made that circumstance what it was, and describe their arrangement as a “center”.

Every center always has the same format. There is a center — which is always a space — created by some elements which surround it. The structure of this situation is fundamental. There is a center — the space which is the heart of the whole thing. This is always space. Then there is a crust or boundary around this center, which forms it. The crust or boundary is always made of solid elements.

Each part of what you do when you are working is essentially a center. For example, if you spend a lot of time talking one-on-one with a single client (attorney-client relationship for example), then it is the space which the two of you form together which is the principal center. It may consist of two chairs, perhaps a table or a desk, perhaps associated stuff you need to talk about. In any case, the efficiency of the way you can talk with your client depends on the extent to which this center is a concentrated focus, and really works “as a center”.

In the list of activities which you have put in rank order, it is probably the top three or four which play the key role in the way your office needs to work for you, and which therefore create the essence of your office.
One point is very important in your use of the hierarchy of key centers. There is one main center, the first one, and a number of secondary centers — the remaining ones. However, you should be aware that even though there usually is one center that you experience as the “main” center for your office, still, your work changes from day to day, and you may make the rounds in your office. One day the so-called main center may indeed be your main focus of activity. Another day a second one may play the main role. Another day it may be a third one. You need to visualize all these centers which give you your arena for work — and among which one is, often, but not always, the “main center”.

4. The layout process

Step 6. Overlap

It is essential to remember that different centers may overlap each other. A particular piece of furniture may be part of two or three different centers, and the different centers may occupy the same space of different overlapping areas of the same space. There is no reason why the centers have to be sharply distinct.

6. Getting the size right

The size of things is critically important, and will affect the feeling and usefulness of your office in a way far beyond what you imagine. Some things can be bigger than you might think. Other things can be smaller than you might think. All that matters is that it is practical.
Present-day office furniture tends to make everything homogenous in size, and this contributes to the dead and unpleasant feeling one gets in many modern offices.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/12 The uniqueness of people’s individual worlds#