The Instant office in the ageing society:
Accessible and sustainable workspheres for politropic space systems, objects
and devices related to the needs of ageing people in Europe.
Manfredo Manfredini, PhD
Arch-I-Lab, Dipartimento di
Progettazione dell’Architettura, Politecnico di Milano
Manfredo.manfredini@polimi.it,
www.arch-i-lab.polimi.it
Luca Brambilla, Marco Erba, Paola
Leardini
Arch-I-Lab, Dipartimento di
Progettazione dell’Architettura, Politecnico di Milano
www.arch-i-lab.polimi.it
Abstract
Focusing
the research activity on the defining of design solutions capable of assuring
the most effective individualization of workspaces, with regard to the issues
related to global mobility, physical and cognitive accessibility, and
particularly to the phenomenon of mature age employment, the project is aimed
to introduce new comfort tenor in the everyday life practices involved in the
incipient work-spreading process. The investigation of a specific work
landscape, related to the instances of temporariness, mobility and ubiquity of
non-residential work conditions, highlights a great variety of practices and
attitudes, space and device organization, comfort and communication systems,
and identifies different conditions in which the incipient transformations are
particularly relevant in their relation with architecture, bringing new
instances to the permanent structure and to institutes of associated life
(office buildings, open spaces, airports, railway stations, malls...).
Addressed to fulfil the needs of workers subjected to the fragmentation of
bijection between workplace and activity, and complying with the requirements
of new work organization, it introduces an articulated system witch merges
intimately in the urban tissue, allowing the sprawled workers the highest
conditions of wellness, information and communication exchange, and technical
equipment.
Intro
The
design program considers intervention at different scales and in different
environments: from the constitution of network in new brownfield sites (the
main city centres are undergoing a radical metamorphose caused by decreasing
needs of office space) to individual architectural objects (open structures, or
integrated building with installation, hvc and cabling), to stand alone
interior elements (partitions, flooring, ceiling, furnishing and lighting
systems) and product (workstations, display and storage systems, complements),
integrating the most promising application of ICT both in the building
construction and management, and in the users physical and informational
interface, facing the problems of re-using of existing objects, spaces,
buildings and city complexes in a harsh evaluation of its environmental and
economical sustainability.
0.1 Hurban
Pathscape
Fostering
the dynamic and non-homogenous evolution of activities, the system is conceived
to reflect the characteristics of the new organizational structures based on
responsibilities sharing and objective defining: knowledge brokering management;
unstable and self defining setting; articulated architecture (core unit,
project/task related integrations, external components); co-creative,
integrated and multi-modular work process; share of responsibilities in the
project development; continuous shift of roles and relations; agility,
nimbleness and swiftness in adaptation to different physical and cultural
contexts. The barriers, which once separated the active part of life from the
non productive fractions on the different levels of duration (age, week and
day) and locations (productive spaces and leisure and rest environments)
becomes permeable and sets new questions for the reorganization of physical
spaces and temporal rhythms. The decline of stiff bond, that ties the work
market to permanent and continuative relation between individual and company,
opens new options in the work market to prospects for the redefinition of the
socio-economic role of the knowledge workers, activating the possibility in
making always and everywhere available and applicable the complete wealth of
individual knowledge, competence, accumulated experience and wisdom. Following
the dissipative model, it activates new work practices, attributes decisive
values in the evaluation of diversity in different states and behaviours, and
considers loss and gain of resources in both energy and information as the
primary issue.
0.2 Spatial Scenario
The
project reveals itself in the improvement of the permeable quality of systems that might reorganize spatial and
movement rhythms through the graft of rhizomatic multi-crossed networks that
allow performance in both intensive and discontinuous activities with
instantaneous or unlimited duration, bearing different work styles, supporting,
both in individual and team work, the speedy and the easiness of textual,
visual and audible information transfer (e.g. improved by the growing
integration of wireless and interactive systems) and the agility of their
accessibility with increasingly smaller, lighter and performing devices determine in the relentless increase of
flows and commuting of information, people and places.
0.3 Diversity, Interaction and Communication
Through a
program that stimulates the strengthening of diversity, in terms of places,
individuals and groups, the project takes in consideration the likeliest range
of users in the near future were the swiftness of changes will deeply affects
cultural and social behaviours of individuals and groups, generating crucial
situations for the personal capability in expressing identity in critical
thinking, consciousness and sensitiveness, facing non linear, idiosyncratic,
cross- and inter-cultural self comprehension. Also related to the recent
decline in welfare administration, the trend of the work market sees the
decline in permanent work positions, that ties the individual to permanent and
continuative relation with the company, which implies a notable widening of the
work life duration and opens new options in the work market to prospects for
the redefinition of the socio-economic role of elderly people. The urgency to
cope with the heavy effects of the trend in demography in European Countries,
focusing the specific conditions of ageing society, sets the research goal of
contributing in finding solutions that allow them to conduct a consistent part
of activities and duties that in the recent past were to them inaccessible, as
consequence of the performances reduction.
0.4 Environmental Morphing and social Cohesion
In order
to remove or contribute to get over the barriers caused by the decline of
individual physic, psychical and sensorial conditions (impaired mobility and
dexterity, reduced sensorial capacity, difficulty in learning new paradigms),
social relations (isolation from family, friends and colleagues; deficiency in
human interaction, exclusion), personal security and self-sufficiency (need of
sheltered habitat), the project formulates an open program for environments,
fittings and furnishings adaptable to the specific anthropometric, biomechanic,
cognitive, organizational and operatives of the individuals using advanced
devices based on personalized setting profiles, which facilitate the movements,
the use of special personal aids and the adaptation to individual needs.
Generating a pro-adaptive environment, that stimulates a productive friction
between persons, objects and information networks in a variable balance between
interpersonal interaction and communication routes and individual concentration
conditions, the system follows the fallout of new needs, depending from the
non-linear relation between real and virtual realms of activities, exploring a
series of themes, including domesticity, rituals of daily life, personal and
data security, prostethics.
0.5 Information Space: Immersion vs Emersion
The system
can be seen as a big metadisplay device, were concealed technology gives
information, as intelligible as possible, by different media, involving
different senses (light, sound/noise, termo-igrometric comfort, tactile
comfort, smell control…). The materials and technology choices will be related
to the study of the multisensorial values (visuals and haptics) of objects and
surfaces, considering a frame that includes the whole life-cycle of the object
in connection with the environment sustainability aspects (low energy
production, management and recycling; low pollution; intelligent regulation
systems; recyclable materials, re-use). Intuitive and context related tools do
not require accuracy or complex motion and are placed in a limited field of
reach, light. Implementable working places, with variable dimensions and
adequate interfaces constitute consequently instable structure: architecture
and information melted together stimulate latent behaviours, avoid punctual
over-loading and communication barriers, value contingency and allow slower or
delayed environmental reaction times.
References
CLAC, Inclusive Design and Intelligent Technology
for Accessible Workplaces, SMAU Exibition Catalogue, Cantù, 2003,
ISBN
88-7569-000-6 ;
Manfredo Manfredini, Instant Office Infostructure, Pavia,
2003, ISBN 88-86719-39-6;