Do the prices for constructing an office in Japan make sense?Of course not. The problem really is that in most office buildings in Japan the building owner has a designated contractor in place. This means that when you want to partition off rooms, create a reception etc… you need to ask the building contractor to do the work. And guess what, this designated contrator is going to present you with inflated prices to do the work… This is obviously one of the reasons why most Japanese office look the way they do: in order to avoid considerable construction costs offices are designed (put into place) with the intention of not having to cost an arm and a leg. That is why most meeting rooms walls in these office will not go all the way up to the ceiling (to avoid moving air conditioners) or have very few partitioned rooms at all.

Designated contractors seem to be unavoidable, especially with rents going up again to bubble times. Does this mean that we are going to see more offices “designed” by the restrictions of the designated contractors? Probably.

So how can you make sure that you can still design a funky work environment without a spicy price tag?

1. Negotiate before signing the lease that some of the work can be outsourced to other contractors. Make sure that the designated contractor has competition!
2. The design should be well thought through, and drawings handed in should have all the necessary details so there is no need for any guessing on the contractor’s side. Remember they will always guess in their favour.
3.  Buy a thick red marker and scrutinize the estimates. Check for product prices, contractors should normally get 40-60% discounts, not providing discounts will drive their fees up twice as they will charge a percentage (usually 12%) on top of the construction costs.

4. Hire a professional. Actually that is what you should have done in the first place!

No. (But if implemented in the right way: Yes)
Even though we will do interviews, questionnaires, staff reviews, polls etc… the issues involved in the design of the work environment are so complex, so broad that in the end it is impossible to please everyone.
In order to be able to keep all the issues together it is crucial to know what to keep and what to forget from the analysis phase of WorkVitamins. I call this “selective listening”. After all, the basic idea of WorkVitamins is that the process is not a cure to a problem, but a suppplement to change. WorkVitamins is preventive rather than reactive and this is sometimes difficult to see during the design process.
As the WorkVitamins procedure starts with a Shared Workplace Vision (read more about the process at vanderarchitects.com) the vision can only be set by those who steer the company. The direction of where a company is going needs to be clear, and well defined. If that is not the case the rest of the staff will not be able to understand the purpose of WorkVitamins. Actually, if not communicated well WorkVitamins can easily create the opposite effect: confusion and revolt.

If for example one of the issues that has been identified during the Shared Workplace Vision was to improve team communications, every one in the organization should understand why team communications is important to the company. If the implementation of the spaces that will encourage team communications will have an impact on the overal space plan, this too needs to be made clear. If not, a territorial battle over personal space will unleash and will severely damage the implementation. Thus the importance of “selective listening” during the analysis: to understand and identify the elements that could potentially emphasize as well as damage the implementation of the Shared Workplace Vision.

Why indeed…

Before I visited japan for the first time, I went to an exhibition on Japanese architecture where I saw a model of Fumihiko Maki’s Spiral building. In the design Maki had to accomodate a complex programme including a bar-cafe, a theatre, exhibition and music space under one roof. When I visited the building 3 months later I noticed that the programme was well defined. The name too, Spiral, was very clear: the elements spiral upwards almost effortlessly upwards throughout the building. But the exterior, the elements that I saw on the top of the model were only visibleif I had a bird-eye view, like I had with the model. Architecture, here I felt, was reduced to the creation of models, models that in the end (in its built form) would be nothing more than useless shapes wrapped around a programme. Did I witness the end of architecture, here in this prime example of bubble architecture? Was this inside-out architecture that still wanted some of the old glory: outside-in and wrap it together?
It is a well-known fact that during the Japanese real estate bubble in the mid 1980′s the cost of land was far greater than the construction cost of the building. Thus buildings such as Philippe Starck’s La Flame D’or a building of which the flame-like element on top seems to have cost more than the rest of the building. Due to the astronomical land prices, the cost of construction was marginal and in a way did not seem to matter. Philippe Starck is a designer, well-known for his furniture and the building has object-like qualities. The building reduced to a sign, in a city of signs, the end of architecture?

We worked on a proposal in Hong Kong in the Bank of China building, a typical example of outside-in architecture: in one of the building’s corners a column breaks through the floorplate cutting diagonal through the space. Spectacular! Yes, but not from a real estate point of view. Hey! I know, the last thing I want to do is put numbers (HK dollar$) on each and every square cm… That is not my point here, no, the question is how architects look at the creation of space; ie the void or the vessel. Does architecture start from the inside or from the outside?

Happy 2007!
Here are some tips to make your work environment a success. In order of importance:

1. Keep it clean: As a student I worked in a restaurant for 4 years. We worked in an open kitchen, so there were no secrets, as the customers would be passing all the time. By allowing a full view into the kitchen (and even into the area where the dishes were done) we were open to the scrutiny, or better to quality control all the time. Was it any wonder that this restaurant was the most successful in town? I think the analogy makes more than sense for the office, keep it clean!

2. Keep it open: The analogy with the open kitchen in the restaurant makes sense in terms of keeping the office open as well. Ok, there are privacy laws ( Even in the kitchen we prepared our sauces etc…during the day when the restaurant was closed), but these laws should not stop you from keeping the office (to a certain degree) wide open. Offices should be filled with light and provide as much uninterrupted views as possible. If rooms need to be partitioned off, glass should be used as much as possible.

3. Storage, desk size: The smaller the desk, the less clutter will fit on it. The less storage you have the less unnecessary stuff you can keep. Work light!
4. Use an expert: to design and implement. Do I need to say more?