Conversation about worst spaces

The other day a conversation with colleagues turned to the topic of “worst spaces you’ve ever seen.” The context happened to be workspaces found in government settings, just following an extensive walk through a government office building.

The motivation for the question was out of empathy towards employees — people —  for whom these spaces are their assigned places of work. I’ve seen a lot of workspaces for government employees over the past twenty years. They include old and decrepit spaces and sleek new spaces; noisy spaces and quiet spaces; wide open spaces and tightly enclosed spaces (particularly those housing highly sensitive information and activities). A whole category of bad space is empty space; i.e. underutilized space. This category encompasses spaces which are unfit as well as spaces which are in other terms good, but no longer being actively used. Empty space is a burden which drags down enthusiasm and financial performance.

Those who know me know that a driving sense of purpose for me is creating the right conditions for flourishing. With regard to the workplace, the space itself can play a significant role as a venue for good experiences. Early in my career as an architect, one of the first transformational workplace experiences I observed was with the design of a new operations center for the Mechanics Bank of Richmond, in California. Richmond was then, and remains a pretty gritty urban environment. The bank’s offices were spread among several buildings around the city center. As opposed to the clean and professional retail spaces provided for customers at their branch banks, the back office was an assortment of rather shabby spaces. Our project involved the design of a new facility in nearby Hercules, moving the groups into a new, light industrial building in a small business park. People were naturally concerned about the move, new commute patterns, and giving up familiar spaces. When the new facility opened, featuring all new interiors, extensive daylight provided by abundant exterior windows, and updated ceilings (including acoustic batting above the private offices to limit sound transmission), people quickly forgot about their concerns. One very telling sign of the success of the project was to observe that people were dressing nicer compared to before. Seemingly the fresh new space refreshed people’s spirits.

The features of bad spaces aren’t terribly difficult to imagine. Bad lighting. Lots of clutter. Poor maintenance record. Stale air. Noisy. Dank basement spaces. People complaining. You get the picture — you can no doubt quickly think of many bad spaces you’ve encountered, whether government workspaces or otherwise.

What matters most about sustaining these bad spaces is the human toll. Cheerless spaces drain our enthusiasm and positive outlook. I’ve heard stories of employees, with no window any where near their assigned spot, texting and emailing colleagues with seats closer to exterior windows to ask about the weather and possible impacts on the commute home. Bad spaces we observed in this most recent tour included not only the infamous endless, dingy corridors, but work points with no access to natural light let alone actual views to the outside. Dead, or radically underutilized spaces lack energy — there’s no buzz, no vibrancy; this undermines people’s desire to show up and contribute to the mission of the organization.

Sameness can be seen, in light of consistency and equity, as a positive attribute of work spaces; however, when sameness takes on an immense scale, the lack of variation dulls the senses and the imagination. This is a very real outcome of overly rigid standards applied over years of tightly controlled facilities management. What may have started as a smart, well-designed workstation on display in a commercial showroom, so-called “workplace solutions” deployed in a rote fashion across thousands of settings create an environment — a workplace experience — which is a real turn off. Employers want (need!) employees to be turned on at work, not cheerless and dull.

The US General Services Administration has been at the forefront of studying the design and management of workspace for the Federal Government for years. In many respects their accumulated knowledge and expertise is exemplary, though mostly invisible to the majority of government office workers. The GSA Workplace Specialists work hard on behalf of combatting mediocrity by promoting the best solutions and designs for their agency customers to choose from. But the story doesn’t end there. Departments, agencies, offices and bureaus within the federal government must operate within ostensibly tight budgets. This is appropriate; however, not all government officials with budgetary oversight are easily swayed by the arguments that better employee experience begets work and better outcomes.

Public sector organizations and private sector organizations alike prioritize predictable outcomes, and work hard to minimize uncertainty. Unfortunately employee experience, engagement and wellness — until quite recently — have seldom been considered in crafting and defending budgets. Legislation and policies, often taken up and formalized in codes and regulations, help to guide the efforts of building developers and designers in the crafting of truly livable and salutary work spaces. That said, without a commitment to good design and proper space management, new spaces in new buildings cannot be counted on to provide good experience for the people who make up the workforce today, let alone those who will make up the future workforce tomorrow.

Some broader themes relate to the people’s workplace experience relate to the ecosystem of influences which shape the workplace experience: physical space, digital space, the organization people are part of (mission, vision, structure, etc.), work processes, the supports provided by groups within the organization such as facilities and real estate management, IT, HR, Safety and Security, organizational policies, and organizational culture.

Some of those themes:

• Embracing uncertainty in facilities management

• Embracing uncertainty in people management

• Design for sustaining interior environmental quality in support of employee experience

• Black swans and catalysts

• Growth mindset; vulnerability

• Learning while forgetting

• Choice architecture

• Experience design

• Service design

• Role of designers

“By treating broken expectations as chances to investigate possibilities within the dynamic now, curious people free themselves of the entrancement with outcome that hobbles our capacities for discernment.”

- Maggie Jackson, “Uncertain — The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure”, p. 46, (c) 2023, Prometheus Books, Latham, MD

Build it and they will come…

So, what makes a good space good? What are the right spatial conditions for having a great experience? In upcoming posts I’ll continue to explore and expand upon these themes.

Good: useful or helpful; appropriate to a particular purpose

Space: the dimensions within which all things exist and move

Good Space: space which people experience as inviting and which fosters their personal and social sense of purpose and wellbeing over time.