In 2002, Bill Blackburn developed a Pod for the Vanderbilt Center for Better health based on the CubeOffice system. This is very close to my original Pod design which I conceived for Vanguard in 1995 yet much easier to build and configure in a wide variety of ways. The VBCH navCenter was built and installed, mostly from stock components, in less than 30 days.

Click on the graphic (left) for a history of MG Taylor/AI POD development 1990 to 2010. We have 5 PODs we are building today. It is still a low production business and we still have yet to build out a floor based on of this solution.

To us, the Pod represents the basic amount of space and amenity that every KnowledgeWorker requires. Of course, there are several different ways to accomplish this utility and function. The Pod is one. The skin of the Pod can be fabric, wood or Plexiglas - or sections can be open. This facilitates great flexibility and adaptability.

The metaphor of streets, Alleys, neighborhoods, and so forth, creates a powerful specification in regards traffic flow and amenity. The strong architectural forms of the basic elements and armature allow a variety of different specific furniture solution-set clusters and “negative” spaces that make the niches for sitting areas, support tools, one-off workstations and small team work areas. Larger group areas are defined by Cube Office components and fold-out WorkWall systems in a variety of configurations. Prospect and refuge along with great variety and flexibility can be achieved on the horizontal plane. However, this is not enough. The constant flat, low ceiling - particularly in large spaces - is not nature to human consciousness. There is a different psychological sense in looking up and downward within an architectural space. This “sense” is important to certain mental states and, thus, to certain processes.

This Center was in continuous use for 14 years. It has served three different “owners,” the Acacia Group, MG Taylor and, now, CNL. The flexibility and adaptability built-in to its layout has allowed it to accomplish three divergent missions without requiring modification. While capital intensive when first built, its durability and adaptive utility has netted a life cycle cost lower than conventional construction.

Most of the 6,000 square feet is open and adaptable - four large areas flow into one another or each can be closed individually or all at once. The three level ceiling and light coves accomplish three things: small areas are defined as part of the larger space (so that “place” is maintained with 6 or 60 in the space); the ceiling is free of the usual clutter and therefore “reads” as an active architectural element; and, the HVAC is delivered from within the coves and does not blow on people in the space.

Palo Alto KnOwhere Store built 1997 viewed from the second level incubation Loft. The knOwhere Stores incorporated retailing, event environments , business incubation, research and the MG Taylor corporate offices. They operated between 1996 and 2003.

Work under way at the two story high opening dome at the Palo Alto knOwhere Store center point. The entire front wall of the PA store opened up and so did the dome. This provide natural ventilation which reduced the need for heating and cooling in the temperate Northern California environment even in the center of a city.

The dome cost $20,000 and was considered a great expense at the time. This will be about 100 dollars a month over the period of the lease. This simple “trick” of curved forms, low, medium and high ceilings, with the play of natural light - all interacting with appropriate dynamic rhythm - creates a space that draws people like a magnet. This area acts as the “center” of the 20,000 square foot space and turns what otherwise would have been a low, dark environment into a dynamic, exciting place to be. The dome with the first and second floor ceiling collars added less than one-half a percent to the cost of the project - netting a high architectural return on investment.

Budgets come and go - buildings last a long time. This building is forever altered and now has a value many times the investment. Spending money on “features” will not necessarily do this. The treatment has to be based on intrinsic human values and the way that people interact with space. It has to support the processes that take place within the environment.

In a world that increasingly builds bland environments lacking identity, brand and “sense of place,” people respond strongly and positively to strong architectural armatures, the use of natural light, fresh air as the weather allows (more often that supposed) and carefully selected high quality materials. This does not have to be expensive. The Palo Alto lease, including lease hold improvements and interior furnishings, was under $30 a square foot per year in a real estate market that had less than 1% vacancy at the time of remodeling, and typically rented undeveloped, unfurnished space for more than this.

The Capital Holding steel structure created an armature which acted as a conduit for electrical, LAN, multimedia and phone lines - and, supported the the KnowledgeWorkers deck from which the above photo was taken. The WorkWalls could be moved from one side to another - along with all lines - allowing the Break Out/Office space to open to another area of the Center. It was with the Orlando Management Center and this project that we laid the foundations for our technology and wiring strategies.

The next stage of this [link: technology integration] process involves building computer and multimedia technology into the WorkFurniture, establishing Center-to-Center RemoteCollaboration and RemotePresense, and developing the first generation of “smarts” into the system components themselves. This work is presently very high on AI’s agenda and is key to several aspects of our Patent and Patents Pending.

Most of the basic ideas that were put into product during the 90s came from my 60s, 70s, and 80s thinking. We built more, however, in this last decade than all the others before it. This allowed us a faster, more iterative, rapid prototyping process. The 2001 and 2002 installations became mature expressions of these ideas.

Even so, in the 1990s, we are just getting to the level of component design and manufacture that we envisioned when we started.

The level of component capability, that we are able to deliver today, allows a utilization of space and level of knowledge “manufacture” than can not be achieved without it. We are now able to produce an environment that utilizes Pattern Language principles, serves the full venue of individual, team and large group collaboration functions, provides greater personal space to each KnowledgeWorker than other systems, and overall, achieves greater space utilization than standard layouts using existing manufactured components.This is not an accident but the result of a decade of progressive projects that integrated design and building with operations. All this can now be done at competitive costs and in a radically reduced design-to-move-in time frame. This cannot be accomplished by design - or even manufacturing - alone. While there are issues related to the design of architecture - this is not the major problem. The furniture manufactures are capable of far more progressive designs than the present market will buy. Clients and customers want more but maintain a buying-system that makes the creation of quality workspaces almost impossible. The total system and method by which this work is done is the “problem” - I discovered this upon my entry [link: 1956] into architecture. I have devoted most of my years of work since then to discovering - and inventing - a way that consistently produces another kind of result.

Getting to this “point of beginning” took 20 plus years since what is now MG Taylor was formed. Every step along the way was funded by a real client solving a real problem. Every piece and component went into a work environment dedicated in some way to creativity/collaboration augmentation. The design team that did this work has been small. I started the process alone and was joined by Langdon Morris in the late 70s and again in the early 90s, and then the current members: Bill Blackburn in the early 80s and who operated AI [link: ai] 1992 to 2002 and still designs for us, Gunner Kaersvang (1995-1999), Paul Lyons 1997- 2002). On the design-detailing and production end, Bryan Ross since 1987 becoming full-time manager of the AI production facility starting, 1998 to 2005. As small as AI is, it has one of the most comprehensive, and integrated, lines of work furniture solutions and design services on the market today. And, it sells more of this new kind of furniture than many of the large manufactures. As we proceed along this path, we will build an integrated design/build/deploy-use supply chain that is deeply embedded in our larger enterprise [link: mgt valueweb].

We are just beginning to see - in this newly emerging postindustrial, global economy - this kind of linkage in ValueWebs [link: valueweb architecture] and supply chains. Product improvement is both user-driven and “pushed” by a strong producer vision. Batch production is giving way to lean, mass-customization methods allowing for rapid development and evolution of products and services. The distinction between products and services is blurring. Design wins as we can see with the i-Mac, TT and Mini. Making things and delivering them to a market is the best way to design. This is employing the 4 Step Recreation Model [link: 4 step] and 3 Cat [link: 3 cat] Models as an OS for a complex ValueWeb. It involves, for us, using our product/service offerings as the factory for making them. We are intimately involved in the entire design, build use cycle.

My design work of the 90s was not just about the “what” - the product. It was about putting in place an “engine” of creation that could build the environments we wanted - which themselves, were “engines of creation.” This was, and still is, a bootstrap process. Multiple iterations to make the tool to refine the tool to make the tool. The decade of the 90s has come and gone. The work we now have in progress will accomplish many of the elements indicated in the Capital Holding sketch. [link: ch sketch] I do not see this work as the “end” - I see it as a minimum foundation for an effective future work environment. In reality, we are just getting in place many elements that should have been ubiquitous in the work environment long ago [link: reworking the workplace].

Joseki Offices, June 2002, were hand built on site by a team of students from SFIA. A mundane space was turned into a flexible environmnet expressive of the Joseki brand.

[link: future link]

When a new position is created, it acts as a meme [link: what is meme]. This “sets” the game, within which, all the variations are played out until a new game is created. The “office” - the workplace - is in the process of being recreated. Which concept of “office” gets on the “increasing returns” slope involves a critical competition. A competition of ideas, of mental bandwidth of decisional maker’s attention. It is not the money issue that matters so much as the total set of consequences that flows from the choices made and what is consequently built. How people think and work frames the range of solutions that they can see and work on. This in turn establishes the quality of what we do as a species [link: a future by design not default].