c o m i n gx i n t ox b e i n g |
part eight of eight - the eighth week |
| This is the beginning of the first week of use. There remains much work to be done in the physical sense and the remaining time, capability and shipping schedules will determine the exact definition of “State 1” in regards the environment, the processes possible, and the level of technology augmentation that will be operational. |
| We have accomplished a beautiful and powerful environment. Virtually all of its systems remain untested. The “test” will actually be the first use of the space with just under 400 top executives of UniCredit and nearly 75 support people many in training of the Taylor method. This is Leaping the Abyss [future link] in a big way. |
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...Sunday - 14/Jan/ 07
4 days to Opening |
| Today was the last day of “heavy” work, in the environment until after the Architecture of Sustainable Growth meeting, and ended with the KnowledgeWorker - joined by most of the UniCredit staff - team having a tour of downstairs narrated by me and upstairs narrated by Anna. This is the first time the two levels have been review as a whole with an emphasis on how they function together as a single system. While there will be cleaning, detailing and trim work going on in the environment, up to the last moment, the work of the KNowledgeWorker Team will be the main activities in the space throughout the rest of this week starting late Monday. |
| The rest of the external KnowledgeWorker KreW arrived in just-in-time for this tour and a diner upstairs followed by some brief comments. The preparatory work, which has been building for a week, will accelerate now. Over the next 72 hours, magic will happen. |
| My practice model of architecture [link: what is architecture?] is based on the conviction that the work is not over with design and the construction - this work is only the beginning of making place. It is how the work is used and lived in that makes it architecture. [link: attributes of architecture]. This is an unusual practice model with few architects even involved in the building process - except to ensure compliance to the design - let alone in the process of learning how to use the work. This is a great liability to architecture because use is the only feedback loop that matters and the best source for the craft to evolve - this neglect of the transfer process is also highly detrimental to the client/end users. Because of this break in the cycle the relationship between designer and client is too often passive-aggressive with the users left out in the cold with the compromised and often impractical result. It takes rapid iterations of Design/Build/Use to defeat this unfortunate circumstance. This is not the direction the profession is moving, however, and this makes the production of what I call Authentic Architecture [link: authentic architecture] more difficult and rare than is necessary. How can you design well if you do not know how to build it? How do you know if what you have designed and built works if you do not use it? How will the users know how to use an innovative work if all they can bring to it is their assumptions only based on past models and experiences learned in environments which constrain rather than augment? The answer is you don’t and they cannot and this is the general state-of-the-art at present. |
...Monday - 15/Jan/ 07
3 days to Opening |
| Yesterday ended at 01:00 for the construction crew and is again underway this morning. Coating and finish of the concrete patio at the Garden POD was started. The carpet on the balcony was finished. Lights in the Radiant Room installed. This has gone slower than expected due to a manufacturing error causing the electricians to have to open and rewire over half the fixtures and there are many of them. |
| The wiring of the PODs and setting of tracks for lighting is progressing - perhaps 80% done. The security system computer in being set up in the Entry POD. The KnowledgeWorker production room on the 3rd floor was finished and used for the first time. My work is largely “defensive” these days consisting of answering questions and anticipating problems in order to head off little compromises made in the name of time and expediency. We brought the large radius 10 panel Radiant Wall into the main space and it fits extremely well. I was relieved that the casters work as they should on the engineered wood floor - this was something that I was concerned about. |
Electrical, some rough, mostly trim and lighting, finishing of concrete, patching, painting, technology set up, art work in the Rotunda, carpet laying, cleaning, setting up WorkFurniture, trimming out the PODS, testing systems, repairing a portion of the wood floor which buckled - these were today’s activities.
Why did the flooring fail and why on this line? We do not know but I suspect it is the reaction between the new lightweight concrete sub-floor - placed to raise the finished floor level - and the mastic used to glue the wood flooring down. Tests are being made and samples sent to the lab. meantime, the floor will be repaired.
The PODs - like the Armature - have a good deal of wiring. In this case the wiring comes up through a turntable floor which adds a little complexity. The center “hatch” will always be accessible in case there are problems or we whish to add more wiring in the if requirements change. All of our pieces can be opened this way as required in the future. This is the first installation of the rotating POD and we are finding our way with some of the details.
The balcony carpet being down now opens this space for our use. We still have on projection screen to mount on the outer wall and that is a task for tomorrow or the next day. We will use this as a team breakout area in this unusually large session - in normal times this will be a sitting, personal work area wit chairs and small Wings.
The multimedia crew is very pressed to get all their equipment, and the system as a system, tested before the event. We had hoped to get them fully set up a couple of weeks ago at the latest - it just was not possible. These are the risks of a schedule that had no slack time from the June 6th of 06 beginning. We will not have the full functionality of the multimedia system for the event but we will have more than we can learn how to use my then. |
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| Mid-day we got back on the PODs now that the electrical rough is done and the floor finish has set. Most of the WorkFurniture and WorkWalls has been set up. Now there are hundreds of little details to finish. We are short the necessary trim for the Lolly Pop columns to trim out the vertical wire runs from the top to the boxes at the base. There is about four times more wire to be covered than the shop estimated. We have several little packages of “emergency” items in the pipeline. In this case, the trim will not get here until just before the introduction to Turino event on the 30th (“State 3 ”). |
| The KnowledgeWorkers were down several times surveying the space and working with the media team - a revised version of the slide show was run from two macs taking advantage of the multi-channel capability of the system. This small improvement greatly increases the impact of the show. This is just a taste of things to come when we will have our system completely finished and know how to use it well. The day ended with a design review of the work to date, diner and then detailed exploration of the Modules. |
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After midnight and the KnowledgeWorker team is still going strong. There will be four more almost round-the-clock days and nights for them - and Mike and his short crew - to finish the set up of the environment, the design of the event and to support the two day session.
Logistics, knowledge-objects, facilitation, graphics, food service, multimedia, documentation, production environment set up - and reset ups - research, longer term operational protocols - for there are none now - workshops design, collaborating with business owners - these are a few of the tasks in support of nearly 400 people over serveral days including prepartion, the event and production afterward.
The KnowledgeWorker’s way-of-working is an exemplary example of how we want the participants to work within the NavCenter. This work is not just supporting a corporate event, it is establishing a practice.
The organization of this team - which will grow to 75 at the event time, itself, with an untrained team to help - is a PatchWorks model/practice/architecture [future link].
This is a hybrid event of conventional corporate meeting processes (in an unusual environment) and collaborative processes. As a total experience, it makes use of our Method in a robust way. This technique is similar to what the Davos WorkPlace has been doing for three years now [future link].
These artful combinations are complex to design just as the NavCenter is the integration of three architectural traditions representing a few hundred years of styles - this is not accident but a deliberate design feature. |
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| This K:Worker team is one of the most talented ever assembled. It is composed of several “generations” of K:Workers from the first start-up (1970s-80s) to the most recent center staff. they are from France, Germany, the US, Italy, Holland and, organizationally, MGT, AoGG, ASEs, Imago, UniCredit, the ValueWeb and the general network. Every skill is represented here including several who have been (and are) Center Masters of facilities such as this. Some of this KreW I have worked with for over a quarter of a century and some I met in just the last few days. Some have done hundreds of designShops® - and, for some this is their first collaborative event. We are not only supporting one event here, we are bringing up a new facility and starting transfer of the Taylor Method. |
| While still incomplete, the space begins to show the layering inherent in the design. At the side entry, there are two sets of doors, the spaces in between and after the doors, the elevators and glass stairway, the radiant Room and finally the far wall housing the media room. The view to the screen from the glass balcony shows some of the possibilities when “solid” and “virtual” media meet to produce architecture. Notice the shadow on the screen superimposed on the image and the reflection of the image on the balcony floor. This also is reflecting back into the room These effects can be controlled by changing the light levels in the space. While useful for this environment, it is also significant as architecture will becoming far more ethereal and virtual over the next 25 years and it is useful to begin to understand what this mean and what effects this has on people. |
...Tuesday - 16/Jan/ 07
2 days to Opening |
| Today, the idea is, after a little clean up, we will start moving into the NavCenter, including our production and storage rooms, and can begin to reconfigure the 3rd floor for the Executive Meeting. Permasteelisa will be done except for numerous touch up items. The AI-AE punch list seems endless. |
| As is turned out, The construction work - throughout the space - continued to dominate the agenda. Then, while I was away for an hour and a half, a Radiant Room setup exercise to be coupled with a working dinner turned into a useless, nothing-to-learn, inappropriate, contradictory to everything-a NavCenter-is waste of KnowledgeWorker time just 36 hours before the curtain goes up. The wrong signal, the wrong gesture, the wrong symbol - at the wrong time. Structure wins. The brakes were thrown on a work process after three days of build up. The creative tension was relieved at the wrong place in the process - but, it will turn out that the anxiety was not which will only build now in a damaging way. We will, of course overcome this. It is an example of how paradigm and habits remain in place even as everyone is genuinely trying to change [future link]. |
| Found out at midnight that my POD skins will land at midnight tomorrow. We are going to try to expedite them and see if we can do an install Wednesday or Thursday night. Actually, across the board for everyone, I think we are two days behind What is the best possible ending point for “State 1.” Not too shabby. Too bad we (Permasteelisa, MGT-AI, the design and prep KreW for the meeting, the cleanup team and support vendors) did not get there. What we will have, however, will be spectacular. The only real risk is that there is not one system or process in this entire environment - and, specifically, for the meeting - that has been tested. I have told the heads of Unicredit Real estate this and they understand and acknowledge this is what I predicted in September and October. I think is there is a deep under standing at this level of the corporation and they will deflect any criticism that is based on a naive level of information. |
...Wedesday - 17/Jan/ 07
1 (!) day to Opening |
| 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds, time 6 carpenters and 50 KnowledgeWorkers. What can be accomplished with massive parallel processing? This part of the narrative wias be written in real time as the day and night progresses - it was not - there was not time. (To be continued). |
...Thursday - 18/Jan/ 07
Opening! - Day One |
| 6 months and a week since the project construction began. Seven weeks and a half since MGT/AI started our installation. This environment is not done yet is it functional. This first-use was 25 percent more people in plenary mode, and nearly 200 percent greater in team breakout mode, than what it was designed to do - still, the environment was able to “hold” and augment the process well. Crowded but not oppressive - the space was “hot.” The teams cooked well and the acoustics were OK. Electronic sound needs more work than the effects of people sound but we will be able to “tune” both over time. Today’s story starts with the entry just as the design [future link] did: |
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| The KnowledgeWorker Team met briefly, before setting up for Day Two, and reviewed the day. There were a few glitches including the media control room briefly losing power, but all we overcome with no awareness on the part of the users. From all accounts the third floor performed brilliantly. Several issues with the building have come to light which we will fix as part of the inevitable and lengthy punch list process. A few bottlenecks in the layout of the space were identified and solved. Nathaniel Brandon once said - in discussing creativity - that “the flash of insight comes to one who has prepared to receive it by hard work.” That this building and KreW were able to do a day of this complexity so well given a system that had never been tested is a “miracle.” Well, miracles happen to the prepared. We have one more day to achieve [link: day two] and then we can get back to completing this phase of the building and move on the large task of setting up a permanent Center. |
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The real joy of finishing a work is to see people using it. This starts, in this case with the KnowledgeWorkers, and then the end-users. The environment had having a profound effect even on those building and equipping it. They saw what it is and have a feeling it for all of the right reasons. This work, I think, will be “understood.” Over the next days and weeks we will see. One participant, upon learning that I designed the space congratulated me in quite flattering terms. I told him how it was the synergy of many engineers, designers and craftsman and that we could conceive of it and build it but that is was himself and his colleagues who would - by how they used it - make an enduring work of architecture. The permasteelisa and UniCredit real estate people were justifiably happy and said “done!” I said no, not done - “begun!” This perspective of mine is that of design-build-use. We have nearly finished a physical thing. It has a latent soul. It has to be practiced into being. It has to be educated and raised just as a child has to be. In doing this, the work is transformed and so are those who do it. |
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GoT0: part one of eight - the first week
GoT0: part eight “b” of eight for the rest of week eight |
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| GoTo: UniCredit Handwritten Notebook |
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Matt Taylor
Torino
January 14, 2007
SolutionBox
voice of this document:
BUILD • TACTICS •
EVALUATION
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posted:
January 14, 2007
revised:
January 19, 2007
• 20070114.224190.mt • 20070115.768100.mt •
• 20070116.877686.mt • 200717.000011.mt •
• 20070118.125410.mt • 20070119.222190.mt •
(note:
this document is about 97% finished)
Copyright© Matt
Taylor 2007
Leonado Images copyright© Leonardo3 2006 |
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