Designed Convertibility

Based on the owner’s needs, E&SW has been designed to be an office and nothing else, and despite the fact that the space within the building can be reconfigured, it was not designed with a different use in mind. This is backed up by the fact that the architects have designed the building with no room for extra services, as explored in 8.5.1.3, this shows that they did not have another use in mind as uses like laboratories would require a lot of additional plant.

Something that the architect has done in an attempt to ensure that if needed, the building would have the ability to change use, is to make sure that the floor to ceiling height is well beyond BCO standards for offices. This could result in fewer limitations on other usage. The architect felt that floor to ceiling heights were one of the most limiting factors for future adaption. E&SW PA gained this understanding from looking at 1960’s office blocks, “1960’s tower buildings, when you looked at adapting them. The thing that tends to absolutely cripple you is the floor to ceiling, or floor to floor heights” (E&SW PA). Floor to ceiling height is also mentioned in the literature as one of the main factors that influences the ability to adapt a building (Wilkinson et al. 2009b). It could be suggested that this need for high ceiling heights was not expressed explicitly within the brief by the client; it was the architect that included this limit in the design due to previous experiences. This proactive consideration of the convertibility of the building could show that the architect is interested in how the building responds to change over time. But the conflict between this and the limitation on additional plant, could suggest that the architect does not, currently fully understand how buildings could change.

One issue with the building changing use is the location. It is very isolated, despite it being on the extremity of the E&SW site. The boundary could be changed around the building, to allow external companies to use it but it is still a building by itself, with no local amenities near it. So whilst it has

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want to increase the footprint they would again have to reduce that overall footprint elsewhere on their site. This shows that even if the building could be scaled up the planning would not allow the extension.

8.6.1.6. Designed Movablility

Movable strategies are generally very specialist buildings, or potentially temporary buildings. The building is neither of these and could never be moved from its current location.

8.7. Evaluation of Buildings Adaptability

Now that all of the E&SW’s adaptable design decisions and constraints have been explored, it is possible to look at what has happened in use since the building has been completed. This informs the feedback output of this thesis. For this evaluation it was deemed necessary to not only explore changes that have occurred but also changes that the user desires. It is felt that addressing both of these gave the architect a complete picture of their building now it is in use, as it is believed that this best helps their future design decisions. The following sections is again split using Schmidt III et al.

(2010b) adaptable categories.

8.7.1. Adjustable Changes that have Occurred

Within the office there have been a number of changes that have occurred already with regards to adjustability. The first is that there have been a few furniture moves and extra desks added: “We have had a few office changes in terms of furniture moving round and departments growing. There have been some additional desks” (E&SW User 3).

Another change is the removal of the hot desk and the large wooden touchdown area on the top floor. This was explained by one of the users when they said that it “was going to be a hot-desk area so that visitors could theoretically have been able to just come in, connect and work from these hot desks, but that never really took off” (E&SW User 2). The users also explain why it did not work, “it was a big, thick, brown wall made from beautiful wood, and it looked glorious. But there was nothing

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section 8.3.2. There have also been additional uses for the atrium including using it for a company quiz and social area.

An issue with adjustability that has become apparent when speaking to the users is the ability to add in more desks. User 4 expressed a concern that this was not as easy as it should be: “five or six months ago, we had to insert more desks. We had to shuffle things around. The building was supposed to be very flexible for moving bits around, but it turned out not to be quite as easy as that.

Creating another half a dozen desks, power and IT, just was not as easy as first thought. And I’m dreading the next time we have to do another reshuffle” (E&SW User 4). This shows that whilst the moving of the desks is possible the ability to service those desks is a much harder proposition, meaning the open span offices are not as flexible as the architect implied.

8.7.2. Adjustable Changes that are Desired

There was no discussion of desired adjustable changes. However, as can be seen from the issue relating to the desks in section 8.7.1, it is not as simple as just moving furniture in some instances.

This is something that could have an effect on the building further into its use, as it could be suggested that the users are less likely to move furniture around, even if it is going to improve how they work, due to the difficulties that have already occurred.

8.7.3. Versatile Changes that have Occurred

A change that was a conflicting issue between the architects and the users was the retrofitting of meeting rooms in the messy areas (refer to section 8.4.1.2) to create very small one to one rooms. In the architects initial design there was one large meeting room situated in each of the messy areas, this was, however, changed during the build.

Some of the smaller changes included changing one of the meeting rooms into a quiet room, where staff could go if they need somewhere quiet to work. However, this has notbeen successful as it was expressed that it was not used. Another change is the installation of an area where the technical or

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Figure 8.10: An image of the ‘touchdown station’ on the first floor, which is used by field staff (Authors own image)

An issue within the building that has affected its versatility is the poor utilisation of meeting rooms.

It was felt, despite assurances from the architects, that there were not enough meeting rooms, which is why some of the storage rooms were changed into meeting rooms, despite not being fit for purpose. However, as expressed by one of the users, “People think we do not have enough meeting rooms, which is untrue – we do. It’s just that we have a culture where we still use too many of the meeting rooms unnecessarily for example for informal chats” (E&SW User 2). This suggests that cultural issues can also affect the adaptability of a building. The culture of this office has played a big part in the building usage and decisions made since occupancy. If this information was fed back to architects it might inform their future designs in a certain way, and help them understand user education requirements on available spaces.

8.7.4. Versatile Changes that are Desired

Despite the versatility of the design there are still some desired changes within the building. As outlined above, the FM team recognise that the one to one meeting rooms are not well utilised, or

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move to this building as a way to reduce the amount they store: “there has been a project moving to electronic storage and looking at that electronic storage and using this building as a catalyst to do it.

We have said we have to do it as we are not going to have enough room for everything” (E&SW BM).

There is also a call for more storage for deliveries, as currently deliveries are simply stored in an area under the stairs. Figure 8.11 below shows how deliveries are currently stored, this is something that the architect could learn from in future buildings, but currently does not know about.

Figure 8.11: An image of the current storage arrangement within E&SW (Authors own image)