Why now? Even in these trying times business can be good, under the right conditions. As we come out of this economic slump, as I mentioned in my post titled "quantum leap", the world will be different, and I want to be a part of that. This is my opportunity to begin something during the worst of times because from here there is no way but up. This is my idea of the office I want to create, this is the new face of architectural practice, or any other practice in what we traditionally call an office.
The new office has to be flexible, adaptable, nimble and versatile. It has to be quick on the feet, respond swift and smart, operate lean, and stay on the leading edge of technology.
The new office has to be versatile, with staff capable of working concurrently and at ease on different projects, project types, building types; for this to work the office has to place education at the forefront of it's operation. Education of it's staff will be it's most valuable capitalization cost.
The new office has to operate on a new model with significantly less overhead, taking advantage of technology by way of teleconferencing and working meetings; electronic reviews of drawings with clients, consultants and contractors; cloud storage and computing allowing remote access to office and project data from home, job site, or other remote locations.
The new office will not necessarily have a physical presence in the traditional sense. No cubicles with workstations, everyone will have a laptop and will be able to work from home, job site, Pete's Coffee, the beach. Rather than a grand lobby with pictures of projects and awards, a gallery of the firm's work will appear on a high-quality web site with high-resolution photographs and interactive displays. Rather than make everyone commute, with inherent stress build-up, expense, danger, environmental and physical detriment, the office will allow remote work as much as possible and will get together for face-to-face meetings when appropriate.
The new office will not have a hard and fast work schedule: everyone will have an electronic office calendar with all it's projects and office activity kept current via the Internet. As long as the project deadlines are met, M-F, 9-5 is meaningless. When working from home, social interaction will be maintained via IM and when necessary video-conferencing; we can't escape that medium so we might as well use it to our advantage. On the other hand, Fridays will be reserved as team-building days, office-wide meetings, in person, where we will learn as a group. Anyone will have the opportunity to show and tell about anything they are working on as long as they can make the case that it is related to a creative field. A cool new bicycle design? An innovative textile? A design for a base in Mars? Fridays will also be used for charrettes, design competitions, educational field visits, etc. and as a last resort, work.
