A Vision of the New Workplace Revisited

In April 1993, the International Development Research Council?s journal, Industrial
Development, published an article entitled “A Vision of the New Workplace.”
(Industrial Development ran in Site Selection magazine for several
years.) The authors were Francis Duffy from London-based DEGW, an architect who
has spent most of his career studying and acting upon the ever-changing relationship
between office design and business; and Jack Tanis from Steelcase, who has exactly
the same interests but with a point of view that starts with the business issues. Both
Duffy and Tanis had worked on the development of Workplace Envisioning, Steelcase?s
pioneering program for helping office users define their emerging requirements. The
ideas that underpin Envisioning have profoundly influenced Steelcase?s new portfolio of
products called Pathways.

Some unconventional ideas were presented in the paper, ranging from an analysis of
the implications of contemporary managerial ideas, particularly those related to
Business Process Re engineering (BPR), to the design of office space; predictions of
the direction of change in user requirements for office accommodation; and a lament on
the failure of the property industry as well as of architects and designers — not to
mention the construction industry — to anticipate change.

This account of Duffy and Tanis?s experience over the last six years brings the story up
to date. Six years is a very long time in a rapidly developing field. Some things have
changed and others have not.

This article, which revisits the territory explored so tentatively over half a decade ago,
introduces two kinds of data that were unavailable in 1993. The first are tests that
corroborate the trends predicted in the Interaction/Autonomy model presented in the
earlier paper.

The second is case studies of the innovative use of office space for
business purposes by a number of leading organizations. To these data are added
reflections on the business case for Business Process Re-engineering, thoughts on
measuring the impact of design on business performance, and finally, further
comments on the consequences for the property and construction industries of linking
design directly to business goals.