IIDA Perspective - Fall/Winter 2016 - 47

Driving Mobility

hen one of his clients wanted to redesign its headquarters but couldn't envision a workspace beyond cubicles,
CLIVE WILKINSON, IIDA, FAIA, persuaded them to try something new: a mobile workspace that
includes couches, private phone booths, glass-walled meeting rooms, and even a café.
"The client believes the design has massively impacted their ability to collaborate and work effectively,"
says Wilkinson, founder and president of Culver City, California, USA-based Clive Wilkinson Architects. That experience
is emblematic of the rapid and sweeping changes in workspace interiors, he says. Now, about half of his clients request these
mobile workspaces. "And the ones who aren't are on the verge of it."
Technology has been driving that mobility, allowing people not to be
chained to their desks or even their offices, Wilkinson says.
In addition to mobility, the workspace of the future will be
defined by flexibility. "The workplace is becoming much more
varied," he says. "We're getting rid of rows and rows of desks
and isolated offices and replacing them with both enclosed
and unenclosed meeting spaces. It will look much
more like a domestic environment where there's a
customization of spaces."
As people become more mobile and as their
work becomes more project-based, more
workspaces will host their own employees
and people from outside the company. "Once
people become more mobile, they'll become more
project-based, and project teams will collaborate
in one place," Wilkinson says. "You might have your
clients working in your office for periods of time, so your
office becomes host to more and different types of people."
That means workplace design must shift to meet new needs.
"It's bizarre that for a couple hundred years the workspace
typically only had a desk or a private office as an offering," Wilkinson
says. "Today increasingly it's a whole suite of things, much more like a
domestic environment where there's a customization of kitchen, dining space, bedroom, bathroom."
Designers will need to help clients embrace this bold new future and understand what the next generation of employees
expects of its work environment. "With quite a lot of our clients, there's a horror of leaving private offices," he says. "The
younger generation is really facilitating the new mobile way of working because it comes naturally to them." -NP

HOW DO YOU DIFFERENTIATE A DESIGN FAD
FROM A TRUE SHIFT?
"When you see a shift in education.
Fads disappear before the school
year is out. The color of the year,
for example, is a fad. But trends
have a longer impact, and you'll
see them being integrated into
school curriculum." -AMY LEIGH
HUFFORD, Student IIDA, 2016 IIDA
Student of the Year, and designer,
NELSON, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
USA

"Designers genuinely interested
in creativity shouldn't look at
superficial design effects, like
wanting to do more avocadocolored curtains. Being decorative
will get you stuck in one period
of time. Understand technological
evolution and societal shifts. Focus
on the large questions of what
a project is doing in its society
and work community and how it
contributes to forward thinking in
the field." -CLIVE WILKINSON, IIDA,
FAIA, founder and president, Clive
Wilkinson Architects, Culver City,
California, USA

"Most designs that are successful
and survive are more classically
based, like furniture that is welldesigned, well-constructed, and
timeless. When I look at a space,
my first reaction is: Am I going to
get tired of looking at this in a year
or five years? That's really the only
litmus test." -DINA GRIFFIN, IIDA,
AIA, NOMA, president, Interactive
Design Architects, Chicago, Illinois,
USA

fall/winter 2016

perspective

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