Workplace Desire Lines
Associate Bonnie Toland discusses desire lines, workplace design and how agency encourages creativity.
Having recently returned to CallisonRTKL—this time in a different city—I am adapting to a new environment. Sometimes working in a new office requires letting go of ideas about how a workplace should look. Moving from a region where everything is shiny and new set me up to feel that was a priority and that all offices should have the latest and greatest. Over the past few weeks, I have made some observations that have shifted my judgements and priorities for workplace design.
As a newcomer to this office, I have watched how people have taken ownership of their spaces to meet their needs. Areas that have lost official function have been taken over for a variety of purposes. One corner office—where I have sequestered myself to write this piece—is borrowed for a multitude of uses. I see phone calls, lunch breaks, small meetings and quiet work taking place here.
I have also noticed how colleagues scavenge for pieces and parts to personalize their space. I witnessed one colleague locate extra strong double sided tape to hang tack boards that she had found. A small chair graveyard has developed around the corner, and I scavenged a smaller chair, exchanging the ill-fitting one I had been given. I see impromptu galleries develop, tables appearing with new products, displays of memorabilia and odd collections. This place is teeming with creativity. It may not be pretty, sleek, contemporary or tidy, but it has proven to be a versatile and stimulating environment.
As a literature student, I learned that the most life-changing books were the ones that respected the intelligence and creativity of the reader. If an author too thoroughly spelled out the point of his or her work, the audience disengaged. A good book demands audience participation. As a reader, I must connect the dots and make sense of the story as it relates to my own experience. Otherwise, frankly, I’m bored. And the same is true for design.
Successful design presents an opportunity for occupants or viewers to apply their own meaning and engage with a space in a unique, individual way. If a space is too prescribed, the occupant disengages. The success of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial to move people of all political leanings has been widely documented. The piece respects the audience’s desire to bring and apply meaning. And people have connected with the memorial in unimagined ways, creating shrines and leaving relics that could not have been predicted. Good design is not the end result; it is the opening scene. It nurtures the imagination and ingenuity of those who interact with it.
After generations of fighting well-trodden shortcuts that wore through lawns, many university campuses opted to embrace these paths, now known as desire lines. Why prescribe the paths that people will take only to waste energy and resources to enforce them later? Let students decide where the paths should be, and then pave them.
It’s possible that as we attempt to predict all possible needs and uses for the workplace, we strip employees of their instinct to adapt their space. Maybe we are over designing. Instead of solving every foreseeable need, we, as designers, need to figure out how respect the ingenuity of our audience. How can the space itself be malleable, so that workers can create their own paths? Clients have repeatedly asked me to design spaces for innovation. Perhaps those spaces need to reignite the agency of the occupant. Perhaps the more fixed and considered the space, the less empowered people will feel to create.
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