The workplace we have today does not work.

It cannot be fixed.

It is a leftover artifact of the 19th Century augmented with 20th Century tools and stylistic clichés.

It has to be re-conceived and rebuilt to express human values and the kind of productive effort required by the Knowledge and design Economy.

The ideas, work protocols, design-build organizations and manufactured products that exist today will not accomplish this task.

It is time to wipe the slate clean and think fresh - it is time to get to work.

This manifesto is an invitation to those that want to go beyond what they have been able to do in the past and to take a quantum leap in the art and science of making and using work-habitats.

It is a manifesto for the bold - not the timid. This is not an easy task. The tools are at hand, however, the old paradigm is still firmly entrenched. The system [link] that produces what is, today, is composed of financial protocols, corporate standards, building codes, union procedures, professional enclaves and cowardliness, entrenched user habits and organizational practices that are medieval at best. Remember, the purpose of a system is what it produces. The purpose of the design-build-use system that we have today is the unhealthy work environments we get.

If you want to change the results, you have to fundamentally change the system that produces them.

What is incredible is that few I have met in 49 (as of June 2005) years of making environments [link] - producer, user, investor - actually like what is being produced. From my experience, the industry - if it can be called that - is full of talented well-meaning people who want to do better. But few feel that they can or must make a difference. This Manifesto is for those who believe they must make a difference.

Our workplaces are unhealthy. They cost far too much. They do not facilitate the work that must be done within them. They represent, at best, our past - not our future. They expresses the values of compromise, financial expediency and human exploitation. They are a mockery of any reasonable concept of economy or ecology. They are not efficient. They take too long to build and do not even approach the kind of flexibility required by today’s work and evolving market conditions. They are not happy places. They are not profound. They do not demand of us what we want to become. They do not make sense. Yet, we spend a huge portion of our life in these environments.

Occasionally, some great environments get built. They are rare, expensive and usually don’t last long before compromise and deterioration sets in. The personal cost of making these environments are too high. The number of people who enjoy them - too few. It is great to see them - and use them - but the total result does not get it done.

Long ago, architectects learned to build well for the very rich and privileged - and do so now for those who have the means, knowledge and will to demand good work. Building for the larger population - home or work environments - other than generic “tract” boxes remain a fantasy. Expensive, oversized “boxes within boxes” to live in and minuscule cubicles at work is the sad reality for most of the employed. The poor take what they can get. A low average income can afford the best personal computer system in the world, a fine automobile and any number of competent industrial tools - but not an affordable and healthy work of architecture without engaging in a protracted, risky personal crusade.

There are basics which measure the quality of any civilization: personal security, health, food, energy, education, housing, work, community, access. Access to opportunity, art, alternatives. Freedom of thought and expression including the exercise of legitimate commerce. Architecture addresses and combines many of these basic human requirements. Architecture acts as an armature. If architecture does not work, the entire set is compromised. Architecture is not about pretty buildings for some - it is about the environment that all experience. Architecture requires personal wealth and commonwealth.

This Manifesto is a criticism of the existing order. However, it is more than that. It will seek to “create the problem” in a way that facilitates and encourages real improvement. It actually is possible to make a quantum change in the results. How a problem is framed and defined determines what is solved. Our built environment is a complex, systemic problem. It will not be fixed by fixing the parts. The problems will be dissolved when the system is transformed into a better system.

I have invested 50 years learning to build. In the last 25 of these, I have focused directly on the workplace environment. Only the surface has been scratched, however, the [link: 20 years of taylor environments] makes a demonstration strong enough to support the claim that far better work environments than we get today are possible. The major elements for defining the problem are known. There are many viable, tested, alternatives to every component of the problem-set. We are not lacking in many great examples that have been produced by many talented individuals and firms. We are lacking an effective systematic way of working [link: 7 domains of the taylor system] that spans the entire process of producing and using architecture. We are lacking the will to do it.

Changing market forces and work requirements present a new set of conditions. The churn in the workforce and the general wealth, in major sectors of our population, adds more to our options. Advances in technology and the industrial design arts create both enhanced means and increased user expectations. The instabilities associated with these trends present a window of opportunity. If we do not respond to this opportunity with new business and production processes, new concepts and designs, and far more human and effective built realities, we will have none to look to but ourselves.

In the time that I have worked professionally, a huge portion of the built artifact, that makes up our work places today, have been constructed. The scale and scope of this effort has been immense. It is nothing compared to what is likely to happen, on a global scale, over the next 25 years [link: the case for planetary architecture]. It is in this coming period, that we have the opportunity is make a new practice of architecture based on a new and old and better criteria. In this same period, more new materials and manufacturing options will be created than in all the centuries before. The essential question is if these new means will be used to built temples of work or work-jails. The outcome will have a profound effect on the quality of life - human, animal and plant - and on the sustain-abilty of our planet as a living system. It will have a profound effect on the kind of products that come out of the office - the values of one are intertwined with the other.

The choice will be made one building at a time. It is made by design and building professionals, by institutions and corporations, by governments, by individual users. No one controls this system - we all do.

How will you vote?

SolutionBox voice of this document:
INSIGHT • POLICY • PROGRAM