p r o g r a m ss s t a t e m e n t |
| This Program Statement identifies the philosophy and function of the UniManagement NavCenter. These are the ideas that drive the design, equipping and construction of the NavCenter, as wells as, guide how it is to be operated. To supplement and carry forth into design and construction the precepts of this Program Statement are the Specification, Drawing, Time Line and Options pages that are linked to this document. All of the vantage points [link: vantage points model] from philosophy to task - are necessary in order to create a specific design concept and properly implement it. Some, given the nature of their work with this project, will be more interested in the ideas - others, in the specifics of the design and how to build it. This is understandable. However, It is a requirement that everyone who is involved in the project spend the time necessary to explore the full scope of these documents - particularly those areas outside each individual’s work focus and immediate interests. It takes all different kinds of media: face-to-face dialog, writing, drawings, specifications, models and graphics to fully describe and delineate a design and how it can be realized. Context and understanding is required so that good design and building judgment can be exercise at the many levels of the project across time. Without this context,design development and contract documents are sterile and will fail to convey the real intent of the design and will, therefore, fail to achieve the desired result. |
| I bring 50 years experience to this project the last 26 of which have been devoted to building and operating creative, collaborative, learning work environments. I can design, engineer, build and operate a NavCenter. This is not my intent in this case. My intent is to develop a new version of what I have learned how to do in collaboration with a Design/Build/Use Team made of of MG Taylor, its ValueWeb, UniCredit and its excellent design, architect, builder, consultant partners. In order for a process to be truly collaborative - which exceeds cooperation - there must be a high degree of common ground. The Program Statement is intended to begin building this common ground. At MG Taylor, we call this “creating the problem” [link: creating the problem] which is the first half the creative process [link:seven stages of the creative process]. |
| This Program Statement is the result of interaction between myself, Anna Simioni, Dario Maina, and Maurizio Travaglini. Other members of the Team are invited to provide feedback which I will responed to and incorporated as appropriate. This Statement, in its present form, is the beginning of the discovery process not the end. A wiki has been established [link: to be provided] to provide a interaction place for greater participation in an extended dialog throughout the design-to-impelmentation and use processes. |
| My sense of this project evolved over a 60 day period which included four stays in Milan and two trips to the project site. In Turin, I had discussions with individuals about the state of the economy and the perceived need for an innovation center there. I was also able to observe the preparations for the Olympics. In Milan I had a behind the scenes tour of La Scala and several walks about the center of the city including the Cathedral and the Galleria [link: virural tour]. Dario, when he saw my interest was always ready with a web site URL, a tour or a book and a trip to Lesmo - the existing UniCredit training center and to which I was to return to another time. I had discussions about the Italian political economy with Maurizio (an others) and several with Anna about her goals for UniManagement. My other work during this period was for the World Economic Forum - supporting the installation of the WorkPlace at the Annual Meeting in Davos and transferring the Taylor Method to Forum people - and on the SDC Master Plan for their 7 acre campus in Baltimore - a project that has community and economic development at its core. During this period, I also facilitated the Private Wealth Council which required doing research about, conceiving a media show, and writing a paper [link: a future by...] on the rate of change and complexity and the risks and opportunities for humanity in the 21st Century - a subject which has been at the core of my work since the mid 70s. I believe that architecture is fact-based and experience-based. It is, at its best, timeless and always the consequence of a time and place. It is by responding to, in an universal and comprehensive way, a local condition that enduring value can be created which deals with the particular while transcending it. For these reasons, I always pay close attention to my experiences, and the context of those experiences, when I design a project. It is from the sum of these experiences that the best ideas emerge. |
| While the UniManagement project was an attractive one to me from the beginning, its true importance dawned on me slowly. The SDC project came my way as a consequence of a paper I wrote a number of years ago on the process of restoring both economy and community in an area that had long been depressed. UniCredit heard about my work, in 2003 [link: steps to xanadu], because I had offered some ideas to a team exploring innovation and economic growth in Northern Italy. My practice is one of a few that combines social economic issues with environmental design with the learning, design and collaborative processes necessary to address those issues. As, I got into the UniManagement NavCenter design process and had the interaction mentioned previously, the following ideas emerged: |
The EEU is being forced by circumstances to match U.S. power while considering the rise of China. Economic innovation is critical in this circumstance.
The increasing change in the rate of change and complexity will produce as much market risk and opportunity, over the next few decades, as has the last 100 years in total - this is a conservative estimate that will require radical innovation in all sectors of the economy including banking.
This change will be driven by disruptive technologies that will forever alter humanities’ relationship to the state, the organizations they work with, each other, and the natural environment. This mean that learning is life long and personal development cannot be separated from corporate development. This is the era of the knowledge worker, designer and collaborator requiring skills not yet ubiquitous in human society.
Humanity faces unprecedented risks and opportunities from global warming to intelligent machines and powerful human augmentation. These are rushing upon us much faster than the decision making processes of our major institutions are responding. This means that nearly everything has to be rethought in real-time - education and work are no longer different tasks.
Italy faces the risk of falling behind the EEU which will compromise its unique contribution to the determent of both. The base has to be maintained in order to expand. This will require both leadership and innovation. Turin is unique and an example of a broader symptom. The solution will be found in regional economic development - not the State. And, the historic value of Italy has to be reinvented and brought into the 21st Century.
UniCredit is becoming a true European bank independent of traditional cultural and political boundaries. This is building a new kind of organization. Traditional structures do not necessarily migrate and scale. Organizational design and innovation becomes key in this circumstance - a new UniCredit culture will emerge. Traditional HR and organizational development methods will not prove adequate.
Leaving Lesmo is a symbol of the shift to a new multicultural bank with a global perspective. What replaces it will be different but is must be more - a portal to the 21st Century - not a let down.
The UniManagement environment and operating process must be a 21st Century experience bringing people into the future they helped design - not 20th century mentality “pushing” people into a predetermined future.
The 21st Century, assuming humanity survives and prospers, will see the end of the “soul-body dichotomy” - economics and ecology will be come one; ethics and business practices will be one; work-life and private-life will be one; Intellect and emotion will be one. Borders will become permeable. What today seems idealistic and far away will become practical and ubiquitous. There is a caveat, however, only if we pay attention to the truly critical issues of our time and prepare ourselves for this magnitude of change. Art, science, engineering, production and business have to merge.
Italy was the place of the last Renascence. |
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| These reflections directly lead to the Functional Process COMPONENTS covered at UniCredit Design Specifications. [link: unicredit specs]. If these reflections have merit, then what capabilities must be embedded through out the UniCredit organization and ValueWeb to promote it success and sustainability? |
Anna sent me an e-mail outlining her thoughts for the Program Statement - they are listed below:
UciManagement program statement:
We want to develop an organization where:
Learning and development is the primary goal, at group and/or individual level
We are part of our global perspective
We get value from flexibility but we have a structured way to achieve results
We understand that differences provide an array of perspectives (diversity) that lead to truly innovative approaches
If we want to learn, we are able to “de-learn” something
People can think to real problems in an hassles free environment
People are put through an intense cooperative experience or work on self cognitive/decision making awareness/development not only on emotional awareness/development
People gets insights of our Group/world complexity (i.e. multicountry, multicultural)
Everybody feels accountable of the individual and group results
Everybody can (is stimulated to) share thoughts, concerns, expectations
You understand that differences provide an array of perspectives (diversity) that lead to innovative approaches for a truly European bank
You feel that everything is built around you
You can’t stay passive, aside, “cold”
You feel part of a community/experienced based network
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| An architectural Program Statement must cover far more than a simple statement of utilitarian use and description of physical arrangement as has become the default practice. It must create a design challenge which informs the entire design process and establishes the criteria by which many thousands of design decisions are made. The Program Statement is the first iteration of the design [link: design formation model]. It states the goals of the project and describes the means by which these goals will be accomplished. An authentic work of architecture is far more than a mere building. There are many aspects to be considered that go into its making [link: definition and criteria of architecture] and use [link: design formation model]. |
| A work of art requires a theme [link: theme in architecture] in order to have coherence and power. The theme evolves out the the central ideas of a project and becomes the means where by these ideas can be translated into physical form through the use of denotation and connotation. |
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| The economy of Italy, UniCredit becoming the first truly European bank, the condition of Turin, the growth of the EEU, the challenges of the 21st Century - its risks and prospects for humanity - all make up the context of UniManagement which can be seen as either one of many other corporate training units - only better - or as something fundamentally transformational in its work and effect on its community. |
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| Often FUNCTION in architecture is defined as only the utility aspects with the “art” added on if the budget allows. I reject this dichotomy. I thinking about the function of the UniManagement space the same applies. |
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| Economics is not to be confused with that necessary thing called a budget. Budgets are tools of administration. They may - or not - be truly economical. The economics of this project pertain to its performance over time, how it creates human capital and to the extent it earns a return on financial capital. The economy of a NavCenter is discussed, in general terms, elsewhere [link:] The economics of the UniManagement NavCenter will depend on the business model which is ultimately created. At the moment, this is not determined other than the project will start as a mostly internally focused cost center. |
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| The theme is RECREATION - to re-create oneself, organization and society. This is the purpose of this space. The theme of the central space of the NavCenter - the Radiant Room - was articulated by the Permasteelisa lighting engineer when he said “the way to thinking about this is if you were lighting a market.” This is a perfect understanding of the main collaborative space. It is a market place of ideas and their expression in the form of knowledge artifacts. It is a place where knowledge is created and shared and recreated in the form of practical designs. The THEME must be expressed, directly and literally, in the physical form and presence of the space itself. |
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| The expression of a work of architecture is the stance that it takes and the statement it makes within a social context. Just as buildings can make place for and anchor individual and group activities, they can do the same for a community, a nation and even a world. They become iconic - think of the Taj Mahal [link: tour of the taj mahal] - or Falling Water [link: falling water] . |
| The Galleria, in its physical-social setting, has been described as follows: |
“The 640-foot-long north/south axis of its cruciform plan links the secular Piazza della Scala on the north to the spiritual Piazza della Duomo on the south. In 1877, a triumphal arch was added to the southern end of this cruciform gallery, thereby formally terminating this covered urban link between the opera house and the cathedral. The iconography of the inlaid mosaic concourse and the painted pendentives of the 164-foot octagonal dome, raised over the crossing, represents the union of church and state which first came into being with the triumphant nationalist revolution of 1848.”
Kenneth Frampton and Yukio Futagawa
Modern Architecture 1851-1945
p26. |
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| Today, the Galleria is a thriving shopping mall and place to gather. It is one center in a cluster of centers which make the CENTER of Milan. Its symbolism remains no matter if explicit or not. It is part of what defines the nature of this city. It creates memory and identity. |
| La Scala [link:] is a significant anchor in this complex. Starting in 2002, a controversial reconstruction and addition to the theatre was undertaken by the Swiss Architect Mario Botta. It is an amazing piece of engineering creating a completely modern back stage and support system while preserving the original house [link: The Restoration and Restructuring of the Theatre alla Scala]. I am not going to go into the controversies other than to point out their cause. If you look at Opera and its place of Italian life - and sense of life - and the historical significance of this building, it can be seen that there is no way that a major alteration of this sort could possibly be free of controversy. The point that is relevant to the UniManagement project is that - although I do not have the figures - I am certain that it would have been much less expensive to tear the entire complex down and build a modern theater from scratch in its place. This is, of course, unthinkable. To do so would have violated the soul of Italy and deprived the World of a global icon. It would have destroyed social memory. It terms of total costs it would not have been good economics either. UniManagement is the act of UniCredit moving from Lesmo to Turin to establish a learning a design center for it senior management - those who will build a European bank and pass the leadership to a new generation. What does this mean? |
| To answer this, lets first consider Lesmo. |
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f u n c t i o n a l xp r o c e s sx c o m p o n e n t s |
| In regards the task of designing, building, equipping and operating the the UniManagement NavCenter, this Program Statement mandates a set of Functional Process COMPONENTS [Link:functional process components]. These are the high level performance specifications which, in turn, are translated into specific design criteria for the systems and subsystems of the navCenter. |
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| Return to INDEX Unicredit Academy |
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| Return to INDEX Matt Taylor Biography |
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Matt
Taylor
Milan
February 14, 2006
SolutionBox
voice of this document:
ENGINEERING • STRATEGY • PRELIMINARY
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posted:
February 14, 2006
revised:
April 6, 2006
• 20060214.421988.mt • 20060228.311992.mt •
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Copyright© 2006 Matt Taylor
(note:
this document is about 15% finished)
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