Towards a new interior architecture: Taming the GSA's workplace portfolio using work pattern tools

Abstract

In June 2010, President Obama issued a memorandum to all US executive federal agencies to achieve three goals in the foreseeable future: to eliminate excess federal real properties, to raise the occupancy rates in underused buildings, and to improve the energy efficiency and sustainability of the federal real property portfolio. This directive has re-energised federal agencies to aggressively evaluate their real estate foot-prints, but this eagerness is not without its pitfalls. This paper reviews the history of past government space reductions and why they were not successful. It touches on why, this time around, there are very legitimate reasons to hope that a more structured approach, supported by simple but robust technology, promises a much better result that will reduce federal space in a way that is consistent with agency missions and the way in which people actually work today. The introduction of mobility and mobile technology means a 1980s workplace for a 2010 workforce typically leaves huge tracts of traditional workstations unoccupied over the course of the day, which is a highly questionable use of valuable real estate and carbon, especially when it is clear that out-moded facilities so often fail to support the more collaborative activities of a modern workforce. Furthermore, these low occupancies exist in both public and private workplaces where the reali-sation of the magnitude of recent change has failed to take hold. The paper ends with a discussion of the US General Services Administration's ‘Hallmarks of an Effective Workplace’ and how tools for understanding work patterns based on mobility and interaction make real estate rationali-sation more rational, rendering more effective support for the modern federal workforce and serving as a model for others.