The Future of Office Work

This cityLAB + Gensler Los Angeles publication instigates a new conversation about the future of office V1 work, office buildings, and their impacts on downtown Los Angeles. This instigation takes place during an era The Future of Oﬀice Work of urban resurgence in the city and increased mobility in contemporary life. Los Angeles can be considered both America’s last industrial, railroad city and its first post-industrial, automobile-centered city. As such, the trajectory of downtown Los Angeles’s future potentially charts the future of other American downtowns— especially those in the West and in the Sunbelt. Office work in Los Angeles has been sheltered by multiple versions of the mono-functional office building, both high and low-rise, situated within many different settings; from the office parks and low-rise industrial buildings of the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys, to the landscape of logistics that is the Port of Los Angeles, to the autotopia of Century City, to the creative offices spaces of the Westside, and to work- live spaces in a re-imagined downtown. The variety of Los Angeles’s office landscape is the result of decades of architectural experimentation, and, according to some boosters, has contributed to its resilience to broad economic change. The reimagining that continues to transform Los Angeles’s central business district into downtown Los Angeles does so by reconfiguring the regimes of time, place, and selves that set the temporal and spatial definitions of work downtown, and in particular, the kind of downtown work most often labeled “office work”. The Future of Oﬀ ice Work Volume 1: How We Got Here

First published in the United States of America in 2013 Editors: Dana Cuff (cityLAB), Tim Higgins (cityLAB), Shawn Gehle (Gensler by cityLAB UCLA & Gensler Los Angeles), Li Wen (Gensler Los Angeles), Emmanuel Soriano (cityLAB), Christina Gray (cityLAB), Yang Yang (cityLAB), and Aaron Cayer (cityLAB) cityLAB UCLA Department of Architecture +Urban Design Design: Danielle Duryea (Gensler Los Angeles), 1317 Perloff Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1467 Meghan Moran (Gensler Los Angeles) and Dan Oprea (cityLAB) www.citylab.aud.ucla.edu Cover Photography: Ryan Gobuty (Gensler Los Angeles) with concept Gensler Los Angeles by Emmanuel Soriano (cityLAB) 500 S. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90071-1705 Funding for The Future of Office Work: How We Got Here was provided by Copyright © 2013 cityLAB & Gensler Gensler Los Angeles and Gensler’s Firmwide Research Program The Future of Oﬀ ice Work: All rights reserved How We Got Here No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner, without written permission from the publishers, except in the context of reviews.

Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. Table of Contents Introduction 6

City [Place] 12

Building [Enclosure] 30

Desk [Experience] 46

Alternative Oﬀ ice Spaces 64

Findings and Implications 74

Bibliography 78 Introduction This cityLAB+GenslerLosAngelespublication Angeles canbeconsideredbothAmerica’s 2 MichaelJ.DearandStevenFlusty, “Postmodern Urbanism.” 1 For further discussionontime,place,andselves,seeamongothers,Bob Jessop. Valleys, tothelandscapeoflogistics that isthe side, andtolive-workspacesina re-imagined and increasedmobilityincontemporarylife. figured asDTLA).Thisinstigationtakesplace from theofficeparksandlow-rise industrial functional officebuilding,bothhigh andlow- tentially chartsthefutureofotherAmerican of officework,buildings,andtheirim- jectory ofdowntownLosAngeles’sfuturepo- City, tothecreativeofficespacesofWest- Port ofLosAngeles,totheautotopia ofCentury instigates anewconversationaboutthefuture industrial, railroadcityanditsfirstpost-indust- in theSunbelt.OfficeworkLos during aneraofurbanresurgenceinthecity downtowns—especially thoseinthe been shelteredbymultipleversions ofthemono- buildings oftheSanFernando andSanGabriel pacts rise, situatedwithinmanydifferent settings; rial, automobile-centeredcity. Assuch,thetra- ondowntownLosAngeles(recentlyre- Annals oftheAssociationAmerican Geographers Angeles has

West and T last he RegulationApproach,Governance andPost-Fordism, EconomyandSociety Los The reimaginingthatcontinuestotransform Los Angeles’s centralbusinessdistrict(CBD)into

and spatialdefinitionsofworkdowntown, and acquiring,astelecommunications techno- transformed intoaglobaleconomicpole, circuits time, place,andselvesthatsetthetemporal one interpretationofthelatecapitalist Angeleno of accumulationhavebecomeincreasingly rapid; often labeled“officework.” cityscape.

DTLA in particular,thekindofdowntownworkmost Michael Dear’s“Keno Capitalism,”tocitebut downtown. ThevarietyofLosAngeles’soffice broad economicchange. boosters, hascontributedtoitsresilience made wayfor moreflexiblesystemsofmaking mass productionandconsumption have region hasbecometheplayingboard for ural experimentation,and,accordingtosome landscape istheresultofdecadesarchitect- logies evolvedtowardsinstantaneity, andthe

90, no1(2000):80. does sobyreconfiguringtheregimesof 2 Thesetransformations challenged 236mm 1 AsLosAngeleshas . (BlackwellPublishing,1995).

“downtown” equivalencewiththeSouthern Though visionsofareviveddowntownhave SoHos. Ithasinspirednewconceptions ofmetro- stead ofbeingtheCBDagain,DTLA floatsina sought toinspirestrategiesovercomethose Grand Avenue Park,aBroadwaystreetcar,new theorizations ofpolycentricurban form. Inthe tegrated downtownwithhigh-speedrailaccess, this singularsetofaims. trict andtheregion’spreeminentlocationfor created plansfor downtownovertheyearswith office space.Prominentgroupsofprofessional challenges, mostofthemfocused onreposition- constellation ofLODOs,EDOs,DUMBOs, ifnot California region’s political andeconomiccenter. LA Live,DisneyHall,anewfootball stadium, the However, noneoftheseefforts imaginedanin- ing downtownasthecity’scentralbusinessdis- politan growth hotels, andtensofthousands residents.In- models of the monocentric city midst ofthisvastformal change, anessential — ones thatnotonlyscuttlehoary — and more recent

s 7 Introduction

8 Introduction Scholars oftheparticularshiftsintechnological, sumerist, anddecentereddiscoursessurround- seeking to make sense of the fragmented, con- sical ahostofotheronceinherentlyincompat- scenarios thatspeculateontheimpact ofthe as-planned toaccommodatethat growth,have already been accomplished by the Los Angeles acterize thecurrentmoment,aswellcritics tial DTLAgrowth,andtheability ofdowntown- tions onscalesfromthemetropolitan tothe twentieth century city, thespacesformed there,andthepattern- global. At the same time, projections of poten- contemporary mobileworkforce onthecity, City PlanningDepartment.Urbanists, neverthe- ing ofurbanlivesandlivelihoods. ing these ible, binary, relationshipsthatdescribedthe has stoppedmakingsense—renderingnonsen- political, andeconomicparadigmsthatchar- less, haveyettodevelopanddelineate DTLA lational antonyms,bothurbanandsuburban,

shifts, havefocused theirinvestiga- echt -Californian setofre- The commodificationofofficespace andrela- America. Iftheofficebuildinghas beenthe scale ofthecity, building architecture oftheofficebuilding. Certainly, and itsmoderncapacityfor reinvigorating and downtownredevelopmentacross North tive the deskandboundariesofofficebuilding. through technology, increasingly liberated from the gatheringofthesepredominantly single changes alreadytakingplaceandleveragethe How thisliberationmayamplifythepositive down question. Ourworkbeginswitharetrospective by accommodatingstandardized officeconfig- purpose buildingsintoaCBDcommand center recognizing an remained akeyobjectiveofurban renewal resources ofthecityasawholeremainin urations madealastingmarkon the typological understand thedevelopmentofofficework look attheevolutionofofficework easeofproducingplanametric“flexibility” town LosAngeles. office workforce thatisnow, and deskinorderto

As such,officeworkhaslongbeenviewedas sectors. Whilecitydwellerscould engagea sumption ofhighcultureandhigh-endgoods— skylines, officework—evenmorethanthecon- assembling avastarrayofknowledge-based ance, documentationandaccounting related to theeconomy’sproductiveand consumptive tion, exchange,management,logistics,market- towns, includingdowntownLosAngeles. few denizenstypicallyonlythosewiththe there. Downtownscountedamong theirvery working indowntownoffices,was reside thing thatnoonefromthemiddle orworking contributing toitsimageabilitythroughmaking enterprises includingadministration,organiza- capacity tochooseanyresidential optionand chief componentofdowntowns,providing classes didinorneartheCBD,including those ing, variety ofactivitiesindowntowns, theone both thefabric oftheCBDand,insomeplaces, has beenthesignatureactivityofmanydown- planning,financing,dealmaking,govern- Downtown Los Angeles 1870 to 1945: A machine for office work MACHINE AGE Integrating the city, building, and desk through efficiency, economies, and scientific management

1890 Downtown LA 1781 1880s 1896 1903 Pueblo called California Architect and Building News makes the point, “Every By the 1890s, the economic Los Angeles First height limit “La Reyna enterprising man seeks to get as near to the center as possible and advantages firms realize by population is ordinance enacted 1909 de Los Angeles” will put up with great limitations and inconvenience rather than locating near one another 97,000 Free Speech Ban is founded leave the heart of trade and commerce.” concentrate Southern California The city CITY 1880 commerce in an increasingly 1894 Pullman Strike fathers place Los Angeles 1885 1887 bustling Downtown Los Angeles a ban on free population is Santa Fe railroad Electric trolleys speech from 1870 1877 Birds eye view of Los Angeles Executives at Machine Age firms prize 11,000 enters Southern first travel in Los 1891 opportunities for face-to-face communication, public Spring and Temple Railroads arrive in Los Angeles upon the The Los Angeles Times notes, California, setting off Angeles 1889 information sharing, and client and consumer Continental Building streets and Streets, Downtown completion of the Southern Pacific in 1876, Orange County "The geographical center of Los 1903 a rate war with access that only a central place, augmented with The 13-story Continental private Los Angeles contributing to the social vibrancy and breaks off due to Angeles is the old Plaza, but property Southern Pacific Built in the new communications technologies affords Building, Los Angeles’ first economic competitiveness of downtown by population growth that has long since ceased to be except for Romanesque skyscraper, is completed – making it a place to transport large the center of population.” the Plaza 1884-1888 Revival style a reticulated frame amounts of customers, workers, and goods Approximately 100 1886 typically associated structure for more open First oil well dug new towns are An acre of land 1876 with commercial interior space in Pico Canyon planned goes for $100 178mm The Wainwright Building is a office spaces of the 10-story red brick office period, the Bradbury building in downtown St. Building is built in Larkin Building is completed 1887 Louis, Missouri. Designed by a period of in Buffalo -- considered the

BLDG An acre of land Dankmar Adler and Louis optimistic growth goes for $1,500 first purpose-designed office Sullivan, the Wainwright is a for downtown office environment for a specific 1879 Telephone highly influential model for space. Typical of its organization. The innovation The telephone, once the office buildings, and was period, the Bradbury Fully integrated of the central atrium most common (and among the first skyscrapers Building features within an establishes a neutral, essential) business in the world. The Wainwright office spaces that architectural hermetic space with The punch clock appliance, supports a 1891 building features identical are discretely workspace and minimal distractions and Wainright Building fragments office wide-ranging network "honeycomb" plans to express segmented into surrounded by visual links to the exterior, workers' lives into of economic relations in architecture the autonomous units the latest thereby increasing efficiency public and private parts. An entirely new building type underlying economic for individual or technology, the and greater worker The office becomes a Holcomb specifically devoted to knowledge-based relationships whereby small-scale work worker becomes 1904 identification with the firm; 1906 Acoustic downtown worker's 1879 work accommodates the explosive growth owners and investors seek entities a component of a Larkin Building workplace as family Stenotype: Created a Telephone 1893 Globe Co. Office 1860s second home in managerial and business service the greatest possible revenue system that 1901 whole new segment of Bradbury Building 1896 Furniture Typewriter: Separated from both the domestic 1880s activities with the least possible integrates the Numerical Keyboard: administrative Made writing 1870 Calculating Machine sphere and industrial zones, the Frederick W. Taylor promulgates outlays space, the tools Early form of the workers who could more efficient & defined The calculating machine is marketed as office carves out new places in the methods to quantify human and and the user calculator and transcribe quickly in the modern keyboard a marvel of mechanical construction city, where business planning and mechanical processes to streamline equally computer, allowed for short hand, and it is and a time-saver for the daily routines of administration, as opposed to and enhance overall productivity quick tabulations still used

DESK ﬁnancial institutions business itself, took place 1780 1860 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 Introduction 11 urban design interventions. Such interventions point of exchange. down-town and metropolitan leadership about volume will follow that promotes new design ideas volume will follow obsolescent office building fabric. In turn, a third obsolescent office building fabric. facilitates the doing of such work, and imagines facilitates that address these opportunities. The intention will be to provoke new conversations among the the future character of downtown as place, and the role the city plays as a place where technology where place a as plays the city role the alternative futures for downtown’s increasingly alternative futures for seek to address the office work of future and urbanism of downtown through architectural and uring, or expanding with new program) that, given ning ideals and an urban scale survey identifying mediate the face-to-face communication that the mediate the face-to-face real and the current office fabric may provide its real and the current office fabric provide local identity through the redesign of have a commensurately scaled impact on the city. have a commensurately scaled impact on the city. key opportunities (“hot spots”) for reinventing the key opportunities (“hot spots”) for potential for a new, inside-out urbanism appears a new, potential for downtown and the political and economic regimes economic and political the and downtown ing telecommunications technologies that seek to District and Los Angeles’s Old Bank District). The Indeed whole sectors of cities have changed to office building facilitated. Any such obsolescence office building facilitated. edge-based work in the context of rapidly chang- their interiors (e.g., New York City’s Meatpacking their interiors (e.g., New York would necessitate change (tearing down, reconfig- attached to various Los Angeles downtown plan- second volume reviewing the planning history of sites. the scale and quantity of office buildings, would Thus, this first publication will be followed by a Thus, this first publication will be followed

architecture downtown, as well as adaptive as well as downtown, architecture town Los Angeles, shifts in office work re- logies, the succession of ideas about how knowledge-based work is and should be accomplished. reuse of office buildings. We review the implica- reuse of office buildings. We metropolitan center for office work, with notes metropolitan center for preted, both from historical and contemporary building, interior architecture, and office techno- down ings, adjustments to paradigmatic practices in innovations in office building architecture and, office office interior design; and through innovations in on how the is lived in DTLA today. generic office building is obsolete due to issues pace and timing of knowl- of location, mobility, office agglomeration, its dispersal, and revision office work in Los Angeles is understood and inter- flected in office interior architecture and furnish- the range of ways the particular urban form of the range of ways particular urban form downtown as the tions of all these for We also chart the changing nature of work in We as DTLA. Through that application, we document Speculation would lead one to posit that the As the building, particularly in DTLA? nature of office work and the relationship have these principally been advanced on rat- posited as separate? in organizing work inside the office ional, cultural, or symbolic grounds? What in office interior architecture sought to re- of firms to work and workers have changed, of those standpoints when organizing office work? How have Los Angeles’s experiments What has been the range of experiments are implications of privileging one or another and home public lives that were once solve conflicts between new kinds of work make sense of the current situation past attempts to understand the downtown downtown office district and review various downtown office, and the organization of In order to answer these questions for the case In order to answer these questions for of DTLA, the writers this volume attempt to work both within and outside them. We pre- work both within and outside them. We sent research on the history of Los Angeles • Does the mono-functional ures of those spheres changed to accommo- urban life in downtown Los Angeles? urban life up so much of the real estate in our cities, Los Angeles? date new kinds of office work? What are the and how did the generic office building implications of those changes for collective, implications of those changes for DNA were to change? taken by office buildings in DTLA? When type, with its central core plan emerge in office building type fit the new world of that can now be done anywhere, including with bourgeois ideals of separate spheres consumption, for public life, work, for for work? What is the future of this building type if it is not? Since these buildings take what would the urban impact be if their What were the various building forms What were the various building forms at home and in cafes, comport or conflict at home and in cafes, and for domesticity? How have the architect- and for •

How should the place- leveraged to support new kinds of knowledge of kinds new support to leveraged produce the places of downtown Los based and technological assets of DTLA be imagined there? How did technologies of the CBD interact and cultural forces around office work and cultural forces with the traditional office building to it eventually repositioned as peripheral? city’s CBD in the 19th and 20th centuries? How did it differ in form and function from in form How did it differ that aligned for DTLA to emerge as the that aligned for other central business places in North work once done in downtown offices and What were the social, economic, political Angeles and how have they been re- eminence been championed and why was America? How has its centrality and pre- -based work? How do new arrangements of

global system now: tinct regimes of time, place, and self that supported industrial capitalism then, and support Los Angeles’s participation in the

• • Introduction 10

Introduction 9 DTLA 6 that, the mat-like metropolitan urbanism ledge-based work. Our conversation about posited by UCLA geographer Ed Soja. has re-emerged as the chief locus in region quiry cut across scales, and implicate the dis- dining, and hosts visitors tourists, culture, izing Cal Hamilton’s 1970 “centers concept” for know- current situation as a site for DTLA’s ious scales: the City, the Building, and Desk. ious scales: the City, ed on developing a critical understanding of our multiple neighborhood centers, finally real- of city living options and increasingly urban of work could be said to happening at var- eminent, 24/7 neighborhood, hosting a range yond the Los Angeles Comprehensive Plan or, be- for professional services, entertainment and professional for time, it is quickly becoming the region’s pre- the history and future of this particular kind amenities. sports, and progressive design. At the same sports, and progressive design. At Yet the essential questions that drive this in- Yet This publication, volume one of three, is focus- Since then, Los Angeles has, at Having revised its downtown, 4 5 2008, no 2 (2008): 266-279. , of the Los Angeles School Urbanism in a broad, metropolitan manner that calls least according to some observers, re-urbaniz- have made of them, as paradigmatic rather has largely been refigured. Since the emerg- in the mid-1980’s, scholars have repositioned into question familiar oppositions like “down- into question familiar Los Angeles may finally escape Dorothy Los Angeles and its downtown through their Parker’s characterization of “72 suburbs in observations of the city and sense they economics, demographics, urban form, and economics, demographics, urban form, culture must also be accounted for. oes the ascendance, decline and ultimate ed center—but with a premiere downtown among ence than peculiar. transformation of other North American CBDs, American North other of transformation town” and “suburban.” While DTLA partly ech- specifics of local history, geography, politics, geography, specifics of local history, search of a city”—not with traditional single American city. That being said, Los Angeles’s exceptionality Urban Affairs Review Urban Affairs Los 3 (Irvine, CA: University of California Institute of Transportation Studies, 1984). Institute of Transportation (Irvine, CA: University of California

. . (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2000). . (Oxford: (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996). (New York: The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t. The American City: What Works, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions Autos, Transit, and the Sprawl of Los Angeles: The 1920’s Autos, Transit, like so many Southern California phenomena— like so many Southern California moving them to the urban fringes, resulting in both exemplar and exception. Height limits downtowns. Residential uses also persisted downtown, until redevelopment largely remov- in the neglected zones at downtown’s edges. Los Angeles to work proved just as capable of it among the most industrial of North American Industry and industrial employment continued ed that possibility. The vast intra-urban rail ed that possibility. crafting a signature skyline in downtown Los early as, but more quickly than any other North that sought to preserve sunshine on downtown streets dampened the potential for to persist in areas adjacent the CBD, making those with few or no choices clinging to shelter those with few the shift from railroad mobility to auto mobility. an urban decentralization that occurred as system that brought everyone to downtown 3 Alexander Garvin, 4 Martin Wachs, Wachs, 4 Martin 5 Michael J. Dear and Nicolas Dahmann, “Urban Politics the Los Angeles School of Urbanism.” Soja, 6 Edward W. Angeles until the era of redevelopment. Angeles’s CBD was developed at the cusp of Yet downtown Los Angeles was, and DTLA is— Yet City [Place] 13 to Some 9 culture that was English-speaking, largely white, and increasingly Protestant, with it a changed culture and ethic of work. the business of forming downtowns. The term, thus, was somewhat late Southern California, downtowns. The term, the business of forming “downtown,” originally intended to describe the burgeoning business district in southernmost Manhattan, had been in use North America since the 1830’s, a time when Los Angeles remained an agricultural market center. steps in the formation of downtown, at least steps in the formation as understood by a morphologist like James inception, exclusion, and segregation Vance—his in (Los Angeles, CA), 1891.

Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times As occurred in other western 8 “The geographical center of Los Angeles ask themselves seriously what is to be done arrest or at least delay the steady march of business section from the old to new plaza on Sixth Street ....” among El Paso, San Diego, and Francisco them), businesses and eventually residents mig- rated from the colonial city center to new center, in the process producing a new urban and southwestern railroad cities (Albuquerque, the northern part of city are beginning to a street grid eventually brought development south of the original settlement into what today are labeled the Civic Center and Historic Core neighborhoods. In 1891, the noted, is the old plaza, but that has long since ceased to be the center of population….While at one time most of the population was north plaza, during the past ten years 90 per cent of the improvements have gone up in southern which it is half of the city….These are solid facts useless to attempt ignore by playing the os- trich acts, and level-headed property holders

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003),10 (New Haven: Yale Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950 Downtown: Its Rise and Fall,

7 By 1889, the boom subsided, but Los Angeles prices eventually re- had established itself. Too, covered and continued to rise into the 1900’s. Infrastructure enhancements and the laying of transportation, huge tracts of available land, temperate weather, popular culture, outrageous promotion, and avarice proved a combustible combination, enflaming the land boom that was the true genesis of Los Angeles’s downtown. $100. In 1886, an acre of land there went for 1884 The next year it was worth $1,500. From to 1888 roughly 100 new towns were planned, and in 1889 Orange County was broken off due to population growth. Between 1880 and 1896, Los Angeles went from a population of 11,000 to 97,000. In 1885, the Santa Fe Railroad entered Southern In 1885, the Santa Fe setting off a rate war with the dom- California, inant railway line of the area, Southern Pac- made Southern ific. Competition and low fares accessible to the rest of country in California never been. New cheap a way it had heretofore 7 “Downtown History,” Downtown Center Business Improvement District, accessed October 15, 2012, http://www.downtownla.com/5_05_downtownHistory.asp. 7 “Downtown History,” to the Southwest”. the New Plaza; The Business Section Being Forced 8 Now Pershing Square. See “The City’s Growth: Marching from the Old Toward 9 Robert M. Fogelson, 9 Robert M. Fogelson, CITY [PLACE] 14 City [Place] of Los Angeles itself. process of urbanization was inseparable from the the place of business city’s central place and of “downtown” as the century, the construction During the early 20th division intosub-districts. 1920’s, andearly1930’s,completingdowntown’s ercial growthintheareacameduring1910’s, Building of1893),thetrueexplosioncomm- from thiserastillstand(notablytheBradbury in theearly1890’s.Althoughafew buildings capitalized usersoccurredalmostsimultaneously boom thatwouldexcludeallbutthehighest the inceptionofdowntownLosAngelesand close sequenceinLosAngeles. phases—either occurredsimultaneouslyorinvery 10 JamesE.Vance, Jr, The ContinuingCity:UrbanMorphology

10 inWestern Civilization For example, (Balitmore,MD:TheJohnsHopkins UniversityPress,1990). the managed fromdowntown.Bythe1920’s, sprouted throughouttheregion—werelargely businesses—huge, corporaterunfarm industries administrative andgovernmentcenter.Agri- were established,makingdowntownthecity’s other publicservices,schools,andnewspapers headquartered indowntown.TheSpringStreet nation’s petroleumandbankingindustrieswere fast-growing metropolis,ifonlybriefly. City cess madedowntownaregionalmagnetfor a The mixofeconomicconcentrationandeasyac- expansion. were alsoerectedduringthe1920’s economic buildings, andtheRooseveltOffice Building the Westinghouse ElectricandManufacturing Great Western Savings,theSunDrugbuilding, Hall ofJustice,theJapaneseUnion Church,the as weretheRitzHotelandAstor Hotel. Hotel wasbuiltdowntowninthe early1920’s Angeles StockExchange.Thefamous Biltmore national SavingsandExchangeBank andtheLos America, theCrockerNationalBank,Inter- Financial DistrictbecamehometoBankof Hall, The of alltheworkdone employment hasremainedanimportantportion manufactured anddistributed.Infact, industrial toys, garments,andjewelrycontinuetobe have persistedinareasclosetoDTLA,where Angeles’s edges.Unlikethosecities,theseuses cities, industrywasrestrictedtodowntownLos in nearbysuburbs.AsmanyNorthAmerican Company purveyedgoodstothegentryliving Department storeslikeBullock’sandtheMay a centralhubfor entertainmentandshopping. In thesameperiodBroadwayareabecame downtown.

relationships basedonplacewere weakened 12 DavidA.Hounshell,From theAmericanSystem toMassProduction,1800-1932:TheDevelopmentofManufacturing Technology intheUnitedStates Buchgesellschaft). 11 1887: more so than shopping, formation of downtown, work, was central to the Work, particularly oﬀice interests. based onassociationsofcommon economic Angeles, andwerereplacedwith relationships by broadmigrationstoindustrial citieslikeLos place, andone’sselfinrelationtothem. way oflife, andentirely newsensesoftime, Tonnies, urban work engendered an entirely new ization. For atleastonetheorist,Ferdinand within thecapitalist,political,andsocialorgan- fice work,locatestheindustrialcitydifferently urban communityandwork,includingof- the closure,autonomyandseparatenessof of citymaking.Indeedfor mostsocialtheorists, across urbanAmerica,representedanewkind Downtown LosAngeles,likeotherdowntowns Working Downtown Maryland: Johns HopkinsUniversityPress,1984). Gemeinschaft undGesellschaft , Leipzig:Fues’s Verlag, 2nd ed.1912,8thedition,Leipzig:Buske,1935(reprint2005,Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche 11 Social

retrieval ofinformation centraltocommerce. based andcenteredonrecording,storing, and retailactivity, wasprimarilyknowledge the centralbusinessdistrictoutsideofindustry was likeindustrialwork,wagedonein ology that would serve it. oﬀice building morph- and the mono-functional drove downtown growth of the service economy duced. Thus the start rather than products pro- services were provided a place where business cities, downtown was In many North American governance. entertainment, or even , (Baltimore,

As downtownwork

railroads usedtoimplementthe system proved sense ofenterprise.Themanagement structure highly specifictasks,ratherthan somegeneral ed anywhereandwasorganized to accomplish out ofthesechallengesthatcould besupplant- the 20thcentury, firstwiththeincreas the quantityofitmushroomedby and serviceprovisionem railroads createdasystemof people andfreight.IntheUnited States,the people andthelogisticalchallenges ofmoving cooperation ofhundredsspatially dispersed among thefirstfirmsfaced withmanagingthe the 19thcentury. Railroadcompanieswere and taskswerefirstpromulgatedbyrailroadsin the hierarchicalstructurethatguideditsroles processes ofthemodernbusinessenterprise tration andmanagementof further bytheadventofconsumerism.Adminis- circulation ofindustrialcapital,thencompounded principally ingovernment,banking,andinsurance, While worklikethishadexistedfor centuries, perative ofthenewindustrialeconomy. erged asalogisticalim- goods production internal operations ingly rapid middle of 12 The and

15 City [Place] [Place] City 16 City [Place] them. as did documentation of for meetings increased, of professions, the need services and the growth specialization of business with the increased at the time noted that Furthermore, observers practices. importers, andchainstoresadoptedsimilar insurance companiesandlatermanufacturers, to beeffective. Soonfinancialinstitutions, information sharing, and to-face communication, opportunities for face- manner prized the organized in the railroad 13 Keith R.Ihlanfeldt, “TheImportanceoftheCentralCitytoRegional andNationalEconomy:AReviewoftheArgumentsEmpirical Evidence.” 14 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, 15 RobertM.Fogelson, 13

Hence, entities

Downtown: ItsRiseandFall, 1880-1950 The RailwayJourney:Industrialization ofTimeandSpaceinthe19thCentury, , (NewHaven:Yale UniversityPress,2003),22. abled anexplosioninthenumberofbusiness to beingabstract,standardizedanduniversal,en- reckoning frombeingambient,whole,andlocal time. The needfor meetingswassupportedbyrailroad railroad hub, could aﬀa ord.central place, near a and consumers that only high access to clients work and thenindustry. Earlyimagesofdowntown users for those spaces,displacingfirstresidents izations possessedthecapitalto outbidother and commerce.” venience ratherthanleavetheheart oftrade and willputupwithgreatlimitations andincon- seeks togetasnearthecenter aspossible News In the1880’s, opportunities for face-to-face communication. meetings thatprovided,arguably, mostefficient (Berkeley, CA:UniversityofCalifornia Press,1986) — Railroadtime,whichtransformed temporal madethepoint,“Everyenterprising man office work California ArchitectandBuilding

More importantly, these —

show ittakingplacein Cityscape 1.2(1995):125-150. organ- rooms 14 market halls(the originalLloyd’sofLondon)as Holy Spirit),monasteries(theInns ofCourt),or looked likepalaces(towitRome’s Bankofthe Though downtown Los exchange amongthecity’selites. tration, documentation,litigation,commerceand nourished, downtownwasaplaceofadminis- sphere thatwasattimesintentionallyunder- With limitedresidentialchoicesandapublic occupants mullingthroughpapers. an office:groupsofdeskswiththeirrespective arranged similarlytoourcontemporaryimageof in themercantilecitytookplace in buildings now taking place. service activities were at which new business Angeles remained a to accommodate the scale ing type was necessary of industry, a new build- Office work place that 16 NikolausPevsner, 17 MartinWachs. “Autos, Transit, andtheSprawl ofLosAngeles:The1920’s,” more thantwentystories. Detroit, PhiladelphiaorBoston)butonlyone 130 buildingstenstoriesortaller(asmanyas popular antipathytoit.By1929,downtownhad particular economiclogicoftheskyscraperor were tall.Downtownwasnotimmunetothe new technologiesandsurginglandrents,they ings werelarge.Moreimportantly, asaresultof warehouse. Likewarehouses, est predecessoroftheofficebuildingwas art andarchitecture,NicholasPevsner,theclos- had tobeinvented.To theBritishhistorianof downtown officebuildingoftheindustrialera original sitesofknowledge-basedwork.The A HistoryofBuildingTypes , (Princeton,NJ:PrincetonUniversity Press,1976. 16 newofficebuild- Journal oftheAmericanPlanning Association50.3 molished RichfieldTower. Withheightlimitsen- ing, theUnitedArtistsTheatre,and thesincede- those were grantedfor decorativetowerssuchas height limitordinancewaspassed in1911,es effects ofNewYork andChicago.Anupdated Angeles suffered noneofthe“urbancanyon” sidewalk level,ensuringthatdowntown Los its allowingCalifornia’s sunlighttopenetrate height limitsinLosAngeleswerewonbasedon region’s plentifulsunshine. un-Californian, denyinglocalstreetsofthe they largely becauseofthestreetcongestionthat ablish corner of4thandSpringStreets.InLosAngeles, as elsewhere, tall buildings were vastly tinental Building in 1903, located at the ed following thecompletionof13-story height limitordinanceinLosAngeleswasen American citieswereeffective here.Thefirst ings thathadlargelybeenineffective inother Campaigns for heightlimitsondowntownbuild- engendered.InLosAngelestheywerealso laterbuiltontheEasternColumbia Build- ing aspecificlimitof150feet. Exceptions (1984):297-310 17 Theargumentfor unpopular southeast Con- t- act- ,

public and private parts. the day and people into clock time that divided fulﬁlled according to lives divided into roles by it. People saw their self of people who lived fragmenting the sense of Railroad time resulted in Living Downtown Spring streets. located atthesoutheastcornerof6thand limit wasthe18-storyCalifornia BankBuilding, 1957. Thefirstprivatebuildingtoexceedtheold heyday. The1911ordinancewasrepealedonlyin distinguishing skylineduringitspre-World War II It sprawledacrossmoreland,andgeneratedno ingly distinctfromotherAmericandowntowns. forced, downtownLosAngelesbecameincreas-

17 City [Place] [Place] City 18 City [Place] ionaries, andperhapsparticipantsinpubliclife in Office workerswerevariouslycommuters,funct- 19 RubénMartinez“Occupy’sDeep L.A.Roots,“ 18 MikeDavies, Those leftbehindbythenewurban prosperity developed byHenryHuntington and others. suburbs, likeAngelinoHeightsand Angeles’s upperclassesthrough World War I, Victorian homesthatwereowned byLos Beaudry’s exclusiveenclave isolation. InDTLA,thiswasBunker Hill,Paris exclusive islandsofdomesticitydidsoinsecured arate urbanandsuburbanrealmswere lived downtown; fewer lived there by choice. Sep- children andoldpeople.Infact, very few people day, butmoribundatnight.Itwasdevoidof Downtown wasparticularlybustlingduringthe where, becamepeculiarbutparticularplaces. the process, downtowns, in Los Angeles and else- and publiclife, andwasconstruedasprivate.In specific ways.Family life existedoutsidework travagant mansionoverlookeddown cluding earlytitansliketheCrockers, whoseex- mere 22years.Otherslivedin Those whocouldafford to Dead CitiesandOtherTales (NewYork: TheNewPress,2003;origed.2002),132. Los AngelesTimes shelter of the new lavish two-story

(LosAngeles,CA),December09, 2011. them Highland Park, town for a streetcar selves in created. in- neighborhoods alongtheWilshire out ofone-timemansionsinBunker Hill,Court where themiddleclassand,tosome extent,the A third kind of space, a burgeoning public sphere Being Public Downtown cultural valuedepreciated.Ontheeveofdown- borhoods totrickledownasitsexchangeand elite housingindowntownandadjacentneigh- to newsuburbsfurtherwest.Thatallowedonce cluding CountryClubandHancockParksthen mobile, relocatingfirsttonewam would persist,thedowntownelitesprovedmore While the downtown, a zone of neglect known as Skid Row. succored themselveswithintheshadowsof lived inneighborhoodsonthefringe of Hill andFort Moore town inresidential ly workingclasswhites,continuedtolivedown- town redevelopment,about50,000people,most- town tothesouth,southwest,west, and north. neighborhoods ofthedown hotels andapartmentscarved Hill. 18 Aboutthesamenumber enity-centered Corridor, in- town poor down- bilingual, leftleaning Ricardo FloresMagón,publisher of thepopular, were theconstantsubjectofreporting by Chandler, whoseborderlandfinancial interests Harrison GreyOtisandhisson-in-law Harry Los Angelesresidents. plaza, anarealongconsidered openforum by streets andprivatepropertyexcept for theold fathers placedabanonfreespeechfrompublic of anopen-shopLosAngeles.In1909,thecity Manufacturers Associationtoadvancethecause suit andformed theanti-union Merchantsand the 1894PullmanStrike,joinedtheminthispur- ing enduredthenegativeeconomicimpactsof in LosAngeles.Whiledowntown locus of concern to the owners of the end. Localfruitgrowersandlocalmerchants,hav- labor andquashedpublicdebatetoachievethat also endeavoredtokeepitfreeoforganized icularly theownersof sation aboutthecity, struggledtogainafoothold working classcarvedoutspacefor publicconver- vanced thecauseofexpandingLosAngeles,they Regeneracion 19 Theareawouldremaina Los AngelesTimes boosters, part- newspaper. L.A. Times , ad-

(e.g., LALive). wise entirelyprivateandcommercialventures DTLA interestsdemandpublicfaces for other- the stateofdowntown’spublic sphere is That beingsaid,perhapsthetrue barometerof working women’slunchcounters Club, theCalifornia Club,orworkingmen’sand private socialclubsliketheLosAngelesAthletic realm persistindowntown,whethertheybe including Cole’sandPhillipe’s.Even Nevertheless, the vestiges of a non-state public and taverns, today, some is largelyunquestionedbymany. Intheend, downtown remainpublictosome inawaythat centered ontheWestside, theopenspacesof site ofresistance.Eveninaglobal LosAngeles to occupytheparkinfrontofCity Hallastheir Occupy Wall Streetmovement,choseinstead the localmanifestation oftheloosely organized did holdeventsinPershingSquare, OccupyLA, Flores Magonand for organized protestsinceatleastthetimeof begin atthechurchinElPueblo,asanctuary immigrants’ rights might do so downtown, they While itisunsurprisingthatthosemarchingfor among thecity’smostvilifiedpublicspaces. equal promise,onlytobecomearguablyfirst Olin ofPershingSquarewasonceinvestedwith -the mostrecentrenovationbyLegoretaand creating morerobustpublicspacesdowntown- of CityHalltoBunkerHillshowthepromise renovation of12acresrunningfromthebase opening ofLA’s GrandPark--the$56million Pershing Square.Whilecurrentefforts likethe the conditionofitsparksandplazas,suchas Regeneracion . Thoughthey yards ofLosAngeleshaveremained in LosAngeles.Inmanyways,the however, privatelife has beenprizedoverpublic Pasadena andLosAngelesRailway andtheLos and PacificRailwayfromamerger ofthe transportation systems.In1895real estate creasingly distanthinterlandsaccessed foot, toahubinthecity thatradiatedtoin- patchwork ofmixedusesaccessed primarilyon Very quicklydowntown wentfrombeinga trolleys firsttraveledinLosAngeles in1887. by theintra-urbantransportsystem.Electric town LosAngeleseconomywasunder-girded portations systems.Thecentralityofthe ity;this came in the form of Los Angeles’s In addition,businessvaluedproximitytomobil- Downtown asMobility Hub city’s parksandplazashavelanguished. at leastamongthosewhopossessthem,as Angeles PacificRailway. Huntingtontried,but coon HenryHuntingtoncreated the Pasadena private ascendant, through down- back- trans- ty- the

19 [Place] City

20 City [Place] 20 JimWalker, 21 NationalRegistrarInformation System, “ founded. Eventuallythatfailure cameinthe Railroad, whichhisuncle,CollisP. Huntington, failed, togaincontroloftheSouthernPacific of citystreetsandconnecteddowntown to Railway (1895-1945)thatrandown thecenter of LosAngeles,formally theLosAngeles Huntington retainedcontrolofYellow Cars located indowntown. mountainstothesea,”whereitshubwasin a ern PacificRailroadsystem,popularlyknown the SouthernPacificRailroad.ThusSouth- ific ElectricRailwaystockwaspurchasedby Great Merger”of1911,wheremostthePac-

s the“RedCars,”fulfilleditsmotto“from

Los AngelesRailwayYellow Cars National ParkService,Register ofHistoricPlaces , (Portsmouth,NH:ArcadiaPublishing, October2007.) , March13,2009;http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/All_Data.html went outofservicein1963. system overtheyearsuntillaststreetcar 1898. Thesystemslowlymorphedintoabus Henry E.Huntingtonbecameitsownerin neighborhoods withinaboutasix-mileradius. ing servicefromitspredecessors LaGrande corner ofdowntown,consolidated theremain- last. UnionStation,builtinthenortheast greatest railroadcity;itwasalso arguablyits Los Angeleswasnotonlyarguably America’s Decentralized Metropolis Downtown withinthe wings withnaturalsunlightfilling itsrooms. 250,000 squarefeet ofofficespaceandfive a notablefeature ofthesubway. Ithad Boulevards. TheSubwayTerminal Building Street toaportalnearBeverlyandGlendale 1925. Itran1,045feet underFourth andHill Electric SubwayopenedonNovember30, A thirdtransitsystem,LosAngeles’sPacific

was 20 “ most notablyNewYork. Decentralization problems thathauntedlargeeastern cities, dients torescuingLosAngelesfrom theurban bility andhorizontalgrowthasthe keyingre- partment, whosawdecentralization, auto director oftheLosAngelesCity Planning De- and Power.HewasjoinedbyGordon Whitnall, utive attheLosAngelesDepartment ofWater centralization, includingC.A.Dykstra, anexec- interest, itwasopposedbychampions ofde- as theonlywaytogainaccessdevelopment Fernando Valley propertyowners,whosawit radiating fromdowntownwasgreetedbySan ing areas.Whileexpansionofatransitsystem interests, therebyforestalling growthinoutly- claimed thiswasapowergrabbydowntown transit networkwasresistedbysomewho decline. Further extensionoftheinter-urban versy over its expansion urban form ofdowntownLosAngeles,contro- Station andCentralStation.Itwasdubbedthe portant astherailroadwastostructuring Last oftheGreatRailwayStations.” figured in downtown’s 21 Asim- mo- Downtown Los Angeles 1870 to 1945: A machine for office work Integrating the city, building, and desk through efficiency, economies, and scientific management Black Tuesday MACHINE AGE World War I Great Depression

1910 1913 Projecting forward to 1930 Pershing Square is 1911 1920s 1924 1950, this futuristic 250,000 vehicles renovated in the Updated height This business The Hall of Justice, the Japanese Union 1920s Plans for the vision of the city is 1920s a day pour into 1930s Beaux Arts style limit ordinance of property map Church, Great Western Savings, the Sun California is the Hollywood Freeway based upon a vertical Banking is centered in downtown. downtown Los Numerous very old and favored by City 150 feet is passed shows the Drug building, the Westinghouse largest petroleum officially begin layering of functions in The Spring Street Financial District Angeles historic buildings in Beautiful reformers commercial Electric and Manufacturing buildings, industry in America, the name of increased home to Bank of America, the Crocker downtown are demolished CITY density of and the Roosevelt Office Building are headquartered in speed and efficiency, National Bank, the International to make way for 1911 downtown and erected in downtwon Los Angeles downtown Los even as Los Angeles Savings and Exchange Bank and the Downtown Los Angeles: street-level parking lots The “Great Merger” occurs: the potential Angeles 1924 and many other US Los Angeles Stock Exchange 1930 Broadway at Seventh Street Frank Lloyd Wright's Southern Pacific Railroad opportunities for Frederick Law Olmsted’s, industrial cities The largest electric railway in the world at Johnson Wax Building purchases most of the future Jr., and Harland continue on a path of its greatest extent, around 1925: the Pacific 1920 1920s 1929 was designed to clearly Pacific Electric Railway development Broadway & 5th The Spring Street area Bartholomew's 1924 Major decentralization that Downtown Los Electric Railway or Red Car system connected 1925 impart and reinforce stock above Olive St. in downtown downtown LA becomes Street Traffic Plan for Los begins as early as the Angeles has the downtown employment centers to worker “May Live to See” corporate values, creating Street Los Angeles the banking center Angeles is published late 1920s 130 buildings dormitory suburbs in Los Angeles and Orange 1936 The Urban Land an architecture of work ten stories or Counties, and beyond to San Bernardino Institute is founded - based upon the creation of taller (as many County and Riverside 1925 1926 publishes the Office a particular identity of 1912 Los Angeles' 41% of the as Detroit, Portable Typewriter: Becomes Development 1939 work with its lack of any Pacific Electric population Philadelphia or Johnson Wax Building more widely available and Handbook, which is reference to the exterior Subway opens enters the CBT Boston) increasingly used in business 1922-1923 disseminated widely beyond the space of work. administration Biltmore Hotel, Ritz 1920s 1931 to create a broad The plan reinforces the Hotel and Astor Empire State 1913 The Broadway standardizing internalized identification Belinograph: Hotel are built in Building is completed influence of the worker with the

BLDG area is the First facsimile downtown LA central hub for corporation machine capable 1911 entertainment of using phone Fordist regimes around time, space, 1921 and shopping and the selves of workers begin lines to send Filofax Personal Organizer: Gives 1925 influencing office space, particularly basic data visual and tangible importance to Single Use Carbon Paper: Predating as firms and workforces grow larger to an organized professional life 1920s the Xerox machine, people can create a 1930 Selectomatic handle administrative functions through the organizer’s calendar copy of a document. Carbon Paper was Bleakly Brothers, Camden Courier Post Elevators coupled with typewriters Ad from the The Ediphone The standardization and 1911 Sandusky Register efficiency of new storage Edison Business Dictating Machine The worker is The office takes on Taylorist 1912 Phonograph equipment is highlighted. Typewriter Viewed primarily as promises to not only 1920s valued for his aspects of the factory floor, 1940 The question of the storage a business As had already occurred in make the process of Foot Lever Addresser Elliot Addressing Machine ability to 1932 systematizing operations by 1937 The image of the secretary appliance, telephone industry, office work is subject to dictating more The Foot Lever Addresser is described systematically of documentation remains The Principles of Indexing and coupling new appliances with new Xerography: is gradually emerging to use by women for de-skilling. Stenography, once efficient, but also to 1924 as a machine that is not only efficient replicate the one of the key links Filing is published as a guide to business systems Copying process is take a more visible place domestic use is at considered an essential skill ensure greater leisure Spiral Notebook: but also easy to use, reinforcing the efficiency of an between an increasingly office managers and workers to gain invented without beside the technological first discouraged and among professional secretaries, is time as a result, Production starts increasing integration of user and industrial era mobile work being tied to a maximum efficiency from major the use of liquid apparatuses of work, which King Vidor film then celebrated by largely replaced by "business 1921 reinforcing time as the on the most used machine within the greater aspiration 1928 machine physical base advancements in office furniture, chemicals previously had often been DESK still “The Crowd” service providers phonographs” - dictation machines Ediphone Brochure basic unit of work office notebook for efficiency like the vertical filing cabinet depicted devoid of users 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 City [Place] 23 Vertical dismantling of firms, including Vertical The Non-central CBD: Downtown Non-central The City Polycentric in the decades, Los As downtown languished for Angeles as a whole flourished, testament to downtown’s vestigial nature. A significant amount of scholarship has attempted to make sense of Los Angeles, and downtown in particular within the metropolitan economy. Telecommunications growth the technology, intensive information in and deregulation, work, all were globalization to contribute to said declining downtown’s growth the and fortunes the in centers new of area. the outsourcing of many office functions and has the growth in network organization forms, and Figueroa. Arguably Figueroa. and th again more recently at 7 at recently more again now the most suburban of downtown boule- was reconstructed with vards, Grand Avenue patron drop- two-tiers, one above ground for parking and deliveries. off and another below for The massive parking garages on which down- especially town’s cultural palaces rest give many, the Music Center’s various pavilions, an uncom- boost above street level making pedes- fortable trian accessibility to these places awkward at el- Hill, Bunker redeveloped a of portions In best. evated walkways were constructed between buildings to allow pedestrians access downtown opportunities without being in conflict to with vehicle traffic. That being said, efforts reinsert pedestrians downtown, often in the most inhospitable places, have been recurrent. wit Park 101 is the resurrection of a twice- To idea to span US 101 in downtown through failed pedestrian reconnections. new almost subterranean configuration at the Los Angeles Mall, named ARCO Plaza and then

Pershing Square was renovated in 1910 31 suburban formulations to a struggling down- suburban formulations in the Beaux Arts style favored by City Beautiful in the Beaux Arts style favored Once access was provided, downtown automobile storage issues began. By 1930, 250,000 vehicles a day poured into downtown Los Angeles. into decline after but having fallen reformers, II, the entire park was demolished and War World under- excavated in 1952 to build a four-story 1930 to the 1960’s, ground parking garage. From numerous old and historic buildings in downtown street-level were demolished to make way for parking lots, a more profitable option than preservation of the buildings and finding new occu- them. Much of this was arguably in re- pants for sponse to zoning policies adopted by the City of Los Angeles, first in 1946 and then strengthened the pro- in 1960, setting high requirements for vision of off-street parking. The emphasis on automobile access and storage was accompanied by attempts to apply successful town. Among these was the shopping mall, in a 31 Simon, “Hollywood Freeway Spans Magic and Might of L.A.” 31 Simon, “Hollywood Freeway body 30 no ” “ As construction are pleased to 29 By the mid-1930’s, 28 stop -free express highway” between down- plans for a primarily recreational parkway had plans for loves downtown….downtown is something hurtle by everyday without stopping. that the Arroyo Seco Parkway would be a major suggested that it be built as a park- highway, giving motorists “a great deal of incidental way, recreation and pleasure”. been overshadowed by the need to carry large numbers of commuters into downtown. Plans officially began in the Hollywood Freeway for 1924 when Los Angeles voters approved a “ The first Valley. town and the San Fernando segment built was a one and half mile stretch through the Cahuenga Pass above Hollywood; it opened on June 15, 1940. of the Interstate Highway System advanced II, downtown freeway access War after World was seldom neglected. Nevertheless, at the same time it seemed as if freeway access only provided more opportunities to bypass downtown. One observer of DTLA wrote, he and other freeway drivers , remedy to downtown’s to remedy

27 21.2 (1991): 163-182. , May 8, 1929), http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/trafficplans/1924_traffic_street_plan.pdf. to be the predominant land use down- Major Street Traffic Plan for Los Angeles Plan for Major Street Traffic The increasing dominance of the automobile— downtown’s transportation—and private is that antagonism to it led planners and engineers suggest increased automobile access, particul- tinue a as access, freeway arly languor. As early as 1916 plans were backed by the Automobile Club of Southern California road whose primary goal was to build a fast connecting downtown Los Angeles directly to Pasadena. Some City Beautiful era plans focused on the park like aspects of road while on its contribu- other functional ones focused Law tion to congestion relief. Frederick Olmsted’s, Jr., and Harland Bartholomew’s 1924 while concentrating on traffic relief and noting town, beginning in the 1960’s majority of Los Angeles office space would be located outside downtown, strung along the Wilshire Corridor as it wound its way west towards the Pacific Ocean. County of Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA), December 19, 1994. Regional Science and Urban Economics Los Angeles Times (1959): 232-242. By 1948,

Land Economics Between the 1920’s 24 , 22 On a typical day in 1953 only 15 of the population entered central 25 Downtown: Its Rise and Fall Downtown construction remained dor-

29 Richard Simon, “Hollywood Freeway Spans Magic and Might of L.A.” 29 Richard Simon, “Hollywood Freeway 30 Fogelson, 25 Ibid. 26Ibid. A. Small. “Subcenters in the Los Angeles Region.” 27 Genevieve Giuliano and Kenneth 28 Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and Harland Bartholomew’s Major Street Traffic Plan For Los Angeles, Plan For Law Olmsted, Jr. and Harland Bartholomew’s Major Street Traffic 28 Frederick 24 Arthur L. Grey Jr.. “Los Angeles: Urban Prototype.” percent mant even after the somnolence of World II years passed. In the meanwhile, 9 million War Los Angeles was the only city among 18 largest US cities where downtown stores were less than 10 percent of the responsible for metropolitan retail trade. downtown’s hegemony, hegemony, downtown’s decentral- Angeles Los than quickly more ized city. US other any and the 1950’s, a period when Los Angeles’s population tripled, the number of people who went downtown increased by less than 10 percent. business district, down from 41 percent in 1926. of office space were developed in square feet 20th Century Fox on the former Century City, studio site. New concentrations of office uses and more recently in occurred in Westwood Santa Monica. And while offices would con-

City [Place] [Place] City 22

City [Place] 21 much of it it of much forcers, located not in downtown but to the forcers, Hollywood, in then and Edendale in first north, where rents were cheaper and outdoor scenery more accessible. Office work also increasingly took place elsewhere. An agglomeration of insurance companies concentrated along a segment of Wilshire Boulevard in Hancock Park. long-standing its With coast east to antipathy vast its urbanism, style developable of amounts (and land inter- by accessible bevy a transit), urban decentralization of local within advocates a and government, economic of set growing to opposed interests coast Wil- 23 50.3 (1984): 297-310.

Village, a Mediterranean themed shop- Boulevard with a clear orientation to the automobile, inventing car-oriented urban form arate from downtown interests, and one eager to champion urban decentralization. ping center along side the new Southern Branch of the University California. shire Wilshire Boulevard became the conduit for de- Wilshire Boulevard became the conduit for centralization and the city’s new orientation to Bullock’s Wilshire, a branch of automobility. downtown department store, was the famous among the first Los Angeles department store to cater customers arriving by automobile. Ross developed Miracle Mile along A.W. down Wilshire Boule- in the process. Further vard, the Janss Brothers established West- wood consumers to the As retail activity followed suburbs, downtown lost its hold on other kinds of employment too. The motion picture east the from decamped having industry, production in search of a better climate for and refuge from Thomas Edison’s patent en-

“We Journal of the American Planning Association

business

(New Haven:Yale University Press, 2003), 22. (New Haven:Yale central Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall,

22 find in the metropolitan area of Los Angeles 23 Robert M. Fogelson, 23 Robert M. Fogelson, advocates focused their ire on a proposal to advocates focused City-like elevated transit in build New York downtown Los Angeles; in the end, none were built. While some downtown businesses, retailers, and property owners became concerned about downtown’s decline, and organized to marshal the local political will and resources to reverse it, not everyone shared their conception of downtown as central to the city’s image or It was no longer true that even necessary. large one have must city “every district,” wrote E.E. East, chief engineer of the Automobile Club of Southern California. more than a hundred trading areas where every commodity and service essential to may be obtained.” everyday life Indeed, as experienced in other cities, new rivals to downtown sprang up with regularity, creating a distinct political constituency sep- and the Sprawl of Los Angeles: The 1920s,” Transit, “Autos, 22 Martin Wachs. 24 City [Place] been identifiedamongtheculprits.Sohavevast 34 EdwardW. Soja, 33 Ibid. 32 GiulianoandSmall.“Subcenters intheLosAngelesregion.” among theconstellationofcenters hasbeen The polycentricthesisanddowntown’s place too homogeneoustocompliment oneanother. downtown, manyappeartoospecialized and While someofthemdomimicthe varietyof be homogenousratherthanheterogeneous. census. Andthenewofficecenters appearto ployees asthenextlargestcenter inGiulano’s ority ofemployment,ithastwice asmanyem- portant; whileitnolongeraccountsfor themaj- traditional CBD,eveninLosAngeles,remainsim- Ocean. arc travelingfromHollywoodtothePacific and onesmallerarelocatedonaneastwest ing onesinLosAngeles.Thefour largestcenters employment centersandthreeadditionalemerg- 1990’s GiulianoandSmallidentified29existing portation hasalsobeenblamed.Intheearly mobile asthecitizenry’sprimarymodeoftrans- overall inmanysectors.Relianceontheauto- industry consolidationsthathaveleftfewer firms 32 Despite the large number of centers, the

Postmetropolis: CriticalStudies of CitiesandRegions , (Oxford: BasilBlackwell,2000).

great downtowns,theyaspireto firstlure came withit.Assertingthatgreat citiesrequire of downtown’simportancetothe citythat thinking aboutLosAngelesand the questioning Downtown boosterslargelyrejected revised plications employment isscatteredthroughout. through avarietyoflevelscapital investment, or lessdev described it,wheretheentiremetropolisismore metropolitan mat,asgeographerEdSojahas than apolycentricmetropolisoraskindof more accuratelybedescribedasdispersedrather sults suggestthattheLosAngelesregionmay are significant. ber ofsub-centerswasheldconstant. and fell fromyeartoyear,evenwhenthenum- gional jobsinallsub-centershasremainedsmall analyzed tothenext,andproportionofre- number ofsub-centersdeclinedfromeachyear Angeles continuestourbanize.Since1970the challenged bynewevidenceabouthowLos for downtownundereitherscenario eloped atauniform density, though 34 33 Theim- The re- City ofLosAngelesundertooktheBunkerHill Community RedevelopmentAgency (CRA)ofthe with thedecreasingfortunes ofdowntown.The apartments, butwhichhadcontinuedtodecline to theVictorianmansionsbeingsubdividedinto of thecity’smostdenselypopulatedareasdue fashionable BunkerHill,whichhadbecome one downtown. Chiefamongthesewastheonce areas subjecttodeferred maintenance ringing the presenceofswathsneglectedresidential the chiefobstacletoachievingthesegoalswas the centralcity. Manyofthembelievedthat businesses andthenwell-to-doresidentsto elopers built some of the was ﬁnally raised, dev- buildings for Los Angeles When the height limit of ercial skyscraperdevelopment. topography, andclearedlandfor futurecomm- up-zoned theentireneighborhood, flattenedthe ive slumclearanceprojectthatleveled homes, Redevelopment Projectin1955,including amass- 36 RichardW. Stevenson,“OfficeGlutSpreadsCalifornia,” 37 35 MikeDavis, Beach. TheRed Line, aheavyrailsubwayrunning connecting downtownLosAngeles toLong Line openedin1990atacostof $877million, based exclusivelyonbuses.The light railBlue rail transitsystemtoapublic system years afteritconverteditsoriginal intra-urban downtown-centered lightrailsystem lessthan30 Angeles hadbegundesigningand deliveringa ed results,thechampionsofpublic transitinLos Even asredevelopmentefforts werepostingmix- mountains ithadnotachievedinanearlierera. vide aniconicskylineagainstabackdropof project amodern,sophisticatedimageandpro- In approvingsuchprojects,thecitysoughtto ulative oﬀice buildings. associated with spec- and the tax advantages existing dense zoning, advantage of the area’s the region to take tallest skyscrapers in Davis, CityofQuartz. City ofQuartz:ExcavatingtheFuture inLosAngeles

New York Times . (NewYork: Verso, 1990). (NewYork, NY, November11,1991).

and SanFernando Valleys. soming onthewestsideandin SanGabriel ient shoppingcentersandcineplexes wereblos- movie theaterstosucceedatwhen new, conven- remaining downtownstores,restaurants,and reduced by55percent. was 105,800 in 1940. By 2000 the population had Broadway (thecenteroftheDTLAfor decades) population livingwithinonemileof7thand aggravated downtown’slossofpopulation.The At thesametime, theredevelopmentproject the regionaltransitnetwork. Station inparticular,thusfar remainthehubof district, followed in1993.DowntownandUnion Hollywood, viaHollywoodandtheMid-Wilshire between downtownLosAngelesandNorth last year.However,themajority of theskyscrap- redevelopment agenciesthroughout California ended prematurelywithdefunding community longest ofitskindinLosAngeles history, and The BunkerHillRedevelopmentproject wasthe 35 Thisfurtherchallenged

Alternatives to the Central Business of thosefirmstoceaseexist.Manybusiness the 1980’sallwereclosed. department storesonBroadway shuttered.By headquarters’ movingsixblocks west, thelarge above thegroundfloor.Following thecorporate Spring StreetFinancialDistrictdevoid oftenants moved tothenewerbuildings,they leftformer downtown’s remainingfinancial corporations tions closertochiefexecutives’residences. When service firms,decampedfor new Westside loc in thefinancialandenergysectors,causedmany difficult task.Industryconsolidations,particular Re-attracting businesstodowntownproveda Neighborhood Center, Barrio, and Upscale District: Downtown asEntertainment every year. this project,withatleastonebuildingcompleted ers onBunkerHillwerebuiltinthe1980’sunder 36

25 City [Place] [Place] City 26 City [Place] 38 KathleenNyeFlynnandKathryn Maese,“GrandAvenue’s GrandSlam,” Rafael Moneo’s CathedralofOurLadythe clude Frank Gehry’sWalt Disney ConcertHall the redevelopmentproject.These projectsin- branding haslargelytrumpedurbanism within the world’smostrenownedarchitects, while clude, insomecases,masterworks bysomeof existing venuesattheMusicCenter. Thesein- along GrandAvenue tocomplimentthethree been theconstructionofnewpublic venues Central totheresurgenceofBunker Hillhas down center wasdimming,alternativevisionsfor as SouthernCalifornia’s commandandcontrol highest inthenationfor thattime.Planned commercial skyscraperswas26%,oneofthe the century, thevacancyratefor downtown 40 DonParson, “The Searchfor aCentre: TheRecompositionofRace, Class andSpaceinLosAngeles.” 39 AEG“NokiaTheaterL.A.Live LaunchesNewErafor LiveEntertainment,”(PressRelease,October17, 2007). d5440e320174.html. Yet evenasthevisionof resurrectingdowntown Plaza Three,andthe4-toweredMetropolis. ice towerswerecanceled,includingCalifornia Two California Plazawasfinished.At theturnof economic contraction,afterthefifty-twostory, Momentum dieddowninthe1990’s,with town weregainingground.For instance, LosAngelesDowntownNews off-

International Journal ofUrbanandRegionalResearch , February 19,2007, http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/grand-avenue-s-grand-slam/article_16634787-5dc4-5c2f-a075- revitalization, adding250events and nearly has contributedimmenselytodowntown’s Popular cultureandsportalsoclaimed astake completed. connecting CityHalltoBunkerHill, hasbeen only thefirstpartofthisproject, thecivicpark ground inDecember2007;asof February 2013, 35-55 stories.Officialsoriginally hoped tobreak units willbeinseveralskyscrapersrangingfrom square able unitsfor low-incomefamilies; 1million 10 yearsisplannedtoyieldover2,000new billion GrandAvenue Project,whichoverthenext County BoardofSupervisorsapprovedthe$2.05 nently, Diller Scofidio Art, CoopHimmelbau’sHighSchool9,andimmi- Angels, ArataIsosaki’sMuseumofContemporary tertainment space. hotel; and600,000squarefeet ofretailanden- downtown. TheStaplesCenter,opened in ential units,withover400designatedasafford- In February 2007,theLACityCounciland

feet ofofficespace;aMandarinOriental 38 Officespaceandresidential + Renfro’s Broad Collection 17.2 (1993):232-240. 1999, resid- in .

Theatre, theNokiaClub,RitzCarltonHotel Live wasconstructedwhichincludestheNokia Since theopeningofStaplesCenter,L.A. 4,000,000 visitorsperyeartotheneighborhood. houses inthe1950’s,beginningwithcon- the potentialofSpanish-languagemovie welcome. However,theBroadwaytheaterssaw while highlyproductivefor rents,wasnotalways Other areasunderwentakind form ofFarmer’s Field. football backtoLosAngeleshasemerged inthe and Residencesmorerecentlyaplantobring destination for workingclassLatinos. way hasfor decades beenthepremiershopping The departmentstoreshaveclosed, butBroad- disrepair, andsomereplacedwith parkinglots. theaters onthestreethavefallen intodisuseand Angeles boosters.Virtuallyallof themovie challenge topreservationistsand downtownLos ization” ofBroadwayisallbutcomplete, andisa to a Spanish-language film house. The “Mexican- version oftheMillionDollarTheater inthe1950’s 39

of resurgence 40 During that, 41 MikeDavis,“ChinatownPart Two?: TheInternationalization ofDowntownLosAngeles.” migration westtoBunkerHilland theFinancial Because ofthedowntownoffice market’s Downtown Oﬀice Building Alternate Downtowns: Adapting the Chinatown’s ChungKingRoad. to newaartist’sdistrict,and recentlyalong headquarters inSouthernCalifornia, expandtheir Santa As Westside rentsrose,especiallyinplaceslike namese thatdominatedowntown’sChinatown. among theCantonese,andmorerecentlyViet- towns intheSanGabrielValley ratherthan their investmentsofthenewsuburbanChina- migrants, particularlyTaiwanese, havefocused the samelevelofrenewal,asnewwavesim- Japanese. hotels andshoppingplazastoserveoverseas off-shore bankingsystemanddevelopnew this timeLittleTokyo redevelopedas bohemia firms soughttoexpand Monica andVenice, aoncebeachbound driftedeast,firsttoLittleTokyo, then 41 ButChinatownhasnotexperienced overseas, locatebranch Japanese The Urban Sociology Reader17 The UrbanSociology advocated byMayor AntonioVillaraigosa,the elopment rulesfor thedowntownarea.Strongly approved sweepingchangesinzoning anddev- On August7,2007,theLosAngeles CityCouncil reinvestment. has seen new life and downtown Los Angeles 2008, a 36.9% increase, in 2006 and 39,537 in With 28,878 residents residential population. ive reuseordinance,leadingtoanincreaseinthe dential unitshadbeencreatedundertheadapt- condo complexes.Asofearly2009,14,561resi- into renovatedloftsandluxuryapartment moded, vacantofficeandcommercialbuildings making iteasierfor developerstoconvertout- Council passedanadaptivereuseordinance, ing recentdecades.In1999,theLosAngelesCity intact, usedfor storageorremainingemptydur- District, manyhistoricofficebuildingswereleft (2005):232-240. urban, offering thekindsofamenitiesandresi- ed intoaneighborhood,andbecomingdistinctly an influxofresidents,itisnowbeingtransform- entertainment oriented.Furthermore, nowwith and thebusinessofdowntownisincreasingly central totheregionaleconomyasitoncewas, Los Angeleshasreinventeditself.Itisnotas than currentzoningcodesallow. So downtown and canmaketheirbuildings35percentlarger exempt fromsomeopen-spacerequirements of theirunitsfor low-incomeresidentsarenow downtown; developerswhoreserve15percent changes allowlargeranddenserdevelopments here, enduphereandgobackthere, butthat ter, theknowledgethatyou’llbe abletostart that attractsustothecityis chanceencoun- Architect NormanFoster hasargued “thething Summation parts ofLosAngeles. icult toaccessinsuchcloseproximity inother dential choices,ifnotconveniences thatarediff-

27 City [Place] [Place] City City [Place] 29

(Los Angeles, CA), September 24, 2011.

that downtowns once once downtowns that fostered. Los Angeles Times and and while while The serendipity 42

Foster describes has long been a hallmark of the Foster as any- particular urbanism of downtowns. Yet, something unexpected will happen along the way the along happen will unexpected something that you’ll make a discovery.” key a knows here time much spent has who body element of the civic personality Los Angeles— and many places like it—is that it manages to be an inventive and globally important city without giving its residents the chance to discover much “along the way” or through happenstance. emergence Angeles’s Los century 20th the in metro- that suggested for regions, politan worse, and better huge grow could encounter chance the up holds Foster that ideal, urban an as 42 As quoted by Christopher Hawthorne in “’Urbanized’ Examines the Growth of City Life,” seeming to rule out rule to seeming City [Place] [Place] City 28 [ENCLOSURE] BUILDING 43 JoAllenGause,MarkEppli,Michael HickokandWade Ragas, apprentice andjourneymenwould typicallybe family. Therentalcomponentinvolvingthe over tothedomesticspaceof craftsman’s case ofcrafts.Thesecondfloor was oftengiven the topfloorfor maximumdaylightinginthe the street.Thespaceofproduction or glassblowing)featured awidefrontageto craft (for example,barrelmaking,silverworking, floor devoted to commercial activity—selling the pear. Inthiscase,buildingswiththeground space inanefficientstriationofbased strated acombinationofdomesticandwork teenth andfourteenth centuriesthatdemon- ects suchasTheBurgherHouseinthethir- available toemergingprofessions. Itwasproj- fabrication functions and becoming increasingly in urbancenterswereemptyingthemselvesof production/consumption programsofbuildings zones. As a result, many of the previously mixed of citieswereestablishedasmono-specialized With theriseofindustrialization,specificareas on averticalorganizationthatbegantodisap- on thegroundfloorfor easeoftransport oron Office DevelopmentHandbook was either

(Washington: UrbanLand Institute,1998). necessitated an ow tradition, albeitonagranderscale –foreshad- still alludesstronglytoanestablished formal ly non-domestic,thepublicface ofthebuilding we canseethatalthoughtheprogram isentire- program wastakenevenfurther. Inthisstage gerating thismono-functionalstacking ofoffice duction oftheelevator,possibility ofexag- mono-functional office building. With the intro- aggregated together larger departmentstores,whichincreasingly the groundfloor,riseofentitiessuchas often dedicatedtocommercialactivitiesonlyon previously thesemixedusebuildingshadbeen fully self-sufficientdomestic/workunit.While the productionofcraftonsite.Thiswasa accommodate allstoragerequirementsfor Additionally, theBurgherHousewould in theatticoralternativelythirdfloor. commerce. Thesefactors ledtotheincreasingly ing evenbiggerscalarshiftstocome. entire buildingdevotedonlyto to form alargerwhole, also seen Modernistspheresofseparation,function- was estimatedthat1in5Americansworked a dedicatedofficebuilding. demands and economics in central busi tration of oﬀice towers the homogenous concen- were located far from While suburban homes vertical layering,blendingandstacking. into closercontactwithoneanother through al zonesdistinguishedplanametrically—brought over timeinbuiltform. The building typologyandhowtheymanifested to uncovermanyofthechangesinoffice to officeworkinthe20thcentury. By set offawaveofdemandfor spacededicated The postindustrialeconomyofNorthAmerica the Postindustrial Age The Riseof the ServiceEconomy in tricts, new work 43 overriding shift Thissectionaims ness dis- ing 1998 it

has

in 31 [Enclosure] Building

32 Building [Enclosure] Throughout the20thcentury, technological spaces oflivingandworking. towards increasinglycomplexandintertwined tendency towards flexibleshellscapableof This feedback loopshapedthearchitectural tion oftectonics,economicsand labor. image ofdowntownsrevealsadeep integra- separation ofspecificfunction—and ofthe iated mostsymbolicallywiththe autonomous of theofficetower—building form assoc- reinforcing feedback loop. As such, the history of performance pushedtheothertwoina productivity. Throughouthistory, eachmetric ured architecturally, financiallyandinworker performance –performance thatwasmeas- vealed anunyieldingpositivistpushtowards achievements inofficetowerdesignhavere- prise andidentity, hasdrivenarchitecturalform The postindustrialeconomy, infusingenter- new of living are forming proximity hybrids.

faster cyclesofchange,structuraltectonics, trends ofpostmodernism.To accommodate complex arrangements,andrevealsthelarger accommodating amyriadoftemporaryand toric references displaced intimeandspaceis postmodern architecturalcharacteristic ofhis- essity ofofficeworkperse.The quintessential caught upwithandovertookthe materialnec- ment inwhichtheimageandidentity ofwork emplar ofthepostmodernarchitectural mo- late 1970’sand1980’s,DTLAstands asanex- downtown coreofofficetowers builtinthe With significantswathesofLos Angeles’s the DTLA Postindustrial Postmodernism in of theworktheyshelter. shifting needs,bothmaterialandimmaterial, structure capableofadaptingtotherapidly robust but generic architectural frame of infra- systems increasinglymanifest themselvesasa material separations and environmental control loped structural innovationofofficetowers deve- We beginbyexamininghow20thcentury able quantityandqualityofinteriorwork. speculation andtheinsertionofanunpredict- was builttoaccommodatethevagariesof development, representsanarchitecturethat office space,exemplifiedbytheBunkerHillre- disjunction betweentheparticularitiesofplace the postmodernconditionrepresentedadeep hollowed-out shellqualityofmanyDTLA’s and thespecificitiesoftime.Thegeneric, symptomatic ofthebroaderconceptionthat toaidinthemaximizationofland-rental

Downtown Los Angeles 1945-1979: A circuit for oﬀice work. Increasing the worker’s ﬂexibility among the building and city through consolidation, decentralization, and mobility. US involvement in ELECTRONIC AGE World War II Vietnam War

1952 1940 Pershing Square is 1953 1950s The Federal Housing The ﬁrst segment of 1940s City Hall remains demolished and 15% of the Numerous old and 1955 1957 Acts of 1949 and the Hollywood Numerous very old 1948 1949 downtown’s tallest excavated in 1952 to population enters historic buildings in The CRA 1911 height 1954 kick-start an Freeway opens as a and historic buildings 1946 Los Angeles is the only The GSA is building for decades. build a three-story the CBD downtown LA are undertakes the limit ordinance "urban renewal" one and a half mile in downtown LA are Zoning policies city among the 18 largest established by While strict building underground demolished to make Bunker Hill is repealed program that would

CITY In order to increase a firm’s stretch through the demolished to make that set high US cities where President Truman to height limits are lifted parking garage way for street-level Redevelopment reshape American flexible use of capital, physical Cahuenga Pass way for street-level requirements for downtown stores are make administrative in 1957, significant parking lots Project cities, including office assets are converted into above Hollywood parking lots off-street parking responsible for less than tasks for the federal large-scale office tower Early downtown downtown Los office expenses through Redevelopment in downtown LA 10 percent of the government more construction and the is driven by a 1960 Angeles, where changes to the federal tax code of Bunker Hill begin to be metropolitan retail trade efficient City Hall Building creation of a downtown desire to provide working class enacted 1951 Downtown LA skyline does not occur the CBD with housing is removed until the late 1980s suburban to make way for functional new office separations and 1950s construction levels of 1950s The widespread unfettered by earlier 1952 View from automobile The Million Dollar introduction of building height City Hall access Theater in downtown Thermopane insulated limitations 1940s The Electronic Age brings 1950s LA is converted into glass commences Downtown Los Angeles about the continual Major engineering shifts: a Spanish-language at Broadway & Olympic compression of worker’s The core and the film house 1947 appliances for increasing periphery of the building General Petroleum flexibility and portability can now be held in BLDG Company Building is tension reducing the completed in number of interior columns thereby further downtown LA Scientific opening up the office management building floor plate This continues to seek 1958 supersecretary 1950s the integration of Hughes Products All Steel Equipment Inc ad consolidated Techniplan - To Get Things Done ad human operators 1957 Face to Face ad The relationship many of the 1948 1949 Through ergonomics, with their Completely de-spatialized, between flexibility functions of a Magnetic Tape Audio Rotary Phone eases use the desk is re-formed business the worker and his and worker secretary into Recorder: Replaces of traditional dial 1950s to wrap around the appliance, technology appear in an efficiency is a single the phonograph as methods with the rotary Eberhard & Wolfgang Schnelle worker, collapsing focusing at the abstracted, spatial void. assumed not to compact, choice technology phone’s rapid-spinning develop the Burolandschaft or the immediate needs scale of gesture Here attention has been occur at an urban mobile piece of for audio recording dial-face “office landscape” in Germany in of his work from the rather than the focused entirely on the or even building 1940 machinery response to the open-plan offices of scale of the building Letter inhabitation of direct interaction between scale, but at the LIFE Magazine. 1956 Matic ad A female telephone 1945 1940s America down to the scale of office space the worker and his tools at scale of the room operator in a Bell Supersecretary the desk the scale of the desk

DESK Systems advertisement 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 Building [Enclosure] 35

the create a massive internal atrium. This was deployed dramatically by IM Pei in his 1989 design for an unpreced- the Bank of China, which features ented internal atrium girded with an equally dramatic triangulated steel dampening system. Through this series of structural innovations, office tower took on the ability to house broader and more open interiors able to flexibly accept a myriad of changing interior configurations. These structural innovations allowed the buildings to become increasingly hollow shells. By the 1980’s this flexible adaptability was becoming emblematic of the architectural requirements post-modernism—requirements to adapt the quicksilver flows of both capital and identity. – Separation Technological in Glass. Advancements Running in parallel to the structural advancements of towers were improvements in glass an increasing technologies that allowed for core of the building could be hollowed out to

Citicorp Center in New York by Hugh Stubbins Citicorp Center in New York & Associates which generously opens itself out under a looming cantilever at its ground plane plaza. This search towards optimal structural through hybridity led to a major performance innovation in internal dampening based upon structural triangulation. By triangulating steel as the inner core necessary stiffness was maintained while the central Angeles this moment of fervor for achieving for Angeles this moment of fervor of maximum height was realized in the form Center completed the slender, 62-story Aon by Charles Luckman in 1973, 4 years after the completion of the Hancock Centre. The 1970’s were characterized by a switch from maximizing the structural and economic viability of height, towards optimizing structural and eco- The economic viability of nomic performance. maximum floor space was peaking just as the structural innovation of the period was pushed this moment, the challenge turned to its limit. At towards adapting structure to aid in the quest efficient and flexible internal space. With the for goal of optimizing structure, new attention was paid to the promise of hybrid concrete and steel structures. This new hybrid of concrete core and an unprecedented steel periphery allowed for amount of openings in the ground level curtain of these wall, improving the urban performance towers. A significant example of this new ap- and hybridity is the 1978 proach to performance in Chicago. In Los In Chicago. in of its completion it dramatically surpassed A precedent in this new approach to knitting structure and dampening together was the Brunswick Building by SOM’s Myron Goldsmith Khan completed in 1966. Their struc- and Fazlur tural scheme pioneered a hybrid approach between tension and compression, periphery core. Goldsmith and Khan knitted together the flexible sway of tension and the rigid resistance of compression within one unified curtain wall This arrangement removed internal façade. columns, creating a much more homogenous floor plate, opening the interior space up to a In Los Angeles this new level of adaptability. structural approach was exemplified by William the Pereira’s 611 Place completed in 1969. At time all other downtown Los Angeles towers in height, relying on its rigid exterior frame of vertical aluminum beams further strengthened by a massive blank concrete shear wall covering of the building. The race for one whole face height at all costs culminated with the 1969 SOM by Centre Hancock John dressed through the introduction of damping independently mechanisms that could perform from the main bearing structure. A typical dampening solution involved a peripheral load- bearing frame paired with an absorbent mass in the central core. expectations.

scraper, the 13-story Continental Build-

downtown building boom of the 1890’s-1920’s, District, Financial Street Spring the in particularly consisted of this same category reticulated frame construction. This included Los Angeles first sky the widespread acceptance of a new type for equilibrium among separate components functioning together through tensile strength. The core and the periphery of building were now a held in tension eliminating the necessity for majority of the interior columns, drastically Aided plate. floor building office the up opening and abetted by economic enthusiasm, these structural advancements caused building heights However, with this to increase dramatically. a new vibration structural efficiency, newfound challenge arose with corollary increases in lateral and wind loads, which were dangerously ampli- fied by these soaring new height By the 1960’s this new challenge was being ad- ing of 1903. Major engineering shifts in the 1950’s allowed Building [Enclosure] [Enclosure] Building 34

Building [Enclosure] 33 century th 19 World War II, which demanded greater and War World of office space. greater square footage The structural innovation that facilitated this The structural innovation that facilitated push was an increased separation between the core and periphery of building. This was due to the improved understanding spread in no small part by of tensile forces, the 1950’s proselytizing of Buckminster Fuller. office buildings, like those designed Previously, by William Le Baron Jenney in late Chicago, had been of reticulated frames, masonry load bearing structures relying primarily on structural compression. In Los Angeles the of the unforgiving, unpredictable and un- of the unforgiving, moored qualities of the postmodern office building work condition. ice Building Oﬀ Downtown The the in Los Angeles: Laying for Structural Groundwork Separation and Integration The structural developments of high-rise construction that occurred throughout the 20th century reveal an unwavering push towards the maximum structural expression of height of highest and at all costs as a manifestation best use, the regime of spatial efficiency and industria- centralization that supported Fordist lism in Los Angeles and elsewhere. When this height peaked, pushing towers to ex- race for treme height limitations, concerns turned to the optimization of external factors--mainly height This drive for structural performance. was fuelled by a flourish of economic interest during the commercial boom that followed

creasingly speculative environment. Lastly, this ingly speculative environment. Lastly, flows that underpinned this postmodern arch- section concludes with commentary on the profit, and thus the agglomeration of office turning to a structural work in the CBD before the flexible accom- hollowing-out to allow for unknown and spec- modation of increasingly, this summary ulative future systems. Secondly, will examine how the shift in environmental control systems in office towers gradually encouraged an increasingly hermetic work environment separating the worker not only from the environmental context outside tower but also from the environmental context of other areas of the building leading to an increasingly atomized and untethered postmod- this section outlines the ern worker. Thirdly, increasingly flexible and unpredictable capital itectural moment, especially as they relate to the unmooring of DTLA office worker from the particularities of place within an in emblematic qualities that DTLA possesses as a particularly potent manifestation stands for 36 Building [Enclosure] 44 InakiAbalosandJuanHerreros,

the demandsfor increasedarchitecturalperform- component inthestandardization ofoffice mally andacousticallyinsulating glass acentral pane glassinthe1950’smadelightweight, ther- The introductionandwidespread useofThermo- creasingly structuralglass. tions suchaslayeredglass,tinted glassandin- performative separationwithemerginginnova- ed tobeableabsorbthebroadest rangeof tion. However,itwastheglassbarrierthatprov- type ofseparationfromfireproofingtoinsula- tectonic approachestoa ing fromathickloadbearingmassofprevious optical separation.Buildingskinwastransition- mands toprovidegreateracoustical,thermaland efficiency, glass manufacturers deliveredonde- tivity asameansofdevelopingincreasedlabor the exteriorofofficetower.Responding towards definitivelyseparatingtheinteriorand exaggeration ofthealreadyprevalenttendency tower performance. of discretebarriers,eachperforming aspecific Tower andOffice 44 Increatinghermeticinte- layeredaccumulation (Cambridge:MITPress,2003),111. to terior andanunpredictableexterior. Asthe Towards Postmodernism Interior and Exterior orWorking Environmental Control–Separating ingly networkedworldofwork. vagaries ofglobalflowscapitalintheincreas- specificity ofplaceandbetterabletoacceptthe commodate interiorsthatweredivorcedfromthe glass advancementsincreasedtheabilitytoac- rior conditions,materialinnovationssuchasthese riors, separatedfromthecontingenciesofexte- the became increasinglyinsularandhermetic. While qualities ofglass,theinteriorspace oftheoffice core, coupledwithadvancements inthethermal more integratedstructuralrelationship tothe iphery oftheofficetowerbegan totakeona increased separationbetweena controllable ed desirefor environmental control,namelythe design ofofficetowers,isatrajectory ofincreas- Parallel totheeffect ofstructuralissuesonthe mur neutralisant approachofLeCorbusier per- in-

transition asthedesignersfaced thechallenge commercial structure,nevertheless markedthis i struction of the United Nations Secretariat build- the artificialinteriorclimatecontrols. Thecon- in the1950’ssawnewfound pressuretoimprove The increasingcommercialization ofofficespace and self-controlled. As thetechnologicalcapabilitiesofenvironment- the extremeverticalityoftower’sexterior. the experienceofaninternalhorizontalityfrom plates, againemphasizingaseparationbetween creasingly bespreadouthorizontallyacrossfloor lighter structural requirements, services could in- itself fromthisexternalverticalinterface. With zontality oftheinterior,thusdisassociating tion oftheinternalcolumnemphasizedhori- to theinternalexperience,structuralelimina- saw theverticalplaneofenvelopeasintegral an autonomous,internalspace--self-contained opment servedtofurtherisolatetheinterioras al controladvanced,theparallelstructuraldevel- ng inNewYork City, whilebeinganutterly non-

45 Ibid.,142 within newlydevelopingstructuralsystems. of integratingenvironmentalcontrolsystems ing structuraltowerinnovations of theperiod. tain them while trying to adapt to the ever-shift- were establisheditbecamecomplicated tomain- However, oncethesestandards of officecomfort that served to homogenize office environments. widely adoptedinternalclimatecontrol standards tion SystemsDevelopmentProject developed izations suchastheAmericanSchool Construc- dards wereincreasinglybeingestablished. Organ- readily availableincommercialoffice space,stan- ture. Asenvironmentalcontrolbecamemore systems werethreadedthroughthisopen most efficientlythattheenvironmentalcontrol ing overtheopenfloorofficespace,itfollowed increasingly involvedtensionspaceframesstretch- ered Environment integration inhis particular, thiswidespreadphenomenaofsystem based uponhisobservationsofLosAngelesin By 1969,ReynerBanhamwasnoting,largely

Architecture oftheWell-Temp- . Asstructuraladvancements

struc- 45

were, inturn,abletocontribute to thestructural maintained. Thesededicatedmechanical floors standards ofenvironmentalcomfort weretobe ever morenecessaryifthealreadyestablished Heavily influencedbybothTaylorist conceptsof individual horizontalfloorplates was significant. decentralization andincreasingindependence of the extremeverticalityofoffice tower,the from theopenplanofficeplates. Thuswithin with theverticalstiffening systems prohibited performance ofthebuildingbybeingcrossed sity for decentralizing theclimatecontrolbecame were growingdramaticallyinheight,theneces- across onecentralizedsystem.Asthetowers other tolessentheenergylossthatwouldoccur anical floorsoperatedindependentlyofonean- floor plateandrisingbuildingheight.Themech- control standardsacrossanever-broadening were introducedinordertohandletheexacting control systems.Dedicatedmechanicalfloors zontal distributionoftheexistingenvironmental deeper floorplates,puttingstrainonthehori- These structuraldevelopmentswereallowingfor

contributed tothegrowingawareness ofhori- in structuralengineeringandbuilding systems ubiquitous. the oﬀice interior standards quickly made control into expected interior environmental these mechanisms of The solidiﬁcation of all placed overanetworkofelectricalsystems. humidity andasoundabsorbentraisedfloor lighting, evenlycontrolledairtemperatureand consisted ofacousticalinsulation,continuous included openflexiblefloorspace,aceilingthat for theideallycontrolledofficeinteriorthat the QuickbornerTeam developedastandard environmental controlsystems,agroupnamed rapidly evolvingtechnologicalcapabilitiesof clamor for spatialflexibility, coupledwiththe labor efficiencyaswelltheincreasing Significantadvancements

37 Building [Enclosure] [Enclosure] Building 38 Building [Enclosure] 46 Ibid.,217. tive officebuilding,embracedwithin thelarger The 1980’ssawthesolidification ofthespecula- Postmodernism of the Oﬀice Building:Emergence of Changes inthe Political Economy pure andfundamentalarchitectural separation. Modernist times,beenconsidered sacrosanctin increasingly blendingwhathadpreviously, in configurations ofidentities—identitiesthatwere tralized enoughtoacceptamyriadofshifting standard ofenvironmentalcomfort butisdecen- The genericinfrastructuremaintainsthebasic dition exemplifiedbyLosAngelesofficetowers. shell towerisemblematicofthepostmoderncon- distinct entitieswithinalargerinfrastructural programmatically, environmentallyandspatially working andliving.Thehorizontallayeringof anism toblurfunctionalboundariesbetween begin tousethishorizontallayeringasamech- foreshadowed futureadvancementthatwould zontal layeringwithinaverticalextrusion.This speculation in America. for increased oﬀice factors all set the stage political, and economic speculative real estate. regional identityasitaccumulatedintheform of flowed morereadilyandwidely, stripping “the regimeofflexibleaccumulation.” red tothissymptomaticpostmodernconditionas conditions ofpostmodernity. DavidHarveyrefer- made Foreign Trade ZoneswithinAmerica the 1980’sseveralFederal Treasury decisions workplace designwasexecuted by Gensler. building wasdesignedbySOM,but theinterior ing inSanFrancisco of1964inwhichthebase example ofthisistheAlcoaHeadquarters build- workplace interiorsasadesignspecialty. Anearly interiors. Thisledtotherelated advancement of sign ofcorporateofficebuildings andcorporate creasing separationofservicesbetween thede- in theearlytomid-1960s,whichsparkedin- These factors built uponearliertaxlawchanges Federal, 46 Capital In

lished in the 1980’s. Improvement were estab- precedents on Tenant Thirdly, important tax speculative oﬀice towers. booming business of wider leverage with the turing, gave developers ingly complex debt struc- These and other, increas- ercial-backed-mortgage-security. sources –includingthenewlydevelopedcomm- which allowedbackingfromawiderarrayof financing vehicleswerealsobeingdeveloped increasingly desirablefor foreign investment.New court ruledthat these improvementsincluded thus exempt from prohibitive taxation levels. The repairs rather than capital expenditures and were could beexpensedasnecessary operating cost established that The rulingofthe1987Mossvs.US Tax Court commercial tenant improvements 47 RobertFesler andLarryMaples,“TheTax Consequences of Tenant Improvements,” Downtown Athletic Club,framedwithina influential 1978interpretationof theNewYork Emerging atthesametimeasRem Koolhaas’ Postmodernism inFull Swing Birth of Speculative Oﬀice Buildings: now performance meantthatofficeinteriorsmust provement. Thefocus onbothfinancialandwork manent, disposableandconstantlysubjecttoim- interiors wereincreasinglyconceivedofasimper- possibletoaccommodatesuchchanges.Office tower shelltobecomeasgenericandflexible it becameincreasinglydesirablefor theoffice to renovateinteriorsofofficetowersfrequently building.” relating totheoperationormaintenanceofa windows, anddoors…othercomponents coverings thereofsuchaspanelingortiling, floors, andceilings,aswellanypermanent “...such partsofabuildingaswalls,partitions, change. constantlybesubjecttoimprovements and 47 Withthefinancialencouragement culture

The CPA Journa l . 1996. speculative and horizontal interestinthecompletelyheterogen- tionally fundedspeculativeofficetowerandthe geneity andpredictabilityofthegeneric,interna- two majorconceptionsofthetower—thehomo- variety. The1980’ssawtheconfluenceofthese interiors, of ever-changing accepting a multiplicity of a tower capable of upon the generic form of the 1980’s was based the oﬀice tower boom and symbolic reference, Stripped of hierarchies thesegenericfloorplates. eous activitythatcouldbeaccommodatedwithin city was flexibleenoughtoaccommodateamultipli- ulative officebuildingwasborn—athat of congestion ofinteriorsandcapableacceptingendless , themodernNorthAmericanspec- just as varied, or negotiatedthese infrastructures.For example city. The bases of the towers often acknowledged edged theirinfrastructuraldependence uponthe autonomous fromthecity, butratheracknowl- capital, thetowerswerenolonger conceivedas ly commonplace.Tiedsoclosely to theflowsof designated floordestinationsbecame increasing- striations. Skip-stopandexpress elevatorswith ation systemsweredevisedtonegotiate these across theever-flexiblefloorplates, newcircul- homogeneity encompassinghorizontalvariety behind dropceilings.Withthefocus onvertical equipment was kept as neutral as possible, often the increasinglyadvancedandcomplexservicing vious servicingsystemsmayhavebeendisplayed, their maximumstructuralallocations.Whilepre- were thetwinoperatives.Floorplatesspreadto were multifold. Maximization andstandardization mic motivationstowardsspeculativeofficetowers The tectonicresultsofthesepoliticalandecono- itself. temporary as the city

39 Building [Enclosure] [Enclosure] Building 40 Building [Enclosure] featured sleekglasstowersgenericenoughto Hill. ThewinningschemebyArthur Erickson initively withthe1980’sredevelopment ofBunker downtown LosAngelesofficetowers camedef- The arrivalofpostmodernismin the realmof became agenericplaceoffleeting circulation. neutralize conflictingprivateinterests, theatrium table tothepedestrian,fraught with theneedto tion intheprivate,corporatetowers. Lesshospi- qualities paralleledbyitsdecreasingpublicfunc- came agenericspacedevoidofanyidentifying unification andpublicidentity, increasinglybe- agendas, theatriumspace,formerly aspace dating abroadrangeoftenantswithvarying and grandeur.Inaspeculativetoweraccommo- was allowingittoexpandexponentiallyinsize different characterjustasstructuralinnovation the lobbyatriumbegantotakeonanentirely ulation inandarounditsbase.Also,thespaceof accommodate acomplexnetworkoftrafficcirc- ment in LosAngeles,theBunkerHilltowerdevelop- ofthe1980’swasexplicitlydesignedto of such astheopeningsequenceof 444South productivity thatithadlonglacked. Mediaimages given LosAngelestheskylinedimage ofefficient Hill, toweringandimposingoverhead, hadfinally The representationofdowntown workviaBunker 1983 OneCalifornia Plaza. of time.TheultimateexamplethisisErickson’s ed woefullyunder-subscribedfor alengthy period terior. Numberssuggestthatthetowersremain- less crowdedrealitybehindthetintedglassex- a bustlingandproductiveplacedespitemuch ties andpolishedenoughtoreflecttheimageof absorb anynumberofshiftingcorporateidenti- maximization of the image of a robust, productive New York. Instead,itseemsthattheextreme compared withtheirnarrowercounterparts in ical downtownLosAngelesfloor plateswhen does notfullyexplaintherelative breadthoftyp- ings withslender,taperingpeaks. Butthisalone tallest towersdidreducetheability tocapbuild- commodation ofhelicopterlanding padsonthe 1957. Nevertheless,regulationsinvolving theac- ings at150feet, thesehadbeenloosened by place indowntownLosAngeles,cappingbuild- towers. proportions ofmanyitspre-World War II ularity specifictothecityinbroad,squat of postmodernity–theskylinelackedthepartic- en theinterchangeablequalitiesof tening internationalcityofthe80’s.Andyet,giv- While strictheightrestrictionshadlongbeenin was distinctivefor itsrelativelystoutstructures. York weresendingupslender spires,LosAngeles promoted theimageofLosAngelesasglis- Flower inthetelevisionshowLALawfurther Angeles’s downtownofficetowers–symptomatic WhilecitiessuchasChicagoandNew much ofLos time, thenewlyformed GSAwas taskedwith vate sectorofofficespaceconstruction. At the to theincreasinglystandardized speculative pri- have morphedfromtheirpublic sector beginnings tions ofofficespace—creatingstandards that and formative roleinstandardizing theexpecta- eral agencies.Thus,theyhaveplayed acritical design standardguidelinestobe followed byfed- method toachievethischargewas toprovide for thefederal governmentmoreefficient.One by PresidentTruman tomakeadministrative tasks Services Administration wasestablishedin1949 General ServicesAdministration. on theimageofproductivityandwork. emblematic ofapostmodernconditionbasedup- ated adistinctlyandreassuringlystoutskyline centre, despiteafar moreephemeralreality, cre- self-identity toAngelenosofarobust,corporate moreappropriatelystreet-levelperspective.The of identityimpositionfromasidewalk,orperhaps er horizontallimit–gainingtheutmostbreadth interior pushed theLosAngelestowerstoitsout- The General tion betweenpublicandprivate sectors, the tion Service.Giventhismandated cross-consulta- Public BuildingsServiceandtheFederal Acquisi- Currently thetwomainbodiesof theGSAare assessments oftheprofessionals inquestion. ment withprivatesectorconsultants toprovide hiring processandischaracterized byitsen process isbasedonatwo-partarchitect/engineer process for federal projectsmoreefficient.The gram tomakethedesignprofessional selection the GSAintroducedtheirDesignExcellencePro- Architecture” documentwasreleased.In1994 In thesameyeara“GuidingPrinciplesfor Federal the Ad HocCommitteeonFederal OfficeSpace. they wereaskedtowriterecommendationsfor cies’ architecturalresponsibilitiesincreasedwhen novation totheWhiteHouse.By1962agen- 1950’s theGSAwastaskedwithasignificantre- standardizing emergencypreparedness.Inthe equipment incaseoffurthermilitaryactionand surplus militaryequipment,stockpilingnecessary following World War IIincludingdisposingof creating abroadbaseofstandardprocedures gage- ciple beingtheevocation,“We donotimitate– is tobevaluedoverprecedent- the guidingprin- through culturalassociation. meaning, whichinturnreinforces productivity determinism toproduceefficiency andsymbolic guidelines reinforce thebeliefinarchitectural number ofbothqualitativeandquantitative for weareamodelunto others.”Anextensive Within thismandateitisdecreed thatinnovation vigor andstabilityoftheAmerican Government.” vide visualsymbolismofthe “dignity, enterprise, inism, thearchitectureisalsomandatedtopro- use ofpublicmoney. Inadditiontosuchdeterm- synonymous withtheefficientandproductive takes placetherein.Accordingly, good designis the efficiencyandproductivityofworkthat spective thatarchitecturalform candetermine The policiesoftheGSAoperateunderper- construction. within privatesectorspeculativeoffice increasingly becomeintegratedandimplemented standards initiallyintroducedbytheGSAhave

41 Building [Enclosure] [Enclosure] Building 42 Building [Enclosure] private sectorsaredemonstrated inLosAngeles’s intertwining ofstandardsbetween thepublicand vation andofficeefficiency, aswelltheclosely ivity. Theirtwinprerogativesof historicpreser- duced associationsofpatriotism withproduct- nent oftheirworkstrategy—the culturallypro- building, whichcementstheother maincompo- factors) withinanexistinghistoricallysignificant space andactiveamongotherquantifiable imity, optimumrelationship betweenstorage comfort control,bestspatialhierarchiesofprox- day lightingconditions,optimumenvironmental research towardsefficiency(includingoptimum scenario ofinsertingthemostrecentscientific much oftheirguidelinesistowardstheoptimum tion withintheGSA.Themotivationsbehind the outputofOfficeDesignandConstruc- through quantifiabledesignisdemonstratedby in theformation ofefficientandproductive work transfer theownership ofthehistoricSpring house site.TheGSAiscurrently planning to redevelopment ofitsdowntown Federal Court- The architecturalmanifestation ofsuchabelief

ization thataims tofacilitate theexchangeof founded in 1936,isanon-profitresearchorgan- Urban LandInstitute. and productivity. concerns for speculation as the result of mutual office standardization full intersection of mandate, suggests the defined design efficiency circumscribed by a well- and private sector, ings between the public This exchange of build- lot atFirstStreetand Broadway. GSA designguidelinesonthecurrentlyvacant federal judiciaryofficebuilding,following all then inturnberequiredtoconstructanew Street Courthousetoadeveloperwhowould

The UrbanLandInstitute, office andindustrialdevelopment. of thefivemainareasresearchatULIis knowledge aroundbroadissuesoflanduse.One square feet orless,makeupovertwothirds that mediumsizedofficebuildings, 10,000 medium scaledofficebuilding.The ULIstates ulative reward,inpart,totheresilience ofthe The ULIcreditsthepredictablelong-term spec- resilient oflongtermrealestate investments. amongst themostfinanciallyrewarding and decisions. TheULItoutsofficespeculation as cial feasibility asthestartingpointofalldesign The ULIguidelinesonofficedesign takefinan- foundation ofitsresearchinitiatives. financial andproductivityperformance isatthe to theGSA,architecturaldeterminismbasedupon creating abroadstandardizinginfluence.Similar Development Handbook, material, publishedinforms includingthe ance, tenantsatisfaction andfinancialreturn.This gates strategiesthatoptimizebuildingperform- promotes andexchangesresearchthatinvesti- isdisseminatedwidely Theinstitute Office 48 JoAllenGause,MarkEppli,Michael HickokandWade Ragas, open floorplatetopotentialtenantsincontin- to theULI,isfor anofficebuildingtooffer an flexible tenancy. Theidealscenario,according construction tomaximumreturnofprofitfor desirable ratioofinitialcapitalexpenditurein the tendency began to funded by local banks, office towers might be While Build-to-Suit to financingchangesin the mid-1980’s. Much ofthisshifthasbeenattributed inverse declineinBuild-to-Suitdevelopment. been ontherisesincemid-1980’s withthe that theseinvestordrivendesigndecisionshave most financially desirable investment. ULI notes costs, zoningandrentalratestodeterminethe termined throughanequationofconstruction This idealfloorplate-to-servicecoreratioisde- uous blocksofaminimum1,000squarefeet. America. of theexistingofficebuildingstockin 48 Thismediumscaleoffers themost Office DevelopmentHandbook (Washington: UrbanLandInstitute,1998), 5. ingly criticalaspublicbodiesexposedthemselves t o b e tifiable expectations tower design with quan- standardization of office This fuelled increasing to themarketspeculation. ling in such real estate financing became increas for large-scaleofficetowerprojects.Risk profi- towards increasinglypublicsourcesoffunding its accumulationofprivatedebtsawaswitch The realestaterecessionofthelate1980’sand property trust funds. internationally run such as nationally and ing, speculative funding vehicles of risk-accept- shift towards emerging design parameters. increasingly consistent derived from

- national investing inthelate1970’sandearly office towerfrenzy, largelybackedbyinter- Downtown LosAngelessawaspeculative ization and speculation. conﬂuence of standard- into being through the Angeles was brought existent skyline of Los The previously barely wards restrictions aswellbroaderincentivesto- implementation ofthelongheldstrictheight ers wasdramatic,asitcoincidedwiththefull Suit officetowersandtowardspeculative In LosAngeles,theturnawayfromBuild-to- mortgage-backed securities. ded heavilybypubliclysupportedcommercial assessed throughstandardizeddesignandfun- itively towardsspeculativeofficetowers,risk By themid-1990’sbalancehadtippeddefin- Americanforeign investment. tow-

43 Building [Enclosure] [Enclosure] Building

44 Building [Enclosure] GSA and ULI, outlining those advocated by the Guidelines such as metrics ofstandardizedperformativity. sign emphasiswasheavilyplaced uponproven cross-cultural speculativeinvestment, thede- investors. ments –alargeproportionbacked byJapanese town propertieswereforeign ownedinvest- ported thatby1985,75%ofthemajordown- was exponentialinthe1980’s.TheTimesre- ly forming aheretofore barelyexistentskyline, the rate of growth of such bulky towers, quick- squat buildings.Fuelled byforeign investment, built inthisboomwastowardsrelativelywide, overwhelming tendencyfor theofficetowers al spread concernsaboutmaintainingtheregion- height oftowerselsewhere,therewerewide- a seismicwarinesstoreachtheextraordinary ulative, maximizedfloorplatescombinedwith 1980’s. Giventhefocus onprofit-driven,spec- 49 MikeDavis,

qualities ofsunlightonthestreetsandan City ofQuartz 49 Inordertomitigatetheriskofsuch (New York: Verso, 1990),135. habits for millions. defining spatial work construction, while speculative office tower ting for the boom in helped create the set- ural performance standards of architect- Such quantifiable gating investor risk. establishing and miti- components of increasingly necessary standards, became ing ratios and servicing ratios, optimum light- such as depth of slab quantifiable features investment, localandfederal taxincen characterized tower was The speculative office generic, standardizedshellinfrastructure. from purposebuiltspecificitytowarda financial forces drovetheofficetoweraway turing throughbankinginnovations.These well asanever-broadeningscopeofdebtstruc- including increasingenticementsfor loped throughaconfluenceofmultiplefactors amidst alooseningofcapitalflows.This ingly encouragedspeculativedevelop tower showsafinancialtrajectorythatincreas- In summation,therecenthistoryofoffice Summation fluctuating horizontal wildly disparate and encapsulating the vertical homogeneity by its

foreign ment tives as deve- Downtown Los Angeles 1945-1979: A circuit for oﬀice work. ELECTRONIC AGE Increasing the worker’s ﬂexibility among the building and city through consolidation, decentralization, and mobility. US involvement in Vietnam War

Giuliano's Bunker Hill House 1973 Downtown LA 1960s 1960s 1970 1980 Polycentric 1963 The live/work loft first takes Numerous very old and The early luxury housing of Bunker The longest redevelopment project in LA map Last LA streetcar hold with artists in the Soho historic buildings in Hill had been subdivided into smaller Los Angeles history, the renewal of The decentralized urban goes out of district of New York City downtown LA are flats for low-wage workers. Their Bunker Hill sees a new skyscraper or fabric allows for increasing service demolished to make 1969 removal through urban redevelopment two completed every year. In 1999, 1970s accessibility and CITY The Burolandschaft way for street-level Reyner Banham notes, largely programs evacuates downtown of commercial office vacancy rates Live/Work lofts are automobility from home to office landscape is parking lots based upon his observations of residents, pulling the rug from under downtown reach 26%, one of the transplanted and various work clusters imagined as Commercial real estate Los Angeles, the widespread downtown retail in the process highest in the nation for that time re-interpreted by artists non-hierarchical practice is restructured to phenomena of system integration in Los Angeles’ Venice space in which accord with tax code changes M. Hulot, the in his book Architecture of the Beach area collaborations could and urban renewal incentives, protagonist in Jacques Well-Tempered Environment easily be formed and resulting in the speculative Tati's 1967 film As urban agglomerations reformed as office as the primary mode for Playtime, is produce dispersed Herman Hertzberger 1969 economies, desires for necessary. Signaling delivering office space continually frustrated 611 Place is completed – first Los expressed his interest in The 62 story Aon Center is 1962 speed and mobility trump 1970s The GSA is asked to write Burolandschaft a shift away from downtown by the endless Angeles bundled tube skyscraper designing an office completed making it the the Granada Building in Los desire for access, resulting recommendations for the 1963 Office Landscape Taylorist ideas of repetition of office complex that was based tallest building at the time Angeles near Lafayette in the dispersed, Ad Hoc Committee on industrial efficiency cubicles. The drive around the concept of in Los Angeles. The exterior Park is converted to a 1969 polycentric city At the outset of the Polycentric 178mm Federal Office Space. the Burolandschaft As tax laws changed in the towards flexibility in 100 story John Hancock Centre adaptability. Constant of the building behaves as live/work space Electronic age, the 1980 Los Angeles Photo GSA’s “Guiding Principles focuses on the early to mid-1960s, both office operations is completed in Chicago change is intended to be an iconographic branding for worker’s machines and The Wilshire Corridor embodies the for Federal Architecture” flexible and strategic American corporations and International accommodated in the the corporation. The image desk space have evolved dissolve of the monocentric city in document is released; deployment of human began gaining financial Style architecture basic infrastructural 1967 Andrea Branzi of the space of work, in to a point of increasingly lieu of more polycentric arteries these standards influence resources and the advantages by leasing office Jacques Tati. increasingly produces 1969 No Stop City plan system of assembled many cases, eclipses the liquidated mobility, which mixed with residences and offices and are eventually management of space, rather than financing Playtime film still a bland, featureless The office landscape 1970 modules. Herman necessity for the actual is continually evident in integrated within private worker-to-worker, as and building new and standardized is re-imagined as an The American School Construction Hertzberger’s Centraal office space in terms of the cityscape, as well as sector speculative office opposed to headquarters or offices on space of work infrastructural Systems Development Project Beheer offices in the Aon Center corporate functionality. In the building plans 1972 1973 Not only is this construction opertator-to-machine their own. This change matrix that could develops widely adopted internal Herman Hertzberger Netherlands feature the name of efficient spatial technology interactions sparked a fundamental allow for a strategy of climate control standards, which Central Beheer Office repeating cube modules. flexibility, the core is 1966 advertised for its separation of services Brunswick Building is completed in endless flexibility serve to homogenize office Hertzberger believed that maintained as distinct from

BLDG ability to improve The increasingly 1966 between the design of Chicago – first bundled tube and mobility within environments it was the architect's the open floor plan, allowing The strategic Alcoa Building worker efficiency, widespread corporate office buildings skyscraper provides open free spans its standardized task, not to provide a total for spatial customization on deployment of human San Francisco, 1964 but now the focus deployment of the Architect: SOM and corporate interiors – and system solution, but to provide a a mass scale resources begins to raised floor further Interiors: Gensler led to the related basic framework within of this efficiency is redefine the facilitates the advancement of workplace which users could operate increasingly being post-Taylorist worker 1970s untethering of the interiors as a design flexibly according to their tied to worker from an operator to a Planning and Designing the worker as their specialty changing needs mobility. The office team collaborator 1964 1968 Office Environment is published - is reduced to the mobility at the scale of Herman Miller develops the Action Office Planning and Design (1968) by Michael Saphier is Inryco In-Floor outlines steps towards Digi-Log size of a briefcase the flexibility of the Electrical Office as the first modular business published -- one of the first books in the U.S. to discuss and determining HVAC systems and Briefcase that can travel desk was strategically 1976 1978 Distribution ad furniture system, laced with low guide the reader in designing the open office; one of the most industry standards for lighting Portability with the worker encouraged

DESK partitions and flexible work desks important steps noted by the author is to interview employees 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 Desk [Experience] 47 the office, being placed in the foreground, with others with foreground, the in placed being only limited understanding of the common or peculiar inner-workings of private business en- the same time, hist- tities, as social activities. At orians of architecture have taken only a limited interest in the evolution of, and innovations in, their interests instead the office interior, focusing of on office buildings, particularly in the form urban towers—skyscrapers—as a building type. any moment in the history of At arranging the space of office work motivations for may be various and multiple, with some motivations in the background. The subsequent discussion the interweaving of above motiva- follows tions in the office’s arrangement, while placing progression historical the within motivations these of the office interior. Underlining much this discussion is a much larger movement regarding and postmodern the worker in post-Fordist economic system—one where the worker is free of specific location and an increasingly flexible asset. ees to understand their position within the enterprise, thereby distinguishing their offerings—and their work environments—from competitors. motivations reflect the changing These different character of the office worker as subject in re- changes in terms lationship to equally profound of regimes around time and space between the industrial city. and Post-Fordist Fordist Much has been written about how to arrange office work, but the interpretation of space and the making of some greater social or historical sense of these spaces, has yet to be taken up comprehensively either by the social sciences or by architecture. There is, in fact, to broadcast the firm’s reputation world. Where rational motivations seek gains in worker cultural motivations efficiency and productivity, and emotion to seek to leverage worker comfort support innovation, retention, and longevity of the enterprises. Symbolic motivations are about the creating unique identities and positions for firm’s products and services helping employ- Thus the Among the many motiv- many the Among for expressed ations arrangements particular ice off for space the of are kinds three work, common: particularly from stemming those rationality, instrumental the to attached those rm fi reproduce to desire that those and culture, symbols rm fi make would plans. ice off from production of office space and the manner in which the office interior “organizes” workflows have been variously figured as profit-supporting, productivity-enhancing tools; means for reproducing and giving material presence to the firm and firm’s values; a way to telegraph both individual workers’ status and DESK [EXPERIENCE]

Building [Enclosure] 45 temporality taken deep Furthermore, Furthermore, contact with one another. distinct and homogeneous spheres into inti- mate root in Los Angeles, suggests the and flexibility of such ever-shifting arrangements. Set within the necessary infrastructure the shells, tower office robust the by provided reassuring image and identity of work is main- more complex and fragile tained, while the far interior condition of work is subjected to constant flows of change. the postmodern condition, having

conditions of each ten- ten- each of conditions plate. oor ﬂ custom ant’s the recent history of Technologically, shifted towards the performance the focus integration of the core to periphery within the self-contained entity of horizontal floor plate. When examining these financial in the architectural and technological factors of Los Angeles’s downtown manifestation office towers, compared with alternative work conditions, we see a general tendency towards the dense layering of heterogeneous functions. In stark contrast to the Modernist tendency to planametrically separate functions, the more recent history of office space suggests a closely inter knit horizontal layering of working and living – bringing previously office tower shows an initial push towards achieve- performative and structural maximum towards what turning the focus ment before it provided – an increasingly neutral landscape this horizontal user customization. From for initial vertical push to a more horizontal push, 48 Desk [Experience] the ultimatemeasureofvalueanyfirm’s lationship tostandardizedunitsoftimebecame of itadvancedbyHenryFord, productivity’sre- 1800’s andearly1900’s,especiallytheversion advent oftheindustrialeconomiesinlate course ofproductiontoaspecific personor tasks—leaving aspecificdutyin the overall to thefactory ledtothestandardization of 1880’s, Frederick W. Taylor, oneofthefathers investment inwagelabor.Beginningthe Productivity, Taylorism andFordism. Thus, theapplicationofscientific management of gesturesandinteractions. the subjectworkerwasfragmented intoaseries spatial regimesoflinearityandproximity wherein was standard,divisible,andabstract. Itadvanced ed onthetemporalregimeofrailroad timethat ivity. Taylorism, asitcametobeknown,depend- better streamlineandenhanceoverallproduct- were quantified,analyzed,andthenadjustedto ods wherebyhumanandmechanicalprocesses scientific management,promulgatedthemeth- Withthe of workers beganinfluencingoffice space,particu- regimes aroundtime,space,and theselvesof group ofpeople.Thissystemproduction productivity (andlaterconsumption)andcanbe workers bytheirroleinthegranderschemeof of time,andproductionovertime.Itdefined greatest emphasisonunitsandmeasurement was theversionofindustrialismthatplaced assembly line.Fordism, asitcametobeknown, products usingnewmethodologiessuchasthe efforts tostandardizethemassproductionof by HenryFord, theautomotivetycoon,andhis reached itsapotheosisthroughapplication larly asfirmsgrewandrequiredlarger workforces The Taylorist OpenOffice. the same. could beappliedtowardsmassconsumption of wage” for participationinmassproduction, which consumer ofhisownlabor,granting hima“living that firstrefiguredtheworkerultimately asthe and wageinthe20thcentury. ItwasFord, too, largely creditedwithshapingtheconceptofwork Bythe1910’s,Fordist

keep communicationamongthemselvestoamin- between desks,weknowthatworkerswereto perimeter. Althoughtherewerenopartitions workers atthecenterandmanagerson points for supervisors,theTaylorist officekept factory floorwassurroundedbyvarious lookout tunity for surveillancebymanagers.Muchlikethe cused onhisparticulartaskandprovidingoppor- approach toproductivity:keepingtheworkerfo- office layoutwasdirectlyinspiredbytheTaylorist completed andrepeated. and increasetherateatwhichprocesses were was tominimizehis/herdistractions anderrors, the objectivefor theworkersitting atanydesk completion ofprocessesastheultimate goal, mechanical andrepetitiveaspossible. Withthe that knowledge-basedworkwas renderedas fits for thecompany. The Taylorist officeensured tasks, thegreaterproductivity andthebene- the moreworkerswerekepton their specific ment isstrictly imum. Thebasisfor thistypeofofficearrange- to handleadministrativefunctions.Theindustrial rational , following anotionthat space withminimaldistractionsand visuallinks Wright todesignthekindofneutral,hermetic cent introductionofthelightbulb, enabling the centralatriumwasmadepossible bythere- thousands ofordersperday. Theinnovationof work areawheremanagersandclerks processed ization, thefocus ofthebuildingwascentral designed officeenvironmentfor aspecificorgan- china company. Consideredthefirstpurpose- istrative tasksatLarkin,amailorder soapand Early OfficeLayouts. Frank LloydWright asabuildingtofulfilladmin- New York, theLarkinBuildingwasdesignedby Built in1904Buffalo, They weretreatedtomiddayeducational lectures walls directingthemtowardsself-improvement. were surroundedbyquotationsengraved onthe providing echoesofanagrarianpast. Workers the alienationassociatedwithurbanindustryby efforts byPullman,Cadbury, andSalttomitigate of affinitybetweenworkerandfirm,echoing recommended in the name of both efficiency and to theexteriorthatlabortheoristsofperiod alistic culturemeanttoengenderastrongsense Larkin interiorwasinspiredbyadeeplypatern- and rationalizingtendencieswerepresent.The wide. Highlevelsofproductivitywerethegoal principles soontobeappliedofficesnation- The LarkinBuildinganticipatesspatialTaylorist greater workeridentificationwiththefirm. and symbolicpursuits. but accompaniedbycompany-specific cultural example ofaworkspacedrivenby rationalgoals, activity tookplaceinthecentral atrium, anearly further education.Muchofthis identity-forming and concertsgivenlowcost loanstopursue

employee wasessentiallyabstracted— office wasarrangedhierarchically:workersin any spacetodefineindividualityandforbidden the increasingamountofpaperbeing used, Numerical andalphabeticalsystems kepttrackof developed tofurthersystematize operations. floor, systemsfor filingandorganizationwere With theofficetakingonaspects ofthefactory and hislaborwasirrevocablyrendered asunder. The traditionalassociationbetween anindividual and theultimateresultsoftheir collective efforts. time clock,andtherailroadman’s bly lineproduction,thealmosttyrannyof work/worker dynamic,theimperativesofassem- unnecessary communication with colleagues. This spokes inanotherwisecharacterless ed theworkers’functionasameanstoanend, kept toaminimum.Thisrationalapproachstress- were linedupend-to-end,anddeskclutter middle, managementontheperimeter.Desks Layout andEquipment. removed mostconnectionsbetween workers Asnoted,theTaylorist pocket watch, wheel. The devoid of was the

49 Desk [Experience] [Experience] Desk Desk [Experience] 51 1960’s some

sponse to the need for the need for more need to Desk compositions, 50 As the market of knowledge-based organizations knowledge-based of market the As grew in the 1940’s and after Second World the office layout was still very much open War, without partitions like the arrangements seen in buildings, and in the Larkin and Johnson Wax But Tower. skyscrapers like the Chicago Tribune now the office composition was open, consider- ing particular worker functions. Rather than a approach, Burolandschaft based strictly Taylorist itself in human relations. changed the visual quality of office area. Burolandschaft or “office landscape” was developed in Germany during the 1950’s and the open-plan offices of 1940’s America. Low profile partitions came into use to create in the exterior. Thus, there was no Schnelle in re by Eberhard & Wolfgang access to windows or natural lighting. like a pinwheel arrangement for designers, not like a pinwheel arrangement for an occupa- only made communication easier for tion that required worker interactions, but also have interior arrangements consider

were sulting battle scraper, for a new typology of hitherto unknown for building type. In the years of economic recovery after World II, corporations began locating their head- War ined by the 1920’s office boom that open plan floor plate was the most flexible and effective speculative real estate proposition. Since comprehensive electrical and mechanical systems still in the future, this flexible rentability was directly tied to access natural daylight, re in a narrow floor slab that prioritized window- the The 1922 design competition for proximity. a neo-gothic sky Tower, Chicago Tribune high quarters within urban centers. Their need for capacity spaces that could handle the centralization of operations and employees was a catalyst stood as a seminal moment in the formal to the modern steel and glass corporate office building. The interior of these buildings took great advantage of advancements in air conditioning and fluorescent lighting to essentially detach the interior from resources of light and air

building atrium but also any exterior has any refer- Dominating the early incarna-

tall office building artistically considered. communal gathering, as in the Larkin, the totally circular identification of employer with the corporation is unsullied by reference. The worker no longer reference. their tasks as abstracted from physical production. physical from abstracted as tasks their In this case the completely internalized has not only become a place of identity- Interiors: Open Layout and the Post War Burolandschaft. tions of the office tower was work Chicago architect Louis Sullivan and his aesthe- ticized follows Embedded within Sullivan’s own “form empiri- function” was the seed of performative cism in office towers to come. Historian Colin Rowe asserted Sullivan had already accepted the conditions of the speculator when discussing precedent setting Chicago frame. It was determ- 50“Origins of the Office,” Caruso St. John, accessed June 2012, http://www.carusostjohn.com/media/artscouncil/history/origins/index.html. ence point beyond this dominating atrium space. Their work is introverted within the building just as the emergent knowledge worker internalized subsumes all of the work within this identity. tific management and spatial arrangement— remain central to office interior design. But other concerns have also been advanced, and in many firms flexibility and quick response to change has While under- efficiency. trumped concerns for standing the processes of work remains import- approach ant to any office designer, the Taylorist has been subdued and repackaged, widening now to include the exigencies of real its focus firm culture, and even- estate, worker comfort, tually extending the firm’s brand. Building (1939) designed by The Johnson Wax but, like carried on Taylorism, Lloyd Wright Frank imparted a cultural the Larkin Building before, element that communicated a set of corporate values to workers. While the earlier Larkin took the identification, familial of place a as office the takes this identification to a whole Johnson Wax new level of aspirational, transcendent fervor (ultimately leading to better and more efficient work habits). The building is dominated by the in which completely hermetic Great Workroom rep- cupied dictated down by fit- office where cust- in places far afield in places far omer-facing staff worked, given the price of omer-facing etitive tasks in areas of the workspace, and close supervision of workers by managerial staff. As administrative services increasingly oc the cost of interior interior arrangements—namely, space and the desire to keep costs ting a lot of desks into one space. In some firms, secretarial pools replaced secretaries assigned to any one executive. While firms had long separated the back office, space dedicated to running from the front the company, downtown rents these were increasingly located outside the company headquarter, first at edge of downtown, and then with cheaper rent and lower labor costs. the basis of any organization’s offices is At pro- line—increased bottom the support to desire ductivity leading ultimately to greater profit. In of concerns—the effect that sense, Taylorist keeping office processes efficient through scien- desks, allowing the segregation of specific downtowns, a strictly economic reason up The Principles of Indexing , guided office managers and workers

marked, catalogued, stored, and retrieved. These systems were coupled with new office equipment like typewriters, stenographs, and telephones. Male clerks and scriveners were replaced by a new, less expensive, workforce of less expensive, workforce replaced by a new, women trained to operate the new machinery. Beginning in 1910, the Hoskins Manufacturing Filing System Catalog proclaimed, “The Vertical permits expansion and contraction without limit rearrange- troublesome necessitating without and ment.” The 1932 text, cate women workers to the new regime and fam- iliarize them with the new technologies. technology in advances as 1920’s, the into Leading the construction of taller high-rises, allowed for the open office layout persisted along produc- itself as large tion-oriented lines. This manifested open workrooms with several rows of lined- and Filing to gain maximum efficiency from major advancements in office furniture, like the vertical filing cabinet. “Secretarial colleges” sprang up to incul- Desk [Experience] [Experience] Desk 50 52 Desk [Experience] 52 Francis DuffyandJackTanis, “A VisionoftheNewWorkforce.” 51 Ibid. it.” human character,andanexpression ofsocialist fice landscapewasaresponseto thislackof steps toconsidertheworker.The Germanof- open-plan officelandscapetook somefurther ognize theindividualworkerinits design,the Whereas therationalTaylorist officedidnotrec- The IndividualandtheNewRationality. sub free-flowing, inter-connectiveprincipleswitha to designatrulycyberneticofficeonentire essential. Burolandschaftwas“thefirstattempt work inenvironmentswherecollaborationwas chairs couldbearrangedtosupportcollabor flexibility ofuseinpiecesfurniture.Desksand A unique characteristic of Burolandschaft was interaction for thework. based ontheworkconductedandlevelsof Their worktypifiedvariousdeskarrangements carpets andceilingpanelsfor noise degree ofdifferentiation and privacy, alongwith 52 servient architecturesimplywrapped around

Site SelectionandIndustrialDevelopment absorption. ly new ative the 51

ideals intheofficeinterior.Meanwhile pression ofofficelayouts.Regardless ofthis begin toseesomesignofindividuality intheex- this pointintheevolutionofoffice interiorswe office spaceasanextensionofthe individual.At the workspace,greatersymbolism isgiventothe tion oftheworkerandhisspecific thoughtson themselves oftenknowbetter.In thisrecogni- need tocompletetheirwork,but theworkers Executives have one idea of what employees may noted bytheauthorwastointerview employees. Saphier, whereoneofthemostimportantsteps Office PlanningandDesign guide thereaderindesigningopenofficewas One ofthefirstbooksinU.S.todiscussand be donetomotivatethem. use in assessing their workforce and what could drafted aHierarchyofNeedsfor employersto pursue andfulfilltheirownpotentials.Maslow vironment thatinspiredworkers’motivationto Maslow intheearly1940’sarguedfor awork en- United States,researchbypsychologistAbraham (April1993):430. (1968)byMichael

of anoffice’sdesign—workercomfort thatcould now broughtanewelementinto therationality office landscape.Officeplanners anddesigners ing. Andmost,ifnotall,encouraged theopen- HVAC systems andindustrystandardsfor light- design, outliningstepstowardsdetermining further intothelogisticsandmechanics ofoffice and DesigningtheOfficeEnvironment appeared inthelate1970’s.Works like Several bookslike data. conclusions onusersurveysandpost-occupancy place trends,basesmuchofitsinformation and has becomeanindustryresourceonglobalwork- Gensler’s annualWorkPlace Index(WPI), which lief pursuit ofinnovationandproductivity. This sider alevelofhumanrelationsintherational present. Butnowitbecamereasonabletocon- trend, therationalmotivationwasstillverymuch the ed todetermineuserneeds.Researchsuch is inpartstillevidenttodayasreflected numerous workersurveysthatareper Office PlanningandDesign Planning delved form- as be- 53 “OriginsoftheOffice,”Caruso St.John,accessedJune2012,http://www.carusostjohn.com/media/artscouncil/history/origins/index.html. designer RobertPropstfor HermanMiller,the iness furnituresystem,lacedwith lowpar oped theAction Officeasthefirstmodularbus- was inspiredbytheoffice-landscape anddevelo- The ActionOfficeSystem. likes anddislikes. sideration throughinterviewstodetermineneeds, elements, theworkerwasgivenabitmorecon- ning theofficelandscapestillmain be influencedbytheenvironment.Althoughplan- and flexibleworkdesks.Originally In1964,HermanMiller tained rational designed by titions partitions anddrawers, Action systemiswhathascometodefinethe The organizationofthe ment byencouragingalevelingof ranks:allstaff scape intendedtofoster anegalitarian environ- ianism. ThedevelopmentofGerman officeland- movement, whichcarriedamessage ofegalitar- Northern Europe’spost-warSocial Democratic sensibility towardsindi of anemployeethrough part duetowhatsome were tosittogetheronanopen floor plan,creat- Office System. Symbolism ofBurolandschaftand theAction within alargerspace. users agreatersenseofpersonalized“room” corporating built-inpartitionsandstoragetogive United States.Thefurnituredesignsbeganin- growing needfor efficientofficefurnitureinthe Action Officewasdevelopedtorespondthe tury. Morecommonlyidentified asacubicle,the office interiorinthelatterpartof20thcen- Burolandschaft developedduring This wasalsoingreat vidual personalspace. could increasethestatus theuseofprivacy. would callanAmerican modules, alongwiththe easily madeacubiclebigger,moreprivateand ther on,Herman fitting asmanypeoplepossible withinapar- and stillaretherationalTaylorist answerto easy andefficientstandardization, cubicleswere space toallworkers,includingmanagement.The tried toaccomplishthisbygivingequalwork- their clientsandtootherfirms.Meanwhile, the business” brandfor organizationstoproject cubicles ofthe1980’scommunicated a“downto ticular space.Inthatsamebreath, theseaof Cubicles andTaylorism. any senseofegalitarianismwas diminished. greater latitudeintheAction Officeandthus some todifferentiate betweenrolesprompted the space-statusassociation.Butneedfor of aworker,andrepresentsanattempttolevel workspace stronglysymbolizesthevalueandrole arios, BurolandschaftandtheAction System, distinguishable fromothercubicles.Inbothscen- Action System ing anon-hierarchicalenvironment. could dothesamething,butfur- Miller’s offering ofaccessories

Embracing thecubicle’s 53 Thelayout the

53 Desk [Experience] [Experience] Desk 54 Desk [Experience] cess tonaturallightingbecameanalogous tothe which theyspentsomuchtime. We alwaysseem to findsomepersonalmeaningin thespacein became increasinglysymbolicas workers sought choice basedoncostsandsavings, thecubicle While theuseofcubicleisutterly arational could engulfthemselvesinsuch amenities. private luxuryhomes—onlythevery well-to-do question ofpublicaccesstobeaches linedby book dow andnaturallighting.Asnotedinthe1995 value onanyofficewithdirectaccesstoawin- on thefringes.Italsoplacedgreatgravityand past, andpushingexecutivestocorneroffices different from the“greatworkroom”of by concentratingworkersinaspacenotmuch Cubicle andSymbolism. like theworkersofearly20thcenturyoffices. and generaldehumanizationofitsusers—much cubicle gainednotorietyfor itsblanddisposition hierarchical structureoflargeorganizations, common tocorporateofficesreinforced the Workplace byDesign Theseaofcubicles , thequestionof ac-

overcome thecubicle’sdrearyworkenvironment indications oftheirpersonaldistinctivenessto to personalize their cubicle space with photos and calls thesocio-spatialcontract.Thus,workerstry environmental psychologistJacquelineVischer ployee’s commitmenttothework—something ployee’s valuetotheorganizationandem- level, thecubiclecanbesymbolicofem- the layersofsymbolisminuserspace.Onone inhabit, andthecubicleisoneclearexampleof to establishalayerofsignificancespacewe office planningwasindicativeof thecorporate keep theworkersettled.Thisrational controlto phone lines,clunkycomputersand storageto economy. Cubicles couldbeoutfittedwithdirect ployees intheprivatefinancialsector oftheU.S. of the1980’s,characterizedby surgeofem- together to support the general corporate culture Culture oftheCubicle. place, sterilized and over-lit by fluorescent lighting. that pegstheindividualtoaconfinedandgrey nological, politicalandculturalmovements came

A combinationoftech- terior ofanofficeanditsdesign andarrange- Since the 1980’s the bottomline. led tohighernetvaluefor thecorporationand ment: reasonablylowinvestmentinrealestate eates acorporation’sethosofvalueoverinvest- clearly definedandcontrolledworkspacedelin- ues tobescrutinizedfor maximumgains.The its shareholders,everyoperationhadandcontin- corporation tooperateefficientlyandproducefor entitled ORBIT1and2.Onetrend theDEGW an officewithcomputers,inaseries ofstudies con elopment, waspromptedinthemid-1980’s to DEGW, anearlyfigureinofficedesignanddev- responded toaccommodatethose advancements changed insizeandcapabilities, the officehas ment sincethe1980’s.Ascomputer has widespread usehavegreatlyinfluenced the Computer technologyanditsrefinementfor culture thatemergedinthe1980’s.Inorderfor a duct studiesonhowtoevaluate theneedsof in- . new technology. the 1990’sthispostmoderntrendsawretro- warehouses werebrokendowninto ‘streets’and being doneat“home.”Theinteriors ofthese front door entry aided in the symbolism of work closer together.Individualparking and were alsoinmuchcloserproximity ideal for flexible,speculativeofficespace.They sures ofpreviousindustrializedfacilities, was Such buildingtypes,withtheirbasic shellenclo- and industrialwarehousesinto‘urban fitting ofgenericsuburbanofficeparkinteriors Pioneered bytheLASchoolofarchitecturein Interior asa‘Work Village’ Retroﬁtting the Suburban Warehouse the boldimageof puter. Thecubicleofthetimeclearlybecame with technologies—namely, thedesktopcom- off in found wastheuser’svoicecontinually beingcast urban home,bringingworkanddomesticity

favor ofneedsfor anoffice’skeepingup standardization ofspaceand to thesub-

a distinct villages’.

Gehry, Venice, CA(1991). Moss, CulverCity(1991),andChiat DaybyFrank (1990); NationalBoulevardoffice byEricOwen Associates officebyFrank Israel,Venice, CA ence. the face thiscybernetic threattophysicalpres- an ambiguousblendofprogrammatic typesin growing issue.Theplaceofwork herebecomes office spaceintheface ofcybernetics wasa ment duringatimeinwhichthe relevancy of urban andthedomesticintoworkenviron- This approachsimultaneouslyblendedboththe engagement. as a simulacra for urban the real city and acted traces of the danger of cityscapes removed all The creation of hermetic discrete objectsholdingindividualofficespaces. ‘squares’ astheinterstitialspacebetween Examples ofsuchprojectsare:Bright and office interior functioned reinforce the necessity must continually contemporary office the sense of belonging to a place to reinforce one’s as a corporate cathedral, While must implysomeinspirationalquality. working elsewhere;inshort,theofficespace something thatcouldnotbegainedthrough where onewouldchoosetogoinordergain theofficehasbecomeanoptionaldestination their rolelessandphysicallycritical.Instead, cybernetics, manyhaveargued,hasrendered the functionofwork,decentralization While previouslyofficeswerefundamentalto Inspiration The Office Interior asaPlaceof employer, the previously, the

55 Desk [Experience] [Experience] Desk

56 Desk [Experience] tempt toharnesstheavailabletechnology, LA advertising agency ChiatDayin1993introduced Chiat DayandHotDesking. tion betweenformal languageandprogram. tion thatweseemostclearlythis mis-registra- vance. Itisagaininthesemoments oftransi- references toreinforce theircontinuingrele- office spaceshavebeguntaking on that encouragestheneedtoreturn, manynew return. further impetus to additionally provides mobile and which material that is not all the equipment and become a repository of as the oﬀice space must becomes foregrounded the role of storage to return. Additionally, 54 JacquelineVischer, Space MeetsStatus:Designing Workplace Performance In forging theformal language Inanintrepidat- domestic (London:Routledge,2005),17. were takenhometoensurethat peoplecould not enoughstoragespace;shared laptops difficult timefindingeachother; therewas not turnouttobeasuccess.People hada supported bymany, inpracticetheofficedid As muchasthisconceptwasheralded and able working. to whateverspaceinwhichthey feel comfort- er to access specific information and then head freedom found incollegewherestudents gath- promulgate asenseoffreedom,muchlikethe head, felt thatthissortofarrangementwould ely independence.JayChiat,thecompany’s borhood aesthetictoexpressanalmostleisur- Corridors inthebuildingweregivenaneigh- couches, andprojectroomsfor teamtasks. of areasfor work,includingcoffee tables, do work.TheChiatDayofficeshadallkinds space aswellacomputerinordertoactually Workers wereencouragedtoreserveawork- employee hadaparticularorindividualdesk. a systemofhot-desking—wherebynospecific portant reason,thetechnologywas simply of economicconstraints,instillcorporate ident- it functioned;aninteriorthatcould bemindful gressive officeinteriorwouldlook likeandhow time, itaddedtothediscussionof whatpro- Regardless ofChiatDay’sgeneral failure atthe Jay Chiathopedfor. not theretosupportthetrueflexibility that workspace. Asmuchasthismay bean and theydesiredtohavetheirownprivate iment’s failure becauseindividualsfelt alienated personal spaceisamajorreasonfor theexper- ity. JacquelineVischer arguesthatthelackof space andtechnologydidnotmatchthereal- experiment andtheexpectationsgivento ivity intothecorporation’spsyche.But innovation andacultureofunboundedcreat- Jay Chiatwasattemptingtoinstillanairof were dominatedbygroups. do workthenextday;andprojectrooms Undoubtedly, Chiat Day was ahead of its time.

im- Downtown Los Angeles 1980-present: From Center of Command and Control to Neighborhood Firms deploying digital technologies to expand work space and time The Los Angeles Riots: widespread looting, assault, arson, and DIGITAL AGE Rodney King beating murder occurred causing over $1 billion dollars of damage to the city Northridge Earthquake

Without transit, LA’s poly-nucleated form relies 1993 1997 1999 on freeways and cars. Traffic congestion and 1980s 1990 The Metro Red Line opens The City of Los Angeles legalizes The Los Angeles City Council passes an smog denigrate Southern California's quality of All the large The light rail Metro downtown Los Angeles to home-based businesses, Adaptive Re-Use Ordinance -- encourages the life, and the public clamors for alternatives while department stores Blue Line opens in North Hollywood, via requiring them to register with redevelopment of buildings in the downtown seeking to protect suburban idylls from of downtown LA 1990 at a cost of Hollywood and the the city in order to pay city 1998 core that are either of “historic significance” increased density. Metro opens 22 years after the along Broadway US$877 million, Mid-Wilshire district business taxes The 1903 or “economically distressed.” CITY Having completed One Continental streetcar system closes. Its wheel-and-spoke are closed 1987 connecting downtown service pattern increases access to the former California Plaza, Two Moss vs. US Tax Court Los Angeles to Long Building in downtown is CBD while creating transit oriented development California Plaza opened with 1980s establishes the ability for Beach 1999 Downtown Los Angeles converted into 1980 opportunities near outlying stations only 30% leased space, at a New financing vehicles commercial tenant 1995 Staples Center Conceived of as an office interior that lofts time when the downtown New modes of communication are developed, which improvements to be Downtown is re-imagined through Sports Arena 2000 could morph into a myriad of vacancy rate hovered around and rapid transportation allow backing from a expensed as necessary 1980s the mixing of luxury residential opens The 1906 San Fernando Building in configurations, the conceptual 25%--among the nation’s services support 24-hour wider array of sources – operating cost repairs David Harvey’s “the high rises, green spaces and office downtown Los Angeles completes 1981 Gehry's design framework behind the interior of this Economic Recovery Tax highest. Given the lack of global markets where including the newly rather than capital regime of flexible towers, reversing both early zoning its conversion to lofts -- one of the for Chiat Day in advertising firm’s office relied on Act is enacted - demand for downtown office knowledge spreads quickly, developed commercial expenditures, and are thus accumulation” and later redevelopment efforts to first to take advantage of the 1999 Venice, Los correlating increased productivity encourages construction space, construction of new capital circulates rapidly, -backed-mortgage- exempt from prohibitive begins – more readily create a homogenous corporate Adaptive Reuse Ordinance Angeles is with an enhanced control of one's by allowing developers office buildings in the area and relationships span security taxation levels and widely available As all kinds of resources landscape in the CBD. Civic leaders unconventional, own working environment. Taylorist to deduct taxes from 25% 1983 would come to a halt. The great distances capital pools and and information become and downtown boosters abandon One California Plaza as is the new concepts of efficiency are abandoned of the value of their construction hiatus would 1985 accumulates itself in more mobile, management 1993 efforts to re-establish the CBD and persist for a decade. Built as The LA Times reports that the form of of the firm becomes Chiat Day, system of as office work is increasingly seen as project Frank Gehry instead follow the cues to changing hot-desking that 1998 moments of collaboration, speculative office space, the 75% of downtown LA’s speculative real increasingly a question of housing preferences among a small Hayden Tract: estate Chiat day TBWA/Chiat Day information sharing, problem solving 1999 Umbrella Building generic, open floor plate is major properties are foreign logistics. As the friction of group of downtown residential introduces, and reflection, each of which Designed by Eric Owen as flexible and owned investments – a large distance is dissolved by pioneers, planners and developers. whereby no requires a discreet environment. Moss, the Umbrella accommodating as office proportion backed by increased mobility and Downtown is transformed into BLDG space architecture can be specific This office interior is conceived to Building, in Culver City’s Japanese investors enhanced access, DTLA by the addition of 15,000 employee has a accommodate a range of Hayden Tract, is one of a downtown’s importance is housing units less about its character as particular or configurations, allowing the workers series of Westside office 1991 a place than about its individual desk to customize office environments to buildings seeking to satisfy Through digital Prodigy The telephone is now subsumed Ad for Radio Shack functioning as a node on their preferences a burgeoning market for technologies, firms Service ad With limited demand for into telecommunications, data 1987 Lightweight Handheld various networks “creative offices;” colonize the domestic and downtown office space, the 2000 management and transmission New technologies increase the commercial spaces that Micron PC ad public realms as new notion of downtown as CBD is devices. The drive to unplug efficiencies of communication 'World Wide What?' news page seek to catalyze innovation, This advertisement workspaces, and lengthen largely abandoned. A through cloud computing, and transportation, and make Sophisticated yet affordable technologies curiosity, and risk-taking, to claims that in order 1981 the workday beyond its neighborhood emerges wireless communication, and Honeywell. 'What the Heck is Electronic Mail?' ad instant interaction in distant encourage office workers to stay connected to the challenge the status quo to work, all one traditional 9 to 5 bounds contactless energy—not the Long the iconic office appliance, the telephone is now 1980s places possible. These 1989 office even when they are not physically there, 1996 1997 among employees by needs is a more flexible raceways subsumed into telecommunications, data management and LA City institutes an Artist in technologies also produce the Regus hotel offices and provide firms with new forms of technological DEGW publishes its “Workstyle Cisco Systems offices in San creating fully immersive computer, a website advertised here—ultimately transmission devices. Desks and offices become temporarily Residence program - encourages expectations of 24-hour are founded in control over office workers. Controlling the 2000” - workplaces were to be open Jose opens - every employee office experiences and a company car- expands firms’ spatial and cluttered with digital age appliances and infrastructure as some initial live-work reuse in commerce, on-call access to Brussels - seeks to technology and access to it, firms expand the and non-territorial, with no cellular has a tablet computer or a suggesting the temporal reach over workers and workers are increasingly disciplined through office the downtown area on a small, employees, and mobile fill the niche for accountability of office workers beyond the offices. Telecommuting and notebook computer, and no one ideal worker is a 1980 flexibility in managing them technologies experimental scale productivity. the mobile worker bounds of the traditional workday as well as working from home is encouraged has a designated personal desk nomad

DESK 1991 beyond the perimeter of the oﬀice workplace 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 Desk [Experience] 59 57 inspired seating areas, to make it a reality. Cisco Systems to make it a reality. in San Jose, California is one prominent example in San Jose, California micro-kitchens (as fashioned by Google) or private micro-kitchens (as fashioned these collaborative spaces work pods. The hope for is to “energize people, put them at ease, make connected with their colleagues and them feel open them up to exploring ideas.” Space. and the Nomadic Work Technology in mobile technology have given greater Advances latitude to when and where work can be accomp- mobile on studies case in theme recurring A lished. technology in the office, and when discussing office culture of companies like Google, is the college-like mentality of an assignment and its completion: a task is given and you must get it done—no matter how and where it is done. This was a driving idea behind Chiat Day’s experiment in the 1990’s, but lacked technology that is available now of how its own mobile Internet devices were considered in the layout and design of its offices. In 2004, employees of a particular unit at Cisco settings, like living room individual workstations. occur in less formal office occur in less formal conducive to collective are promoted through the

An overarching trend in office interiors today is collaborative spaces. Much of the interfacing. These spaces range in character from interfacing. workrooms to open tables in private conference proximity to clusters of Collaboration can also availability of spaces Collaborative. knowledge work conducted today requires some collaboration with colleagues—from design services to IT and banking. Unlike 20th century office directive, culture and the every-man-for-himself the individual worker is expected to play an inte- gral part within a team initiative. These interactions

Mountain A Look Inside the Most Creative Spaces in Business (Hoboken, N.J: Wiley, 2010), 13. A Look Inside the Most Creative Spaces in Business (Hoboken, N.J: Wiley, : Google’s The Twenty-First The Twenty-First I Wish I Worked There! I Wish Worked lated. Although the style of ever design ultimately sup- ing of the interior office is pendent on their location in refer to the branded experience as refer University students. Basic ingredients , whereby the fictional aspect of Office

narrative the world, design approach is specific to Google and its image as a leading innovator. by Stanford by Stanford executed through what these interiors vary de text of the office interior, authors Jeremy Myerson and Philip Ross of the book Century a Beyond brand is told through the “interior journey.” brand logos, the ports the business culture and its goals. The corporate headquarters of technology firms like Apple their en- and Google are widely talked about for These spaces creativity. couragement of unfettered communicate an aesthetic message of productivity in the postmodern economy. much headquarters is meant to feel California View, like a college campus, leading back to its founding whiteboards include environment work Google a of everywhere, casual meeting spots, and local task can ideas where spaces various lighting—offering be conjured and articu 57 Kristy Groves, Will Knight, and Edward Denison, and offices The attachment of specific emotion- vironments, from tangible products and economy. Branding is the experience eco- economy. meanings and ideas to images objects is rative about its own maxims to employees and the outside world. While most intensive examples of these trends are visible in large corporate headquarters that thrive on creativity arching and thus changing the way all Branding. al tial nomy’s essential tool—fusing meaning to things and en part of the growing magnitude experien- services, to workers and the office. In con- are now being designed and implemented. execution of those ideas, these trends are over- the neutral and bland offices of 20th cen- there is a growing trend to embrace the tury, influence its and technology mobile in advances over how and where work is accomplished. has been the supportive catalyst in Technology the globalization of economies, resulting in a the way work could be done new paradigm for in order to support creativity and innovation, all bottom the and productivity underscoring while architec- interior office in trends major The line. ture are: branding/enculturation of space and collaboration; flexible people; opportunities for configurations of furniture; and nomadic workspace—spaces and scenarios where the post- knowledge worker is kept in mind. In Fordist, all of these trends, we see the simultaneous movement of motivations: rational, cultural and the there is the pursuit for symbolic. Rationally, greatest value possible in productivity and the organization is instilling a space; culturally, system of physical and emotional values to support innovation and worker commitment; the organization is relating a nar- symbolically, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). (Oxford: mod- Thus the office 56 organized at the international operating in a global context and

The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins Cultural Change service-based companies to reflect these it are best described as a variance on Post-modernity privileges heterogeneity 55 eity, in the interior built environment. eity,

56 Ibid. 55 David Harvey, 55 David Harvey, capitalism, This breakdown of modernism’s rationalization of time brings the current trends in office interior architecture to a status of post cities and system economic the ernity—whereby within scale. in the re- as a liberating force and difference definition of cultural discourse. interior has progressed to satisfy the productive needs of a postmodern economy by implement- ing whatever arrangement supports productiv- trends exhibit efforts ity and work. The following the productive processes of knowledge- for based, norms and values, rooted in flexibility heter- ogen Current Trends Although many administrative offices in the public and private sector continue to look like progressively Desk [Experience] [Experience] Desk 58

Desk [Experience] 57

; working at a at working ; particular job for a for job particular company particular the to on moving before project. next system—can be better better be system—can as characterized freelance The concept of flexibility in the post-Fordist context, besides describing the emergence of new sectors of production and rates technological and organizational innovation, also aptly describes the flexibility that knowledge-based employees are now experiencing. Whether within the fluid space of an office, a workspace in their home, an airport, or a café, the space where work is conducted untethered and flexible—responding to whenever wherever work needs to be accomplished. Time is also fluid, with many workers hearing the re- the completion of a task sounding support for without necessarily being tied to a specific time frame that operates within a specific workspace. are economic economic century—in this this century—in current ulation School, which argues that systems of production go through cycles of success and crisis that result in a new system of production. Along with that system is a set of norms, values and rules (written unwritten) called the modes of regulation that govern how system operates. With the globalization of economies, more and knowledge workers trajectory not operating within the professional that past individuals previously worked in. individual an Whereas a developed past the in private a within career receiv- entity, public or ts, beneﬁ welfare ing a and retirement, pay, increasing steadily twenty- the in workers rst ﬁ

with study, study, ed for all staff ed for ag who could easily work from home, while three days a week work could be done in the office. ity and culture into the space its users, support innovation and productivity through the work environment. In 1996, DEGW—the the British telecom company as its case were these maxims. Workplaces tried to follow open and non-territorial, with neither staff nor management holding on to a cellular office. was encour Telecommuting, Post-Modern and Post-Fordist The Worker The shifts and expansion of economies since the early 1970’s, as argued by David Harvey, have created a global economic system that has redefined the role of workers in postindustrial era. These changes in the capitalist Reg- system are best described by the French British office design firm now called Strategy 2000” that, Plus—published its “Workstyle Desk [Experience] 61 we have flexible workspaces other side of and accompanying furniture that can be you also have more casual configurations of chairs and couches that provide a setting encourages a level of ease. In all current trends in the office interior, worker is a heightened issue of rational import- comfort spaces itional, cost effective approach to office layout. itional, cost effective On the productivity. worker to conducive way any in used As highlighted in the Cisco example, this could be table that can of a rolling conference in the form collaborative or individual space. be a site for Then ance, influencing the symbolic and cultural under- pinnings of a corporation. The interior built envi- to reproduce, the ronment reflects, in an effort corporation’s image of itself and the expectations of its employees. Thus, in current and on-going articulations of the office, interior architecture is argued as a critical opportunity to influence company’s sustainability—through the encour- agement of creativity supported by comfortable physical environments.

flexible workspaces Moveable office furniture provide those tools. This This tools. those provide the underscores further worker the of exibility ﬂ in can work how and at anywhere done be fact desired. time any Spaces. Flexible Work is a concept that was important to the early open Office system in office landscape and the Action Giving workers options for the 20th century. moving furniture according to their needs aligns and with current attention to worker comfort More importantly, its relationship to productivity. new config- the flexibility of furniture allows for urations that repurpose certain spaces and mini- mize costs. On one end of de- can reconfigured be that storage companying pendent on certain job functions—some which area or storage space. may require more surface This type of flexibility is consistent with the trad- you have the modular items like desks and ac- related communication. On the same thread, mobile computer is the essential tool of produc- knowledge workers, and increasingly the tion for workers’ own personal computers are becoming part of the tools as well. becomes worker the As and exible ﬂ more are they freelance, tools their bringing with, along choice of relying to opposed as to employer the on

60 Some companies are now asking

59 from coﬀ ee shops and and shops ee coﬀ from customer to airports, sites. employees to work part of their week from anywhere outside of the main office. Companies and Sun Systems have seen a large like AT&T reduction in turnover rates due to their flexible work arrangements that allow employees to work from home. Cisco’s example of investing in technology infrastructure and their support of telecommuting also highlights an increasing characteristic of the know- The post-Fordist economy. post-Fordist ledge worker produces knowledge work with limited tools, relative to the tools of production such as the mobile Tools economy. in the Fordist phone were once seen as an expense to the em- the workers use. In more recent years, ployer for especially with the popularity of smartphones, the mobile phone is an expense taken up by her individual worker who not only uses it for her work- personal communication, but also for These people These 58

WorldatWork WorldatWork and mobile devices (i.e. (i.e. devices mobile and given also have tablets), nomadic the to rise work can who worker, anywhere. almost from This trend speaks to the knowledge worker who, is as a population of our economy’s workforce, will continue to grow. larger than in the past and 2006, In nomadic the reported rep- worker knowledge two roughly resented American the of thirds force. work of amount large a spend of outside working time On ice. oﬀ traditional the from work they average, ranging locations, 3.4

rent rent Cisco also saved money by not assign- not by money on real real on money

building building people in its cur its in people were given a tablet or notebook computer, and no one had a designated personal desk. When needed, employees could sit at a docking station or a cubicle and connect their mobile devices to larger screen and phone console. Collaboration was accomplished by several open and private tables with large TV screens. conference more t fi could Cisco some of its own network innovations to cut costs and support a certain kind of work culture. declin- its Internet, The availability the cost, ing networks, private of on technology infrastructure, avoiding costly Ethernet jacks by using more wireless internet- based devices. Cisco is a technology firm using estate costs. costs. estate ing specifi c desks, desks, c specifi ing saving es-can- Styles Can be a Good Fit,” hermanmiller.com, last modified 2007, http://www.hermanmiller.com/research/research-summaries/set-them-free-how-alternative-work-styl How Alternative Work 58 “Set Them Free: be-a-good-fit.html. are working from many locations outside their employer’s office,” last modified December 1, 2005, www.mcmorrowreport.com. “Americans 59 Eileen McMorrow. es-can- Styles Can be a Good Fit,” hermanmiller.com, last modified 2007, http://www.hermanmiller.com/research/research-summaries/set-them-free-how-alternative-work-styl How Alternative Work 60 “Set Them Free: be-a-good-fit.html. Desk [Experience] [Experience] Desk 60 62 Desk [Experience] the officehasbeen make theworkerexperiencemore comfortable focused on howtheinteriorenvironmentcould were lookedatfromanewperspective—one Office systemofthe1960’s,worker processes landschaft ofthe1950’sandlater theAction sustainability. BeginningwiththeGermanBuro- of anorganization’sinnovations and ultimate recognition of the individual employee as a source choices à la Taylorism in has with monetarysuccesses,thisrationalmotive nature ofbusinessmanagementanditsconcern scientific management.Simplybecauseofthe century—an erastronglyrootedinFordism and managerial approachesofthelate19th/early20th a physicaltrajectorythatisrootedintheearly In closing, office interior architecture has followed Summation the worker’sdailyprocesseswere andhowthey and efficientworkbypayingattention towhat in theofficeinterior.But,roleofrational alwaysbeenandwillcontinuetobepresent subdued duetotheriseand designing and laying out an indication of the ments in the office are Moreover, these move- indicators (i.e.,officecells). tainly atrendofspacesfreestatus-heavy inated fromtheofficeinterior,butthereiscer- a hierarchicalstructurehasbeencompletelyelim- strong holdovertheoffice.Itisunclearwhether between staffandmanagement,havetakena munication, aswelltheequalizationofspace that aresupportiveofworkercomfort andcom- were beingaccomplished.Movesandchoices economy. shaped by a new global worker that has been relies heavily on a new economic system that emphasis of a post-Fordist development and munication for companiestoproject theirbrand been identifiedasanimportantchannel ofcom- The officeinteriorhasalso office interior will con- critical catalysts, the mobile technology as With the Internet and importance. grey cubiclefarm asabusinessstrategyofvital ation’s pro ing aparticularaestheticthatalignswithcorpor- on employeesandtheoutsideworld.Follow- the traditional office. outside the confines of knowledge workers work as more and more efficiencies—especially in flexibility and spatial tinue to be an experiment has movedbeyondtheobjectiveminded, ducts and/orethos,theofficeinter bland, ior

63 Desk [Experience] [Experience] Desk As an alternative to downtown speculative office able to accommodate the soft production of an enhanced by projects such as the Westbeth Artist towers, looser configurations of live/work have expanding culture industry. As such, the personal Community building. In 1970 the creation of the

their roots in two specific Los Angeles variations identity and enterprise of the loft inhabitant more Westbeth Artists Community in the West Village Alternative Work Spaces on established typologies: the loft and the con- intimately overlapped than in the case of a sub- of New York City was supported by both civic and verted storefront. The adaptive re-use loft space, urban-dwelling, office-tower working persona. federal levels of government. This community with its precursors in SoHo, were characterized The live/work loft first took hold in New York City was the first major government sanctioned low by an open, horizontal plane of domesticity and in the early 1960’s as SoHo artists began illegally cost artist live/work studio space. It was also sign- ALTERNATIVE work. The adaptive re-use of Venice Beach store- occupying empty manufacturing space south of ificantly the first major adaptive re-use project of fronts into artist live/work studios was modeled Greenwich Village. The former industrial space, its kind, inserting itself into the former Bell Tele- on the vertical stacking of domestic space hov- located near rail yards and emptied due to the phone Laboratories. The strategy to densify un- er ing in a mezzanine mass over the more public offshore transition of the garment industry, was derutilized industrial urban areas while preserv- ground level workspace. Currently, in more re- over-built for the purposes of inhabitation. As ing historic urban fabric—establish economically cent Los Angeles incarnations of live/work space, such, it was economically advantageous to con- viable neighborhoods through increasing mixed WORK SPACES which are purpose built, we begin to see a blur- vert space already overly accommodating for use, to reduce commuting congestion through 65 ring of the formal distinctions between the two mere living, and thus able to absorb the addition- co-location, and to build a self-sufficient employ- types, providing yet another alternative to the al demands of working. Broad, open floor plates ed tax base—were all major benefits of the new office tower. allowed for a horizontal spread of inter-mixed live/work ideal actively encouraged by govern- enterprise and identity. The local government saw ment. In Los Angeles a similar sanctioning of Live/Work. The history of the Modern incarna- the economic opportunity of the adaptive re-use live/work space occurred with the Granada tion of live/work space begins decisively with the of the former industrial area and quickly moved Building near Lafayette Park, which flourished [CONVERGE] artist’s loft space in SoHo. The loft as a former to legalize the occupation through rezoning and as a frenetically mixed-use artist studio and resi- space of industrial production was taken over by taxation. This regulation of loft conversions on dence in the 1970’s. These live/work loft spaces, the growing creative class as a new hybrid space the part of the local government was further inserted into existing purpose-built buildings, 66 Alternative Work Spaces horizontal openlayoutcombinedwithitsalready lity byrelyingonthesimpleefficiencyofasingle maintained theireconomicdesirabilityandviabi- Typically, mezzanineswereinsertedabovethe duced toaccommodatetheblending oflive/work. erent spatialapproachoflayering hadtobeintro- over Given thattheformer retailspacewasnotas the urbanfrontiersofgentrification intheirfavor that theself-sufficiencyofspace wouldshift ulative nature.WhiletheSoHoartists rentedtheir only amoreexhibitionist,butalsodistinctlyspec- gan occupyingtheemptystorefrontsofbeach Los Angeles’sVenice Beachareawhereartistsbe- approach wastransplantedandreinterpretedin Soon aftertheSoHoloftswereestablished, meet theneedsofworkinginhabitants. overbuilt infrastructurethatcouldmorethan their inexpensivestorefrontspaces anticipating spaces, theVenice Beach artiststypicallybought version oftheartistlive/workspacetookonnot community. From thebeginning,West Coast built astheindustrialspacesofSoHo, adiff- .

live/work townhousestudio.Anoted concentra- these spatialstrategieswasthe purpose-built to takerootinLosAngeles.Thetypicalhybridof live/work spaces,ablendingofthetwotypes loft andthestriatedstorefrontasalternative After theestablishmentofbothhorizontal live spaces. moves towardscompletelypurpose-builtwork/ of inhabitationwasaprecursorfor laterVenice existing typologytoaccommodatethisnew This typeofpurpose-drivenrenovationan of privatedwellingabovesemi-publicworking. vertical configuration. the dwellingspaceisstackedabove inanarrow ployees. Closeinproximity, butspatiallydistinct, by-laws can typically accommodate up to five em- semi-public workspace,whichaccording tolocal an openfloorplateatgroundlevel suitablefor a wood. Thesespatialarrangements tendtohave tion ofthesedevelopedinboth Venice andHolly- emerged, aspurpose-builtlive/workspacesbegan glass-fronted storefronttoallowfor astriation type

congestion of densely intermixed their own vertical slice given jurisdiction over inhabitant/worker is led scale. Here, the a smaller, more control- parate programs within this proximity of dis- townhouse replicates functional tower, the stacked, frenetic, multi- conception of a vertically Not unlike Koolhaas’ discrete functions acrossanurban-scape,the ernist citypresentedaplanametric spreading Modernist spatialunderstanding. WhiletheMod- resents adramaticspatialdeparture fromthe The increasingprevalenceofwork/live spacerep- . of of dwellingmezzaninehoveringover pro ness taxes.Therangeofcommercial activities register withthecityinorderto pay citybusi- ized homebasedbusinesses,requiring themto In Marchof1997theCityLos Angeles legal- separated divisionsofdomesticity andwork. ized configurationofpreviouslyplanametrically working spacerepresentsanaltogether hybrid- existing workspace.Thedensespatial Ordinance toinsertdwellingmezzaninesabove adaptations, encouragedbytheAdaptive Re-use Beach andthedowntownhistoricofficespace the storefrontstudioadaptationsinVenice in countlessLosAngelestypologiesincluding below. This standard configuration is reinforced typically hungoverthesemi-publicworkspace Mezzanine loftsofprivatedwellingspaceare a literalstratificationofthelive/workFunctions. found shiftoftenmaterializesarchitecturally in previously autonomouscategories.Thispro- of functions—denselyinterlockedspheres work/live scenariopresentsastratifiedlayering layering ductive

hard loftistypicallyleftasalarge openinterior pose builtfacsimile ofanindustrialspace.A whereas asoftloftisnewlyconstructed, pur- dential retrofitofapreviouslyindustrial building The hardloftortrueconversion isaresi- regulate this. has takenactivestepstobothpromote and of denselylayeringworkanddomesticity and aware ofthewide-spreadeconomic benefits ulation. Thecivicgovernmentbecamewell strengthened throughtaxationandcivicreg- of as welltheincreasingprofessionalization legitimization ofcommercialworkinapartments and artistfrompayingcitybusinesstaxes.The aimed toexempthome-basedwriters,musicians successful attemptintheCalifornia Assembly en registeredlive/workspace.In1998anun- allows uptofiveemployeesworkinany home-based business.LosAngelesCityCouncil general tendencywastowardsencouraging remained circumscribedthroughzoningbutthe creative endeavorshasbeenprogressively giv-

work anddomesticity. ential cuetowardstheinescapable mergingof formal qualitiesofahardloftbecomerefer- work placewithinthedomesticsphere. The tendency towardsanincreasing inflection ofthe space ofphysicallabor,isrepresentative ofthe al qualitiesofahardloftassimulacrum for a taking ononlyaparticularselection oftheform- and small-scalenature.Whereas, thesoftloft, to thespaceofproduction,albeit ofanartisan 1960’s, thehardloftmaintainsitsconnection SoHo artistlive/workloftconversionsofthe through thehistoricalprecedentoforiginal be zonedasanythingbutresidential.Carrying live/work spacewhileasoftloftislesslikelyto reference point.Oftenahardloftiszonedas deploy theseextraneousspatialfeatures asa as thesoftloft,beingpurposebuilt,mightonly with multipleextraneousspatialfeatures where- with softerfinishes.Thehardloftisoverbuilt with enclosedservicesandcouldbedetailed while asoftloftismorelikelytobepartitioned maintaining theoriginalunfinishedsurfaces

67 Alternative Work Spaces Work Alternative

68 Alternative Work Spaces Co-office. Social InnovationinToronto, theprojectwas model. Insomeversions,suchas theCentrefor office tookthecoffee shopastheirguiding acy ofthephysicalsharingspace. Theco- lyst ants. Oftenco-locationisdepicted asacata- organizational collaborationbetween theten- would soonspreadtoincludemore systemic, there istheambitionthatsuchspace sharing resources tosharecommonofficespace.Often basic premiseisthatsmall-scaletenantspool oration withintheofficerentalmarket.The small organizationstothrivethroughcollab- services throughasharedmodel,andallow vation tolowerthecostofadministration existing officeinfrastructureunderthemoti- ment, suchsharedofficestypicallyadaptto Flexible in their spatial and contractual arrange- co-office scenariohasseenamarkedrise. favourable tosmallscalecontractwork,the pressures amidanenvironmentincreasingly virtual, sucharrangementsreinforce theprim- for futurecollaboration.Intheface ofthe Giventhegrowingeconomic In LosAngeles,withahighprevalence of virtual networking. is ultimatelymoreproductivethan mobile, spaces assertthatmutualphysical presence and acommonloungearea.Such co-office kitchen/dining area,sharedmeeting rooms es includeacommonreceptionarea, common ment andtools.Othersharedspatial resourc- the hub,containsaccesstonetworked equip- scale, short-termprojects.Athirdstrategy, support, aswellfinancialsupportfor small facilitates programadvice,short-term staffing some basicadministrativesupport,which Another strategy, theincubator, includes workspace availableinacommunalarea. the hotdesk,whichisatemporaryshared sharing techniques.Onesuchstrategyis office renovationsincludevariousspace spatial organizationalstrategiesofthese holders inthelargerproject.Thespecific which enabledthetenantstobecomeshare- partially fundedthroughcommunitybonds, qualities ofaHermanMillerdesk set,but for theergonomicproductivity-enhancing vantage point.Thefurnitureisnot selected across theentirespaceisavailable fromany partitions separateareas—visual continuity not spreadingtomultiplefloors. Nosignificant horizontal, maintainingitsshared qualityby ship-based & Powerco-office.Billingitselfasamember- as SantaMonica’smembership-basedCoffee this overlapisemphasizedinexamplessuch as aoverlappingoftypologies.InLosAngeles a coffee shop,theco-officemodelperforms modelled asahybridbetweenanofficeand greater centrality. Sociallyandarchitecturally gence ofthesharedofficespacetookon self-employed orcontractworkers,theemer- banks ofmovablecafé furniture.Thespaceis bar-like administrativecentresurrounded by space resemblesacoffee shopwithits coffee of therenovatedformer-street front,retail within agenericcoffee shopshell.Theform subsume thecasualflexibilityofaclubhouse workclub, thespaceattemptsto Downtown Los Angeles 1980-present: From Center of Command and Control to Neighborhood DIGITAL AGE Firms deploying digital technologies to expand work space and time September 11th Attacks Great Recession

2007 2008 2009 2011 The view from the top of a renovated The LA City Council and County 39,537 residents in Although Downtown Los Angeles had a The Bunker Hill live/work downtown tower features a view 2012 2006 Board of Supervisors approve the downtown Los Angeles – a mix of uses more diverse than many Redevelopment Project that encompasses both the leisure of a pool The Grand Park 28,878 residents in $2.05 billion Grand Avenue Project 36.9% increase from 2006 downtowns, including uses not found ceases with the and the density of office towers beyond. connecting City downtown Los Angeles elsewhere in the city, this map defunding of the CRA Occupied by those seeking to attain the Hall to Bunker Hill The Los Angeles City Council approves sweeping changes illustrates it moving towards a more status of ideal workers, professionals, and is completed CITY High office vacancies and persistent in zoning and development rules for the downtown area. densely programmatically mixed Available office 2011 entrepreneurs, residents accept no work-life shortages in other real estate sectors These changes allow larger and denser developments working-living environment with 2010 space Los Angeles population Downtown separation and sideline their concerns result in the repurposing of existing downtown; developers who reserve 15 percent of their expanded retail and entertainment sectors The 2009 percentage is 3,819,702 2012 live work about work-life balance office towers, transformed mostly from units for low-income residents are now exempt from some of rising office within, to host a variety of new uses open-space requirements and can make their buildings 35 2008 Park 101 Revitalization vacancies and falling percent larger than current zoning codes allow Eschewing the concept of dense urban center formed by rents was at an corporate headquarter towers and paced according to the all-time high. Two architectural strategies are The LA City Council makes further changes to the rhythms of the work clock, Park 101 will cap the Office work did not Hayden Tract: proposed to address this Virtual Office ad 2001 Complex Plan Adaptive Re-Use Ordinance, creating greater financial Hollywood Freeway, create new park space, and provide necessarily decrease, 2012 emerging condition of work as it incentives to pursue such projects downtown it was just redefined The imagery of contemporary

BLDG an important amenity for adjacent housing developments. Near revitalized downtown Culver relates to global real estate by mobility or housed knowledge-based work City, California, abandoned realities. In North America 2002 in centers outside the maintains visual association industrial warehouses are 2009 where office vacancy is high, 178mm The 1955 Superior 2003 14,561 residential units have been created traditional CBD with the Mechanical Age office. repurposed to studios and offices for Hackable Buildings proposes a Oil Company The 1949 General under the adaptive reuse ordinance This daily rental boardroom has creative industry workers like Headquarters in Petroleum Building 2003-2004 Google’s corporate base invasive method to convert the traditional trappings of graphic designers and software downtown is in downtown Ground Zero Masterplan in Mountain View, CA mono-functional office buildings 2012 corporate power even if it makes engineers. These firms in particular, converted to the converted into the The Ground Zero Masterplan 2007 is campus-like and into synergistic multi-purpose Families are planned and little sense as a place for given that their workers possess Standard Hotel Pegasus Apartments for the former site of the World The 1986 1100 highlights a casual 2008 1010 Wilshire Tower entities. In Asia where new middle class and upper class interactions that take place rare skills and are not easily Trade Center in NYC includes Wilshire tower creative working In a mix of high rises, owners office building inventory is women's expectations about virtually through the Internet replaced, are interested in creating new office towers that just west of Google environment premised have maximum flexibility to low, the 600 meter Shanghai education, work force By the end of the Digital Age, work environments conducive to downtown LA is 2007 Mountain upon the campus model customize the spaces in their Tower stacks various participation, and careers re-asserts the symbolic both firms and office workers have New office technologies allow employee satisfactions and their converted to of educational live-work units; rather than programs, including office, importance of high rise office relationships with downtown office change as a result. New the space and time of the desire to establishing meaningful residential institutions, marking dividing the units with walls, US (Existing) vs Asia (New) into a vertical city buildings in America buildings, office spaces, and questions of work-life balance office to encroach upon the relationships to one’s work Google as a firm whose different areas are defined and desks that are increasingly varied arise among professional and public sphere. Longer work relationship with their linked by built-in furniture and complex. Downtown continues to businesswomen seeking to days and weeks result from employees includes elements that act as negotiate the need to function as a node manage work responsibilities the professionalization of low-height walls, preserving 2003 supporting their and a desire to replicate its 2012 Go Virtual ad and traditional household roles. wage work and the the expansive open plan The twenty-first Century self-realization as importance as place 2011 Firms with far-flung weakening of labor Office is published - 2006 creative subjects originally built in 1959 and Membership- work forces increasingly organizations. Working in refers to the branded Gensler begins a US survey of over participating in renovated in 2008 based Coffee & abandon the expense of 2012 public becomes the modal experience as a 170 companies to begin indexing an important firm 2008 Power co-office the office, relying on The “physical expression of engagement narrative, whereby the workplace trends and employee mission Gensler expands its national “workclub” rent-by-the day facilities social network” with wider urban society, and fictional aspect of the perception of workspaces workplace survey to establish the Workplace 2010 opens in Santa to provide nodes for WeWork opens the middle classes abandon brand is told through the 2007 Index (WPI), creating an industry resource iPad Monica virtual face-to-face in Hollywood Coffee shop becomes the public sphere and allow

DESK “interior journey” iPhone launched around global workplace trends Launched exchange of information. workspaces its institutions to wither 2000 2005 2010 Alternative Work Spaces 71 to encourage the redevelopment of buildings in the downtown core that were either of “historic significance” or “economically distressed.” Eligible 1974, how- buildings had to be constructed before buildings built ever exceptions could be made for as recently five years previous long they could demonstrate that they were in economic distress. Zoning and building codes were relaxed the redevelopment of former in order to favor commercial or office space into either residential, live-work or hotel space. The ambition in replacing underutilized office space with residential the creation of a “24 hour downtown.” was for The downtown Los Angeles adaptive re-use movement was revitalized again in August 2007 when the City Council made further changes to the Ordinance, creating greater financial incentives to pursue such projects. The powerful comb- tax and zoning incen- ination of local and federal tives have helped turn the adaptive re-use of downtown Los Angeles office space from former a purely historic preservation activity toward more speculative venture.

To further encourage what quickly To 62 ed construction industry by allowing devel- spaces, some attention has now turned towards adapting the ground floor spaces into restaurant and retail spaces. The current boom of adaptive re-use in downtown Los Angeles has its roots in the early 1980’s when the city instituted an Artist in Residence live-work initial some encouraged which program, reuse in the area on a small, experimental scale. re-use as a national phenomena took Adaptive in the early 1980’s with sweeping tax on force aimed at encouraging preservation and reforms adaptive re-use. The 1981 Economic Recovery Tax on the de- had a swift encouraging effect Act press became a national phenomenon of adaptive re- use, fuelled by the tax incentives coupled with the growing reaction against Modernism, Los Angeles City Council acted to magnify the In 1999, the Los Angeles City tendency locally. Re-Use Ordinance Council passed an Adaptive opers to deduct taxes from 25% of the value the project. (New York: Crown Publishers, 1986), 14. (New York: work space. Often presented as addressing as presented Often Remaking America

, adapted work performance given the marked rise in tele- work performance this working and home offices. Furthermore, reveals an underlying assumption that goes against the tendency towards speculative office space – here the homeowner is responsible for a new hybrid of the committed model purpose- Re-Use. Adaptive scale and visual continuity issues of local identity, the growing tendency towards of urban fabric, the adaptive re-use of downtown office buildings also addresses pragmatic architectural issues of resources and financing. The overwhelming tendency in the adaptive re-use of downtown Los Angeles buildings has been towards converting purpose-built office space into speculative residential spaces. The current phenomenon in Los almost exclusively on the Angeles has focused core of 5 to 13 story office buildings largely built between 1900-1920, which are typically cast-in- place concrete and steel with masonry infill. As these spaces have been converted to residential 62 Barbarelee Diamondstein weighed with taxation obligations if the worker is aiming to take advantage of the home office the spatial arrange- qualify, tax deduction. To ment of the workspace cannot be multi-funct- work ional, it must be primarily used only for definitive and regulated a suggesting – purposes degree of separation from the domestic space. regulation aside, varying degrees of visual Tax and auditory supervision to the rest of household while in a home work space that is integrated into the command-and-control positions such as the kitchen, suggests that the multitasking nature of such a worker whose attention can be divided and yet still productive enough to make the home office work worth- while. With the increasing prevalence of those electing to work from home, it must be assumed that any amount of this spectrum limited separation between domestic and work spheres is considered superior to the total separation represented by the traditional office tower. dom- to proximity choice, or necessity by Either improving esticity is seen as a mechanism for

was directly tied to the speculative office real estate boom and crash of the 1980’s with the self-employed to seek alter- market forcing native arrangements. Proximity to children by gence of telecommunicating technology. The gence of telecommunicating technology. initial boom in home office entrepreneurship necessity or choice, proximity to a range of domestic resources, proximity to community greater degree of resources and an overall far environmental regulation suggests a worker capable of a broader degree control – architectural and otherwise. Descriptions of typical home offices vary in the degree of separation and work office to dedicated space the between the rest of domestic space – some with partitions, some delineated by the placement of a desk and others with virtually no separa- example, the range of home tion at all. For offices spans from the retrofitted spare room architecturally mimicking a traditional office integrated space to the casual work surface completely within a room such as the kitchen. However, the degree of separation must be the

the purview of accept a broader

range of work. Once considered employed worker and the worker. could one cases, both In worker the that assume working choosing is by either home from explicitly or necessity product- improved for suggesting both - ivity alternate, the that the of customization is ice, oﬀ speculative total its in inadequate and separation work. of autonomy configurations the traditional In various formal home morphs to single family legitimacy of the home worker has increased steadily since the 1980’s, paralleling emer- amateur, part time dilettantes or hobbyists, Alternative Work Spaces Work Alternative 70

Alternative Work Spaces 69

61 self- The home office encompasses . instant offices” by stating: “There’s no capital out-sourcing of administrative support including multilingual telephone receptionists and a prestigious business mailing address coupled with mail handling services. Regus manager, Bob Gaudreau, described the appeal of these “ expenditure; the office is completely furnished and Ubiquitous the widespread, operates chain Regus central the under the that understanding should work of space considered be longer no expenditure capital a an merely rather but expense. operating Home Office two broad categories of workers; the fully and customers decide how long they’ll stay.” partnerships to combine services and customer bases with airlines and airports. Operating as long-term leaseholders within hotels, airports provides Regus towers, office increasingly, and, meeting rooms, hot desks, video conferencing services, business lounges as well administrative support staff. In Los Angeles, suited to the prevalence of self-employment, Regus has had remarkable success, opening instant office parks office and towers office hotels, in spaces throughout the metropolis. The success of enterprise is the level of architectural predict- immediate- ability that allows the users to feel with their environment upon enter- ly familiar ing any of the spaces. Consistency in layouts, proportions, furnishings and material palettes are maintained. These virtual office services can be rented anywhere from a period of hours to a more long-term multi-year, part- time or full-time arrangement. Expanding past their original customer base of business travelers, Regus is now targeting the home office worker who they attract through the

third space, this move towards absorbing café of encounter. Bar stools, shared countertops and ambient lighting approximate the spatial- rather for its approximation of a casual space rather for into the pre-existing Tapping ity of a café. culture as a collaborative and discursive café culture into working represents the definitive and inexorable overlapping of previously distinct spatial spheres, absorbing the formal qualities most conducive to the type of collaborative productivity encouraged therein. in 1989 Brussels, the Regus hotel Founded offices sought to fill this freshly observed the mobile worker while simultane- niche for ously capitalizing on the increasingly inter- changeable and flexible shell of generic spec- furnished staffed, ulative office space. Fully and stocked office space was made available to hotel guests in need of somewhere con- duct their business as they travelled. Catering to the business traveler, company quickly expanded globally and entered into numerous last modified March 31, 2000, http://www.fastcompany.com/39371/office-future. 61 Chuck Salter, “Office of the Future,” Architecturally, adaptive re-use is based upon the Italian Renaissance Revival office building was The Standard Hotel proves to be an exception to– Opened for residents in 2007, the adaptive re-use balance between restoration and renovation— converted into lofts in 2000. Many were dubious or an emerging indicator of–the general trend of of 1100 Wilshire tower is also an exception to the

updating services while maintaining the tectonics about the potential for luxury loft spaces in a adapting pre-1920’s office buildings in downtown general trend towards inserting residential units Alternative Work Spaces of a building. In the adaptive re-use of downtown downtown core bereft of the many typical resi- Los Angeles. Built in 1955 in the downtown Fin- within pre-1920’s purpose-built office buildings. Los Angeles buildings, the balance tends to fall dential neighborhood amenities, but its success ancial District as the Superior Oil Company Head- Built in 1986 as a much-touted speculative office towards restoration compared with the similar proved it responsible for kick-starting other similar quarters, the building was converted into a hotel tower, the combination of being just west of scenario of loft living adaptive re-use projects in adaptive re-use projects in the Old Bank District. in 2002 by Koning Eizenberg Architecture. The downtown and the softening of the office market New York. While much of the building stock sub- The original office space partitioning was adjust- project, undertaken by the Columbia Development due to zealous over-building meant that the build-

Alternative Off ice Space ice Space ice Space Off Off Off Alternative Alternative Alternative jected to adaptive re-use in New York is industrial ed so that each unit was completely continuous Group, deployed $7.2 million in a Federal Rehabili- ing was never used as office space and sat vacant in character, the equivalent building stock in and open aside from small closed washrooms. tation Tax Credit as well as took advantage of the for nearly two decades. This adaptation, overseen downtown Los Angeles is slightly more recent The lofts were praised for maximizing the exist- adjusted zoning requirements and streamlined by Thomas P. Cox: Architects, is the first in down- purpose-built professional office and retail space ing high ceilings and generous window apertures. review process of the Los Angeles Adaptive Re- town Los Angeles to convert speculative office from the 1910’s and 1920’s. As such, the buildings Developer Tom Gilmore received some criticism use Ordinance. While the lobby space remained space to residential units. The tower sits on a 72 in Los Angeles tend to already have a greater for displacing the low-income residents of the largely unchanged, the architects noted that the base of 12 floors of parking, and is relatively 73 de-gree of partitioning and servicing compared adjacent skid row through gentrification that reconfiguration from office space to hotel rooms narrow in its floor plate, making it an ideal cand- with their New York equivalents, making the mimicked a “Disneyland Manhattan experience”63 proved challenging given the depth of the open idate for residential conversion. Taking advantage adaptation process more tectonically intricate. of loft conversions. But the tectonics of the space floor plate. Significant reconfiguring had to be of the incentives offered through the Adaptive are of a different family from the industrial spaces deployed to ensure that the majority of the 207 Reuse Ordinance meant that the developers, The San Fernando Building in downtown Los of SoHo loft conversions. Purpose built as office rooms had at least some access to daylight. Forest City Residential West, promised 15% of the Angeles stands as an exemplar of the larger space, this building differentiated itself by its Amenities such as the fitness center, business units would be maintained as affordable housing. trends towards adaptive reuse in the downtown high-grade finishes, integrated services and center and meeting rooms ultimately had to be core. Among one of the first to take advantage smaller scale partitioning. located in the center of the deep floor plate of the 1999 Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, this 1906 with no access to daylight.

63 Steve Lopez, “POINTS WEST; A Skid Row Bistro Sounds Pretty Good, Despite Reservations,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA),, September 6, 2002 Findings and Implications 75

park and plaza, plaza, and park In summary, off ice work work ice off summary, In in done only longer no is ice off mono-functional downtown and buildings, rm fi potential one is many. among location that was once bracketed between the Work hours of 9 AM to 5 PM is done over morning in pajamas and the bathtub at night- coffee time. Where office work was once conducted in office buildings equipped with almost Taylor- made technologies, those technologies have been miniaturized and have become portable. from Moving to infrastructure territory the atmosphere, and ice off the by claimed encroached has work its café, airport, the upon public office space, the expanding office workday, and office space, the expanding workday, the personhoods of office workers themselves. the same time, disciplinary divides be- At tween interior design, architecture, and urban design (and even to urban planning) have been again breached in the process. the building, and desk, the scale of city, At old binary oppositions—that not only inscribed the old industrial regime lexically but structured our thinking about what was and not at sense-making. The and fail possible—founder incompatibilities that once inhered to these pair- ings (home and office, public private lives, and private enterprise, white public welfare blue collar work, boss and employee, downtown and suburb, interior architecture building to describe the changed world of design) fail work, its place in workers’ lives, evolving ma- cultures, its locations, terial and performance rhythms, its pace, and the urban architectural spaces that both produce the office work world within the city and, in turn, are shaped by it. 64 The content contained herein represents year one be- of a three-year collaborative research effort tween cityLAB and Gensler. The premise driving this research project is that various economic the nature of work that have transformed forces on a global scale have also had impacts at the office district, building, scale of the city, and even various office technologies furnishings. One indicator of this is the new range of office working behaviors and their relation- borrow metaphors from ships to office space. To these behaviors range from a core the Space Age, group anchored at Mission Control, to a of tethering the space walkers like Alexey Leonov, mother ship while undertaking extra-vehicular David Bowie’s mythical activities, to Major Tom, astronaut who slips the bonds of conventional space travel to journey among the stars. alterations within embedded are indicators Other to the various regimes that govern space of office work within the city and buildings, the real estate market in which produces 12 minutes and nine, connected to the craft by a 5.35-meter 2 flight on March18, 1965. He was outside the spacecraft for 64 Leonov’s spacewalk took place on the then USSR’s Voskhod airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the the end of spacewalk, Leonov’s spacesuit had inflated in vacuum space to point where he could not re-enter tether. At suit’s pressure to bleed off, and was barely able get back inside the capsule. Findings and Implications and Findings 76 Findings and Implications affect city planning. furniture and move to traditional domain of design transcend their fields like interior mobile, professional the office worker is desk is as portable as sphere. Just as the office denigrated) domestic a once revered (now and laptop colonize home office, cell phone, the home, where the space—the architecture andurbanism—ofoffice is todetermineinwhichofseveral directionsthe Given thiscontext,theobjective ofthisresearch and— cinema, the automobile, most poignantly— The researchinyearonefocuses onchartingthe timeline. search to adaptation?To attacktheseissues,ourre- and reuse?Areanyamongthespeciesresistant which partsofthecityareripefor transformation core. Whichpartsofthesebuildingsand,thus, mono-functional officebuildingsatdowntown’s for architectureandurbanismamong theforest of urban programs,aswelltoidentifynewsites office workwillaffect, andbeaffected by, other work willevolve.Italsoservestounderstandhow project thatenvisionswhatthefuture ofwork year willbedevotedtodesigning aspeculative transformation willalsobeidentified.Thethird of thisstudymostsusceptiblefor thistype of year one.Siteswithinthegeographical limits change duetotheevolutionaryresearch of will focus on prognosticatinghowworkwill serve theofficeworkfunction.The secondyear lution ofbuildingsthathavebeen developedto evolution ofworkactivityasitrelates totheevo- hasbeenstructuredalongathree-year home to city. However,downtownLosAngelesisalso the broadestdemographiccross-sectionsin buildings inLosAngeles.Italsocontainsoneof contains someoftheoldest,andnewestoffice selection ofthecityitself.Thereisnodoubtit town, DTLA,isperhapslessobjectivethanthe The reasonfor selectingLosAngeles’sdown- they propose;downtownLosAngeles isarich that conceptsareonlyasgood therealities propositions onthecity. Together, webelieve cityLAB’s traditionofprovocative intellectual tectural practiceinLosAngelesis matedto demia signed tobeadeliberatebridge between aca- premier academicthink-tankon the city, isde- offer its future. This partnership with cityLAB, the and desk. activity willbeatthescaleofcity, building, area selection reflectstheoffice’scommitmentto Gensler’s interiordesignandburgeoning archi- and whatthiscollaborativeeffort hopesto and theprofession, wherethelegacyof Gensler’s LosAngelesoffice,andthis and fertile groundtoexploreboth.

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