Ove Arup, one of the world's leading engineering design firms, was founded in 1946 by a Scandinavian who believed in the beauty and potential of "total design." (Please read the philosophy statement of the firm) With their 53 offices in 23 countries, they have representation on every continent. They are considered by most to be THE leader in building engineering design. They have decided to consolidate all of their Asian offices in Hong Kong in order to concentrate their resources in an increasingly competitive world market. Their Engineers thrive upon challenge and are part of almost every significant large-scale architectural or engineering project on the globe. They are a multi-disciplinary firm with employees covering every possible branch of design and construction. When consolidated, this Asian office will employ a total of around 1000 people in their four main divisions: Building Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Civil Engineering and a multi-disciplinary group known as Arup Associates. As you can read in their literature, these divisions include individuals who specialize in a very broad range of fields.
Their new office will be like no other office building. This building's design should reflect the stature and horizontally oriented hierarchy and total design philosophy of the firm. Their strength lies in both their ability to employ first rate individuals and in their ability for effective teamwork. They are able to draw upon experts from any of their offices around the world for whatever task is at hand. The success of their efforts can be seen in their works in Hong Kong. One of the reasons for the consolidation is the growing demand for higher quality engineering in Asia. The rapid growth of the '80s and '90s will lead to ecological disasters in this region. Energy costs will increase and the rate of pollution will have to be brought under control. Arup believes that less travel, continued high density living and better working place design are part of the solutions. Thus, they will use video conferencing and computer networks to interact with their world-wide partners.
The office is divided into groups. Each group may consist of a fluctuating number of individuals depending on the job at hand. This is their strength. A group will have one or two directors who acquire projects and act as the driving force behind their working atmosphere. There will then be two or three associate directors who are the project managers, ten to fifteen senior engineers, twenty to forty technical staff, up to ten draftspeople, one group accountant, up to ten clerical workers and a few gophers. Each technical staff and above will have a fully networked work station. The difficult aspect of designing an office building for 2013.5 is to make it a convincing proposal: it cannot depend upon negating gravity. It must be fully functional and serve the clients needs by 2013.5. This is an exciting opportunity to utilize and integrate contemporary technologies in the design of a significant building.
The following was given as the initial program sketch: Transient work stations, Working Group Offices, Teleconferencing Stations, Printing Room, Meeting rooms, Director's Dining Room for 30, Cafeteria Dining Facility to seat 50, Archive, Overnight Facilities for Employees, Overnight Facilities for Guests, Multi-purpose room to seat 200, Exercise Facilities, Library, Model Making Workshop, Parking , Mainframe Computing Facilities. All of the above require support areas of sufficient size. The ground level must contain at least one lobby with reception, waiting room, transformer room (min. 60 sm with one 1.5m double door that opens to the street), electrical meter room (4 sm), water meter room (8 sm), sorting/recycling room (24 sm), refuse room (8 sm), security office, post room (very large and very busy!) and toilet. A typical office level will contain toilets based on building regulations, a meter room and a cleaning supplies room.
The groups tallied their perceptions of the requirements for the program. These were then compared and the differences were discussed. It was agreed to disagree on the differences. This allowed an amount of flexibility in the spatial requirements. A design program for the proposed office was finalized for the entire studio. Long discussions ensued about the degree to which the partnership could function as described in the Prime Directive. Asian culture and Scandinavian culture are worlds apart. And yet, despite the fact that it was difficult to conceive, the concept of the horizontally oriented office was embraced by the students.
The challenge of creating an office building for such a prestigious firm can be overwhelming for any architect, let alone young students. And, it was quite difficult to determine a distinct design "personality" for the Partnership. How would you define it?
More images of the programming exercise can be found by clicking on the thumbnails below. The DC-40 was invaluable in this part of the exercise. The boards that were photographed. Due to the high resolution, a segment of the board could be isolated in Photoshop and printed. In this way, each group could then receive a copy of the other group's work as it was relavent to the specific parts of the building program. A quick and painless process of documentation.
The students were very fortunate to have two engineers from Arup's Hong Kong office come to the final review. The review also included the first 3-D presentation in Hong Kong using some very powerful computers. The jury looked quite amusing with their glasses. Reminded one of the 3-D movies of the fifties. The Ove Arup Patnership was so pleased with the work they saw that they invited the students to put together a representative exhibition of their work. It is now hanging in the main foyer of the Hong Kong office in the Hopewell Center. Quite an exciting opportunity for the students!
These images are only a sample of the hundreds that were taken in the studio. Used correctly, this camera is a great addition to the tools that can be used to enhance the learning process. As with every emerging technology, the appropriate methods for the application of the tool are still being developed. One thing is certain, digital imiging is here to stay!
Questions and comments about this application should be directed to Prof. Dr. Chris H. Luebkeman. All images on this site were taken with a Kodak DC-40 Digital camera. They were downloaded with Kodak's Photo Enhancer software which was included with the camera. They were resized and converted for WWW use with Adobe Photoshop 3.03.