A Time and a Place for Everything

Office buildings are used as an example of the unsatisfactory relationship between the architect’s role of designing of the physical fabric of workplaces and the subsequent necessity of accommodating emerging – and almost certainly unexpected – patterns of beneficial use over their lifetime. The professionalisation of Facilities Management has so far failed to fill this gap. The concept of the “intelligent building” has further confused the issue because it is based on the unrealistic assumption that automated environmental control mechanisms will have the capacity to anticipate, and respond to, open–ended user expectations and ever changing patterns of occupancy. The very term is an excellent example of a “pathetic fallacy”, the belief that lifeless objects, on their own, can anticipate change. The practical implication of this argument is that the software of space management must become at least as “intelligent” as the design of the hardware of the buildings themselves – perhaps much more so. Space management for many organisations is already transcending isolated, individual buildings and will have to expand through time and space to embrace the accommodation of the totality of ever shifting networks, connecting people, wherever they happen to be, in multiple organisations in many buildings – and places – of many different types.