User:Mzimmerman/DEGW

THIS IS DRAFT MATERIAL

DEGW is an international design consultancy that helps clients articulate their requirements in ways that stimulate the delivery of imaginative, innovative and workable solutions designed to improve performance through stimulating a more dynamic relationship between people and place.

Three factors distinguish DEGW from other design practices: 1) a high degree of specialisation - initially in workplace design, particularly the future of work, and subsequently in educational environments, libraries and arts centres; 2) a long history of collaboration with other designers, architects and urban designers; 3) four decades of research into and disseminating ideas about buildings and their use.

Origins

Three founders of DEGW, Frank Duffy, the late Peter Eley and John Worthington (the D, E and W in DEGW), were students between 1959 and 1964 at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Later all three studied as Harkness Fellows in the USA

In 1968 Duffy, then working on his doctorate at Princeton, having been interested in office design since evaluating office landscaping in 1963, became a part time consultant at JFN, a New York Space Planning practice. Here he met Luigi Giffone (the G in DEGW), an Italian architect, graphic and product designer. On Duffy's return to London in 1971, he agreed to support JFN's new office in Brussels, where Giffone was then based. Simultaneously he established with Worthington and later Peter Eley and Colin Cave a small JFN office in London. In 1973 a newly independent practice became the kernel of DEGW.

The Seventies: Transatlantic Contrasts

Focussed initially on workplace design, DEGW was well placed to take advantage of the beginning of the shift in organisational and technological innovation from North America to Northern Europe described by Murray Fraser and Joe Kerr in Architecture and the Special Relationship (2007).

In 1971 Duffy, drawing on his Princeton dissertation, used a theatrical metaphor – Shell, Services, Scenery and Sets – to explain to European architects the fundamental but still not fully articulated American concept of office buildings being composed of different degrees of longevity, an idea later popularised by Stewart Brand in his book, How Buildings Learn (1994). The fledgling firm gained experience in the UK, Netherlands, Scandinavia and Italy working for American corporate clients who were coming to terms with the heterogeneous nature of European business culture. IBM and Digital were particularly important because as well as having to provide consistent office standards cross a culturally fragmentedEurope, both companies were well positioned to anticipate the impact of the computer on workplace design.

The micro politics of allocating office space in the corporate world proved useful in illuminating analogous issues in urban design. Eley and Worthington, as graduate students of urban design in the USA, had been deeply impressed by the renewal of the decayed industrial cores of cities such as San Francisco and Boston. Revitalising Redundant Buildings, initially in London's Docklands and later in Glasgow, Birmingham and other cities, depended as much on facilitating cooperation between potentially conflicting user interests as on calculating the capacity of existing buildings to accommodate new patterns of occupancy

A working habit established in the Seventies has persisted ever since – using technical journalism and architectural criticism in the context of practice to explore, clarify and promulgate ideas. The first examples are two handbooks based on technical articles on office design and on the reuse of industrial buildings originally published in the Architects Journal.

DEGW Offices: London

DEGW Publications:

• 1964 Francis Duffy, "Burolandschaft", Architectural Review (February)
• 1967 Office Landscaping, Anbar Publications, Francis Duffy), published in Sweden as Kontorlandsskap (1967)
• 1976 Planning Office Space, Architectural Press, Francis Duffy, Colin Cave and John Worthington - published in Spain as Officinas (1976)
• 1979 Industrial Rehabilitation: Architectural Press,The Use of Redundant Buildings for Small Enterprises, Peter Eley and John Worthington,

DEGW Research Studies

• 1969 Organization, Behavior, and Office Buildings: Some Proposals for Analysis and Design; Francis Duffy, Thesis (M.Arch), University of California, Berkeley
• 1974 Office Interiors and Organizations, Francis Duffy, Dissertation (PhD), Princeton University
• 197-, The Reuse of Redundant Buildings for New Enterprises, John Worthington and Nicholas Falk (URBED), a study carried out for DoE and the London Boroughs of Hackney and Islington.

The Eighties: Data and Development

DEGW's ORBIT studies drew national and international attention to the potential impact of information technology on workplace design. Anticipating clients' emerging workplace requirements attracted attention in the UK, particularly from Financial Services and the High Tech industry. DEGW's work was also noticed by developers – notably Stuart Lipton and Godfrey Bradman.

The first ORBIT multi client study was carried out in the UK in 1983, followed by a North America version in 1985 in collaboration with Xerox and Cornell University. Both studies confirmed that profound changes generated by Information Technology were taking place in office work.

The extent to which ORBIT influenced office design can be demonstrated by comparing the specification, plan form and section of buildings in the Broadgate development in the City of London (1986 onwards) with earlier post war London office buildings. DEGW, by advising major developers, helped the City to respond to the potential and challenges of computerisation and globalisation and thus defend and expand its position as Europe's financial centre.

The location, plan form and specification of business park buildings such as those at Stockley Park and Chiswick Park were shaped by parallel research into the requirements of the emerging High Tech sector. Funded by developers and the Welsh, Irish and Scottish Development Agencies, this research was the basis for profiling emerging sectoral demands for work space. Building Appraisal was invented by DEGW to assist developers, architects and other design team members in evaluating the plan forms and specification of office buildings relevant to different categories of user.

In a time of change clients programming new buildings as well as enhancing building performance needed high quality data. This requirement encouraged DEGW to found, publish and edit from 1983 to 1991 Facilities, a monthly newsletter, which accelerated the professionalisation of Facilities Management in the UK and stimulated the founding of the Facilities Managers Association (FMA). The idea of Intelligent Buildings designed and programmed to respond to changing user and technological demands over their lifetime emerged from this debate and inspired in the following decade a series of international DEGW Multi Client studies.

By the end of the Eighties, as well as generating ideas and creating methodologies, DEGW was also on the way to becoming a substantial urban design, architectural and interior design practice, still largely focussed on workplace design, and carrying out large scale projects for such important clients as British Nuclear Fuels in Warrington and Lloyds Bank and the Corporation of Lloyds in London.

DEGW Offices: London, Glasgow, Mexico City (1974-78), Paris

DEGW Publications

• 1980 "Office Buildings and Organisational Change" ,Francis Duffy in Anthony King, Buildings and Society
• 1983 The ORBIT Study, Information Technology and Office Design; Francis Duffy and Maryanne Chandor
• 1985 Stockley Park: Meeting the Needs of Modern Industry, DEGW
• 1986 Business Buildings Compared, DEGW
• 1987 Eleven Contemporary Office Buildings, DEGW
• 1989 The Changing City, Bulstrode Press, Francis Duffy with Alex Henney
• 198- Premises of Excellence, Sheena Wilson and Ziona Strelitz

DEGW Research Studies

• 1983: Orbit Study UK
• 1986: Orbit Study North America
• 1986 and 1989, Trading in Three Cities

The Nineties: From 'The Changing Workplace 'to '''Design for Change

DEGW's design output was now considerable: big office interiors for clients such as the Department of Trade and Industry, British Telecom at Stockley Park, the Prudential in London and its banking subsidiary, Egg, in Nottingham. Also in Nottingham, DEGW converted a large industrial building to accommodate Capital One's banking operations. Of the dozen or so important DEGW architectural projects, the most outstanding is a new building which extended Boots the Chemists' headquarters in Nottingham. As well as being an award winning project, the process of occupying the new building was used by DEGW to help Boots achieve a major programme of cultural change.

Another important architectural and urbanistic achievement, made possible by the establishment of a DEGW office in Berlin, was the transformation of the redundant Carl Zeiss industrial complex in the centre of the University City of Jena, in former East Germany, into a mixed use complex comprising a major shopping centre with an impressive galleria, an hotel, offices, additional space for the University as well as accommodation for the slimmed down and reorganised Carl Zeiss.

Important for the future was the continuing development of methodologies for measuring the use of office use over time and engaging with users on their preferred working environments. Time Utilisation Surveys (TUS) first developed for IBM in 1989 have confirmed internationally in thousands of cases that office space and meeting rooms are substantially under occupied: less than 60% of potential occupancy over the eight hour conventional working day is common. These findings have helped to encourage and legitimise more mobile ways of working. The most significant early work to explore and demonstrate opportunities for flexible working patterns evolved through DEGW's relationship with Andersen Worldwide, beginning in 1991, with Arthur Andersen, later with Andersen Consulting and, continuing until today, with Accenture.

Other tools include DEGW's Culture Cards (first used in the late !980s)) which provide a vocabulary of striking visual metaphors – e.g. a maze, a cactus, an orchestra or a team of athletes – as well as the Jigsaw and the Sandbox – continue to be widely used in workshops to assess both existing office cultures and to articulate what ought to be. Such data and methods provide the operational basis for what has become one of DEGW's most significant contributions to Workplace Design: i.e. using the design and delivery of the physical working environment as a means of accelerating organisational change. Change Management techniques – staff involvement, mock ups and prototypes, manuals, orientation sessions and communication programmes – have become an integral part of the practice's working methods.

DEGW's experience in office building design proved to be applicable to other building types, such as education and health care, and at other scales such as the urbanistic challenges faced by DEGW in determining tall building strategies for Rotterdam, Dublin and London. Arts projects began to be important for DEGW: particularly the briefs for the renewal of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the brief for the master plan for the Southbank Centre.

Having become in 1996 part of Twynstra, the Dutch, multi-disciplinary management consultancy, DEGW became independent once again in 1999. At this point Despina Katsikakis who had been a driving force in DEGW's methodological innovations and geographical expansion in Europe, North America and Australia became Chairman.

DEGW Offices: Berlin (until ), Glasgow, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Paris, Sydney

DEGW Publications:

1. 1992 The Changing Workplace, Phaidon, Francis Duffy with Patrick Hannay
2. 1993 The Responsible Workplace, Butterworth Architecture, Francis Duffy with Andrew Laing and Vic Crisp
3. 1993 Workplace Design for Knowledge Industries, John Worthington in Industriebau – die Vision der Lean Company, Birkhauser
4. 1997 The New Office, Conran Octopus; Francis Duffy with Kenneth Powell
5. 1997, Reinventing the Workplace, Architectural Press, John Worthington (second edition 2006)
6. 1998 New Environments for Working, Construction Research Publications Andrew Laing, Francis Duffy, Denice Jaunzens and Steve Willis
7. 1998 Architectural Knowledge: The Idea of a Profession, E & FN Spon; Francis Duffy with Les Hutton
8. 1998 Design for Change: The Architecture of DEGW, Birkhauser, Francis Duffy et al, simultaneously published in German as Flexible Gebaude

DEGW Research Studies:

• 1991-92: Intelligent Buildings in Europe
• 1995-96: Intelligent Buildings in Asia
• 1997-98: Intelligent Buildings in Latin America
• 1997: Utrecht: Two Sites, One City, (John Worthington, Despina Katsikakis, Andrew Harrison)
• 1999: Rotterdam High Rise Study, (John Worthington, Philip Tidd, Lora Nicolaou)

The First Decade of the New Century

DEGW had learned over the previous three decades that the design of the physical working environment on its own, whether at the urban scale, architecture or interior design, is not enough to change organisational culture. To release the potential latent in a major change of working environment the management of a coordinated tripartite process is necessary: the redesign of the physical workspace, the parallel introduction of new technology and, most importantly, a well directed programme of organisational restructuring and communication.

On this basis DEGW provided space planning, interior design and change management for a significant sequence of large UK Government projects – including space planning and interior design for HM Treasury, the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSC). All these projects involved extensive change management in order to transform the use of government workplaces while reducing occupancy costs, enhancing effectiveness and improving user satisfaction.

Similar methodologies and design processes have been deployed successfully in other sectors, especially in creative organisations – Google in the USA and across Europe, BBC Worldwide in London, GlaxoSmithKline in the UK and the USA, National Australia Bank (NAB) in Melbourne and Cisco in the USA and India as well as Nokia Siemens Networks across Europe and Asia.

DEGW's offices in the USA, working with a group of other leading design practices, have performed a similar role in helping the General Services Administration (GSA), the department responsible for all Federal office space, to conduct a series of pilot projects designed to broadcast the financial, organisational and operational benefits of new ways of working.

DEGW has been able to deploy its network of offices across the USA, Asia and Europe to help large organisations such as Microsoft, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse to measure the benefits of using their worldwide stock of space more efficiently, effectively and expressively. Managing such coordinated strategic projects for demanding clients over large geographies has become an art form in its own right as well a major logistical and methodological challenge.

Meanwhile, urban design activity, including campus planning exercises such as a project for the University of Otago, has increased in importance, not least because such projects, seen in DEGW's cumulative perspective, are regarded as space planning but at a larger scale.

DEGW offices in the UK, the USA and Australia have won a reputation for programming educational projects – school systems, universities, business schools and libraries. The concept of Learning Landscapes, i.e. using all spatial resources in a fluid and coordinated way, is being put into effect in schools and universities, in the USA, the UK as well as in the Middle East and Africa. A similar reputation for briefing and strategic planning has led to consultancy for arts projects such as the Masterplan for the British Museum, planning studies for the Design Museum and for Somerset House and the brief for the second phase of the Masterplan for the Southbank Centre.

DEGW Offices: Amsterdam, Glasgow, Istanbul, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Milan, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Sydney

DEGW Publications

1. 2000: Transforming Your Workplace by Adryan Bell
2. 2001: Managing the Brief for Better Design, Spon Press, Alastair Blyth and John Worthington (second edition 2010)
3. 2004: The Distributed Workplace: Sustainable Work Environments, Andrew Harrison, Paul Wheeler and Carolyn Whitehead
4. 2004: Working Without Walls: An Insight into the Transforming Government Workplace , Office of Government Commerce, Adryan Bell et al.,
5. 2007: Reinventing the Workplace, Architectural Press, John Worthington;
6. 2008: Work and the City, Black Dog Publishing, Frank Duffy,
7. 2009: Working Beyond Walls: The Government Workplace as an Agent of Change, Office of Government Commerce, Bridget Hardy et al.

DEGW Research Studies

• 2000: Learning from Experience: Applying Systematic Feedback
• 2001-02: Sustainable Accommodation for the New Economy (SANE)
• 2001: Dublin Higher Buildings: Intensification and Change (City of Dublin)
• 2004: Impact of Office Design on Business Performance (BCO and CABE)
• 2005 -07: Project Faraday: Reinventing School Science Spaces
• 2006: The Multigenerational Workplace
• 2008: Changing Boundaries: The Role of Change Leadership in Building Schools for the Future
• 2008 -09: Learning Landscapes: Clearing Pathways, Making Spaces – Involving Academics in Leadership, Governance and the Management of Estates in Higher Education (with the University of Lincoln)
• 2009 -10 Space for Personalised Learning

The Future

Given the accelerating power and ubiquity of information technology, inherited modes of working and living have become unsustainable in every sense. Conventional office buildings and urban structures as well as outmoded patterns of use, are becoming harder to justify in an increasingly virtual and environmentally challenged world.

DEGW has always been a friend of users and continues to challenge supply side thinking. The principal responsibility of urbanists, architects and designers is to anticipate the future so that changing user requirements can be addressed with the highest levels of design ingenuity to release the maximum problem solving capacity of the real estate and construction industries.

In 2009 DEGW became a division of Davis Langdon which, a year later, joined Aecom. Aecom's role of providing professional, technical and managerial services globally gives DEGW the opportunity to extend and develop the firm's specific heritage, unrivalled it its field, of specialised and collaborative commitment to user research and the dissemination of ideas about buildings and their use. DEGW's overriding objective remains to help clients to articulate their requirements in ways that stimulate a dynamic, fruitful and measurable relationship between people and places.