Date of Award

Spring 6-2-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master in Interior Architecture [Adaptive Reuse]

Department

Interior Architecture

First Advisor

Markus Berger

Second Advisor

Stefano Corbo

Third Advisor

Jongwan Kwon

Abstract

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, but the one most responsive to change” is the core of Charles Darwin’s Natural Selection theory. This relates not only to biology, but architectural typologies over time.

Office design has gone through many periods of evolution to reflect changes in industry and the workforce: from Ford’s assembly line to office cubicles to the open plan workplace and today’s anti-office. Designers have been mediating between workers and space for better performance for over 100 years -- though none of these anticipated the need for complete flexibility.

Through the development of automated technology in the 21st century, working modes are shifting dramatically. The popularity of working remotely revealed the conflicts between collective and individual working modes, as well as varying needs for work and rest. As it becomes more difficult to find tenants for conventional workplaces, like high-rise corporate office buildings, a new adaptive scheme of reversing people’s associations towards corporate architecture and responding to the new workforce is required.

This thesis will focus on improving the way workspace relates to its users. A column grid structure is selected as the module to create an adjustable system, due to its’ universal dimensions. The proposed system can be changed manually and automatically to provide different spatial qualities. Offering 4 levels of adaptation (Influence - Involvement – Interaction – Interconnection), this system will work as an adaptor to mediate the conflict between individualism and collectivism, work and break, private and public, social and solitude.

High-rise corporate architecture presents the perfect host structure to experiment with adaptability and the capability of supporting human comfort in the workplace. Benefiting from the standard type and simple structure of high-rise corporate architecture, the data collected by this experiment can be applied universally to promote social interaction and human comfort in the workplace.

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