On the fringes of academia, trying desperately to stay In.
What we do at work is post-occupancy evaluation. We evaluate buildings, after they are occupied, from the occupier's point of view. The task is to judge how good the building provision is, in terms of design and management, and how much it suits the needs of the users.
Now on paper this sounds very tying-architecture-and-social-issues, doesn't it? I can faff about it for hours, calling it workplace research, mapping work culture trends, all the socio psycho jargon. I'm an architect and I went to LSE... I mean, Of Course I can turn the mundane into the supremely sublime.
But the methodology used is inherently reductive. Very predictably, it identifies only the actual daily users of the buildings as those with a worthy opinion. It completely excludes anyone outside the physical office – the guy on the street, the sandwich man, the kid in the house across the road, and the girl who saw it from the bus.
Moreover, it lacks depth in areas where it matters most – the actual workplace politic. It drones on instead, about How Cold their offices are, How Heavy their door is, how much sugar they want in their coffee – this technique turns a valuable take on buildings and development – the user opinion - into an exercise in mollycoddling over-fatted employees of rich businesses. No questions about how close you want to sit to your boss. Or whether you would ever really use a gym at work.
The sample size, too, is worrisome. The responses are so homogeneous. Statistically, it may be correct and appropriate, but I can't help feeling that we're missing out on the office joker, the secret stalker, even the suicidal secretary.
I feel like I could do a whole different analysis from the data we have been collecting. Different direction, different scope, different agenda. I wonder if it would be plagiarism if I wrote a paper using this stuff and got it published...
Now on paper this sounds very tying-architecture-and-social-issues, doesn't it? I can faff about it for hours, calling it workplace research, mapping work culture trends, all the socio psycho jargon. I'm an architect and I went to LSE... I mean, Of Course I can turn the mundane into the supremely sublime.
But the methodology used is inherently reductive. Very predictably, it identifies only the actual daily users of the buildings as those with a worthy opinion. It completely excludes anyone outside the physical office – the guy on the street, the sandwich man, the kid in the house across the road, and the girl who saw it from the bus.
Moreover, it lacks depth in areas where it matters most – the actual workplace politic. It drones on instead, about How Cold their offices are, How Heavy their door is, how much sugar they want in their coffee – this technique turns a valuable take on buildings and development – the user opinion - into an exercise in mollycoddling over-fatted employees of rich businesses. No questions about how close you want to sit to your boss. Or whether you would ever really use a gym at work.
The sample size, too, is worrisome. The responses are so homogeneous. Statistically, it may be correct and appropriate, but I can't help feeling that we're missing out on the office joker, the secret stalker, even the suicidal secretary.
I feel like I could do a whole different analysis from the data we have been collecting. Different direction, different scope, different agenda. I wonder if it would be plagiarism if I wrote a paper using this stuff and got it published...
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