IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

5 Situation
In May 1993 I arrived in Amsterdam to start work at the Netherlands Design
Institute, where I had been appointed its first director. Builders were
already on site at the Fodor Museum, on Keizersgracht, which was to be
our home—so I cannot claim to have been involved in the project from
the very beginning. But when I first met the architects Jan Benthem
and Mels Crouwel (the same architects who take care of Schiphol Airport),
our roof was off, the foundations were laid bare, and most of the internal
space and infrastructure still had to be designed. A full year remained
before we were due to open. Following that rather alarming first site visit,
I had six years of on-the-job training in the design, commissioning, and
use of a new building. During that period, we designed and built a new
knowledge-based organization, too—also from scratch—a ‘‘think-and-do
tank’’ whose objective was to reframe the way we perceive and use design.
In the course of those six years, the building as a space and the relationships
it supported interacted in powerful ways—most of them positive,
some negative. The experience taught me that a focus on space constrains
the design of a workplace. The word ‘‘situation’’ better encompasses social
factors.
Our building was frequently criticized for being too stiff. It isolated
us from the real world and from one another. It was beautiful and a pleasure
to be in—but because of the way the circulation of people worked, we
seldom bumped into one another or visitors. When we resolved to try to
loosen up the building, we discovered that it was not an easy space to
change. We tried dozens of ways to make our space smarter and more interactive:
video art installations, tricks with screens and doorbells, dynamic
information screens, flashing lights, sound sculptures, kinetic art. You
name it, we considered it. In the end, the single most important change