Commonality of poor office design

I sat at my workstation in the Fish Factor, there were 8 emails from the day before and more were coming in.  It was raining work, I'm only one individual and have just one pair of hands, but still it poured. I kept a tally of the interruptions, there were in excess of 25 of them, where someone wanted to speak to me, on the phone or in person.  It is like I go to work to be interrupted and not do any work while there.  The day was a write off.  It may have been OK for everyone else but for me it was walking up hill in treacle.  It felt like nothing got done.

If office environments are supposed to be places of productivity then this environment could not of been an office.  I believe in the UK we go backwards in the design of buildings for people to work in.  As with everything else the people who are meant to use a building are not consulted, the project teams become selective groups who have power in not just design but finances.  They are amateurs when it comes to creating working environments but it doesn't stop them from going out in the world and purchasing designs and furnishings which are inappropriate.  The buildings look beautiful.  They win awards for all kinds of things, such as energy efficiency, renewing rain water for toilets, the use of glass to allow in lots of light.  The buildings are said to be friendly for the disabled.  However, once you get a group of people and who start to fill the building up the real issues come through.  There is no doubt in my mind architects play a part in this, but there must be a tomb of knowledge somewhere about the failures of office buildings and how they can be improved and made better.  How in the planning stage so much can be achieved to prevent disasters.

I am sure the project masters who designed the Fish Factory had no conception of the noise made when a building which is little more than a multi-story car park is adapted for employees to work in. How the reverberations of chatter carry and bounce of hard concrete surfaces, and do disrupt people, especially those who need to think.  As all the money has been spent on design there is little left for furnishings or noise dampening devices.  So there are times when it is impossible to concentrate, peace is so necessary for some of us.  Consequently less work gets done when the Big Fish want more.  It is a complete contradiction.  An environment is thrown together which does little or anything to help at all.

I expect then to get picked up as I have not met my quotas, it will not matter what argument I put forward.  I'll be in the wrong.  So I'll just sit with my fingers in my ears, or ear plugs, or ear muffs and hope there will be a time where a little bit of work is actually achieved.  Down with the ignoramuses who control everything and know nothing.