05 Jun Designing for Flexibility
Point of View:
Designing for Flexibility
Withee Malcolm prides itself on striking a balance between design innovation and constructability; looking out for client’s best interests in terms of ingenuity, design excellence and return on investment. As the world, and in turn the development industry, is being turned on its head by the health, cultural and economic fallout from COVID-19, Withee Malcolm is once again listening, learning and applying lessons learned in order to support our client’s success.
Predictive articles and opinion pieces on the post-COVID are widespread and offer lots of “what-if” scenarios for our future. One, authored by architectural writer Sam Lubell for the Los Angeles Times, outlined a series of evolutionary shifts our profession may see as a result of this pandemic and future disasters. Some of these have been in the works for years and will likely move forward with increased support while other, new ideas are just beginning to take hold.
In hopes of assisting our clients during this trying time and into the future, Withee Malcolm is applying our knowledge to the specific markets of permanent supportive, special needs, senior and market-rate multifamily housing.
We are outlining implications of this evolution and ways in which we, as a team, can take advantage of change. Our first deep dive: Designing for Flexibility.
In his article, Sam Lubell postures that we may well see a shift in regional balance towards less populated places, made possible by telecommuting. While it’s unlikely that we will see a mass exodus from urban centers, it is widely acknowledged that working from home is here to stay. The ramifications of telecommuting translate to new opportunities for the role of “home,” namely in the way we think about and provide flexible space and the ways in which we offer privacy.
Rather than just default to larger units to absorb working and living, Withee Malcolm continues a tradition of finding multiple uses for space through transformation, adaptability and flexibility. Even pre-COVID, as construction costs have risen and tenants have access to more choices, our designers have been “finding space.” According to Principal and Director of Architecture Dirk Thelen, areas such as secondary spaces off of entries are turning from coat closets into mini vestibules and containment zones. Nooks or irregular corners in bedrooms are primed to accommodate desks for tighter working areas, and bump-outs in dining and kitchen areas can, with minor design adjustments, be full-blown home offices. As the need for flexibility increases, the firm’s designers are re-examining kinetic furniture like murphy beds that allow bedrooms to transform into full workspaces, and looking to concepts regularly used in live-work lofts like barn doors, folding partitions and even pocket doors to help living and working spaces feel separate. These strategies offer division but without losing square footage with large door swings.
For employees that decide to make working from home their priority, our efforts to increase privacy and amenities—real and perceived—is key. Strategies for facilitating work and privacy include offsetting units with shared walls rather than mirroring them so that patios never face one another. According to Senior Project Manager and Associate Mauricio Munoz, not only does this ensure individual views for tenants but it provides visual interest across large facades when viewed from the street. Operable window offsets rather than mirroring also offer tenants an edge on feeling their conversations and daily activities stay private.
At the heart of these, or any other solutions we put forward is understanding what clients, owners and tenants need. So we remain at the ready to share lessons learned from past efforts, but more importantly, translate our 40+ years of experience into solutions for a greatly changed design landscape.
Click to read Part 2 of the Series: Healthy Buildings
Click to read Part 3 of the Series: Planning for Better Cities
Previous Posts
