Office size shows who measures up

In "Office size shows who measures up" John Gill quotes Dr Jennifer Parkin (a researcher at Nottingham Trent) claiming the Open University's new open-plan Jennie Lee Building as an example of "innovative office design" for academics. Well, if that's true, then the Jennie Lee Building may provide one of the best examples of why open-plan offices for academics are cheap ways for universities to make very expensive mistakes. We can't imagine what parts of our Computing Department's new premises Dr Parkin saw that led her to make her claim, but we doubt it was the areas that academics occupy, that which two of us share with 13 other colleagues seated in four parallel rows. For, if she had seen it, she would surely have noticed the distracting background noise? the clicking keyboards, the cleared throats, the sniffling noses, the ringing telephones, the laptops powering up, printers spewing out and photocopiers doing what they do. She would also have noticed the artificial lighting? constantly on with no wall switches? the "breakout rooms" designed for private meetings but allowing occupants to hear all other private conversations taking place in neighbouring rooms. And if she had stayed for an hour or more in one of these airless rooms she is guaranteed to have triggered a humdinger of a headache. A rainy day visit would have drummed into her the din caused by even a mild drizzle falling on the impressively translucent roof of the atrium; in a week's visit she could have wondered at the squeals and giggles coming from the weekly hula-hooping bonding session. But whenever it was, Dr Parkin certainly could not have missed the number of occupants wearing headphones, the prominent sign of one of our professorial colleagues declaring "Do not disturb" and the large number of unoccupied desks. There is of course the childish pleasure many of us are compelled to indulge in, waving and grinning at our colleagues trying to have serious meetings when so highly visible through the goldfish bowls that have replaced office walls. It's rarely possible for the academics in the Jennie Lee Building to do much of our "real work" while we are "at work". The environment simply is not conducive to serious writing, reading or reflection. If the Jennie Lee Building is the best and an academic's modern lot, we say "bring back the cloister!" Jon Hall, Simon Holland, Lucia Rapanotti, Yvonne Rogers, Donia Scott Open University

Spacious atriums....? An array of breakout areas....? Copious amounts of natural light....? Team bonding sessions in communal areas....? My, how this environment sounds truly awful! Meanwhile, I sit here typing in my dingey, single-occupancy 'cloister' office, with minimal access to natural light, aural stimulation or interaction with my colleagues. Sure it is quiet, but I wouldn't be able to quantify the amount of work colleagues in at any one time on my 'traditional' corridor. Moi - bitter? Ok, so I'm being ever so facetious here, but in reading Jon Hall et al's response with great interest, there is an issue I feel the need to raise. I, myself, have worked in an academic-related capacity within an open plan office environment and as such, many of Jon Hall et al's gripes are all too familiar. There are a number that I empathise and agree wholeheartedly with. However, I find myself strongly objecting to the manner in which Dr Parkin, in my mind, is ridiculed in order to vent this particular set of grievances. I see little evidence in the article of Dr Parkin suggesting that the Jennie Lee building successfully address the needs of it's academic occupants, as Jon Hall et al imply. Indeed, Dr Parkin is quoted: "...the term 'open plan' can be scary; you automatically think of vast call centres, but some new open offices aren't like that at all" Having had the priviledge of being shown around the Jennie Lee building when it first opened, and having read numerous web-based sources describing in detail its design, I feel that Dr Parkin has been vastly misinterpreted here. Many new open plan offices (the Jennie Lee building, for instance) AREN'T like "vast call centres". In fact, there are a wide variety of different sized-meeting, work and social spaces provided within the Jennie Lee building, which to my mind is fairly indicative of an "innovative" design. Should one wish to look no further than the OU's Walton Hall campus, both the East Campus Student Services offices and Michael Young building should further serve to illustrate the relative 'innovation' of the Jennie Lee building's design. For me, the most contentious statement to be found in the above article cannot be attributed to Dr Jennifer Parkin. It is instead: "[Academics] may not have the executive salaries, company cars or expense accounts of high-flyers in other sectors...". ...But they do have the priviledge of working in a well-paid, relatively secure, intellectually stimulating jobs - quite often with the flexibility to work in any number of alternative locations should their office environment become so intolerable.... Right? James Lavender

I for one would welcome good quality research on this issue, since many important decisions seem to have been made in ignorance. As one whose office affords 12 academics with 2m(sq) each (and I'm in possession of the original plans, which clearly designate this particular room as an 8-person office) I feel qualified to question the motives and competence of whoever thought this might be a good idea, going forward. My perspective is straightforward - if it's a good idea for me, why isn't it for the Vice Chancellor? There are many problems with the shared office, not least in that it is now infeasible to have 1-to-1 tutorials about anything (not simply confidential/personal matters) because of the disturbance to others. As an aside, tutorial space turned up after 12 months, in the form of 4 cubicles on the landing - that should service over 600 students needs just fine. The problem of office crowding is mitigated somewhat as most of us avoid the space wherever possible - not least because the shelf allowance (1.5 m) is insufficient to house reference books and journals. Still, some of those will be in the library just 15mins walk away. So in this particular case, just a metaphorical stone's throw from where Dr. Parkin is carrying out this research, I think the open office initiative should be treated with the same skepticism reserved for the general gamut of modern university management decisions. Incidentally, we as academics now find we increasingly have to provide office facilities at home, without recompense. We have considered purchasing one of the scores of vacant pubs and converting it to our office usage; I think tutorials would proceed rather more healthily. Overall, a useful metaphor might be this: have you ever observed how sociable people are when they are not crowded? - have you observed how little communication goes on in a crowded subway train?

Interesting that the little survey on the research website reveals what academics really want. Funky colours? Mood lighting? Latte machines? Nope - peace and quiet. And, we have much more opportunity now than ever before for e-collaboration. We can collaborate electronically with colleagues from Aberdeen to Zurich without physical proximity. Without sharing germs. Without hear hearing what everyone is having for dinner. Without hearing blow by blow accounts of their projects. Sure, collaboration is good. Socialising is good. But sometimes, academics just need to retire to write, think and read. The private office is therefore more essential than office. And I don't mean the de facto office which exists in many academics back bedrooms.

As I understand it, one of the chief advantages of open plan/shared office arrangements is the opportunity for discussion with collegues. Wouldn't some sort of specialist discussion room -let's call it a "staff room" - serve that purpose better?

An infantile Head , a darling of the management although was a junior member of staff with less than 10 years experience, acquired a large room for his office. His office was a rectangle and the long side was so long, it needed a bicycle to reach him from his door!

Bringing modern office space into academia - what a non-starter, what a waste of time and money. It just shows again that academics don't know a thing beyond their ivory towers. Academics - working mainly independently from one another - need peaceful premises where they can read and contemplate and churn out mostly useless papers to appease money wasting government-grant bods. Open-plan offices serve a totally different task. They are open plan because there has to be regular communication between departments/desks to achieve a collective goal. That said, I still find the views of J Hall, S Holland, L Rapanotti, Y Rogers and D Scott hilarious. What a bunch of hyper-sensitive wimps... they don't have the strength of mind to work through the general hubbub of an office-style environment. Oh, the noise of the drizzle! Oh, the sniffing noses! What a bad advertisement for the OU.

Why's it a bad idea for academics to have offices where they can meet students, do scholarship, write and get on with what they do? Offices are useful. I've been told that it was difficult to recruit top profs at Glasgow, Liverpool, and Loughborough because office space issues. At the institute of Health of Society at Northumbria four or five professors are resigning before it goes open plan in the summer.