Making Place:

The recalibration

of work, life, and place

Making Place:
Revisited 2022

Almost three years ago, IPUT published a comprehensive global research project, ‘Making Place’, to examine the relationship between work and workplaces, and the recalibration of work, life, and place. In this 2022 report update we look at how we need to respond to the identified themes, the importance of focussed investment in the public realm and putting placemaking and communities at the core of development.

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Office recalibration

As we see our working lives being transformed through technology, we have reached a point at which we need to reflect on what this means for the future of physical offices and the communities surrounding them.

Five spatial typologies

We have identified five different spatial typologies that can help guide us into ensuring offices maintain their important economic and social functions while at the same time contributing to making our cities more enriching and sustainable.

Number 1

Watering holes

Places that attract people to linger, meet and socialise: this is based on the experience that employees see work as a social experience.

Real world examples

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1. Watering holes

Alley Oop is an urban space in downtown Vancouver that invites the public to play in a laneway between commercial buildings.

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2. Street classrooms

The steps in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York attract all kinds of citizens to linger at the entrance of this knowledge institution, merging people’s experiences of the exhibitions with their experiences of public life.

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3. Cultural canvases

IPUT Real Estate’s high profile Tropical Fruit Warehouse development in Dublin city centre is being used as a canvas to showcase artists.

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4. Mind labs

Arup’s Melbourne office includes a Sky Park with public access where employees and citizens alike can take outdoor meetings in any of the space’s diverse seating areas.

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5. Mind gardens

IPUT commissioned award-winning landscape architect Robert Townshend to create an urban park as part of its Earlsfort Terrace redevelopment in Dublin’s central business district.

Niall Gaffney

We need to recalibrate offices to make them attractive to today’s working mindset. That means offices need to work harder to be part of sustainable places both socially and economically.

Léan Doody

We now recognise that workplaces offer unique experiences that are not available when working from home. Those experiences include social and cultural fulfilment as well as opportunities for learning and collaboration.

Yolande Barnes

We are seeing a new paradigm in economic geography: successful landlords will be stewards of their neighbourhoods rather than just their buildings.

Making it work

The role of the employer

The employer is the daily enabler, custodian, and manager of workplaces and workplace culture. The company should engage with workplacemaking to support a variety of interactions between colleagues that ultimately lead to greater employee satisfaction, wellbeing, and productivity.

The role of the city

The city is the ultimate legislator, regulator, and facilitator of quality workplacemaking. The city should engage with workplacemaking to bring the productivity and enjoyment of citizens closer together, to create an overall more resilient and liveable urban model.

The role of the developer and landlord

The developer is the initial creator, builder, and maker of places for working and living. The developer should engage with workplacemaking as a way to future-proof real estate projects against short-term market fluctuations.

 

The rise of the white collar worker

Pre-industrialisation

Live at work

Before the age of industrialisation, people would sleep, work, and play on the land that they farmed, or they would build places to live and socialise above places fit for making and selling goods.

The conclusions of ‘Making Place’ still have application. The city needs to have close dialogue with developers to build commercial buildings that are active, interesting, and inviting and this ambition needs to be written into local area plans and building permits.
Camilla van Deurs, City Architect City of Copenhagen, Denmark
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Looking forward

The success of our cities is likely to be impacted by how well these places succeed in bringing people together to share ideas, skills, and experiences that can lead to new, better outcomes.

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