December_1970 — Page 10

Making the landscaped office work

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Dobson House, Killingworth, in the north of England, is a single- storey office building designed by Williamson, Faulkner Brown & Partners for the use of their own architectural practice. In this article the partners explain the design of the furniture and its contribution towards the equality of the total internal environment. Following this, one of the firm's young architects gives his reactions to the first eight months' occupation of the building

IN MOVING from old premises in which the majority of furniture was 'built-in', the opportunity presented itself to design new individual work- stations for the staff and to rationalise incidental storage units.

The first step was to conduct a sur- vey to explore the pattern of work activity and to determine precise space and equipment requirements. Rela. tionships between team members and departments were carefully analysed.

Broadly speaking, the office com- prises three categories of staff: archi- tects, technicians and secretaries.

Architects' workstations

Architects and technicians work to. gether in teams which vary in size from one to six. Experience had shown that both categories required precisely similar draughting and re- ference equipment, and space.

The examination of this work- station commenced with a user-study analysis of our existing furniture which we had designed in 1963 and which was illustrated in the RIBA Handbook of Architectural Practice and Management, 1967 Supplement".

Drawing board. Everyone spoke highly of the fully adjustable drawing board with its moving arm carrying interchangeable scales. The main com- plaint was lack of comfort in reaching every part of the board and this was largely due to the mounting height of 3ft. in conjuction with the discomfort of the high stool,

Reference space. This was the main drawback. Side reference in a flat plane at 3ft. height and in line with

the board was adequate only when standing up. The reference surface behind the draughtsman was incon- venient for reference spaces at each side of the draughtsman at right angles to the board.

Lowered writing and telephone area. In practice we found that few

Work too

Knee space

12ins.

-5 H. § ins.

people used this surface for writing because it was easier to swivel round to the back reference space than it was to change chairs. Telephones were also invariably left standing on the higher bench. We decided, therefore, to con- sider positioning the 'desk' opposite the draughting machine to make the

Ramped reference board

Ramped reference board

-3 h. Di uns.

This -

Drawing board frame

Ramped reference board and architect's drawing board

Far East BUILDER, December 1970

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