Design for Ease

I am interested in good design and the Zen approach in particular appeals to my sensibility. My goal, when advocating design, though, is not so much tranquility as ease. All workspace should support the required task. Much of my sensibility was shaped early: as a teenager I worked in a factory and I learned that repetitive physical movements that take you off center quickly become unsustainable and lead to a very negative mind-set. Whereas movements that are properly arranged can lead to an almost meditative state that makes repetition bearable and, if not exactly uplifting, then at least neutral. 

The tranquility that the Zen approach emphasizes is necessary, though, to keep the body as well as the mind focused. In the service industries, there are still endless-seeming repetitve tasks that may not be physical in nature, but nonetheless, if they are approached in an off-center way, they become aggrevating and frustrating and unsustainable. If you have to search your desktop for the right file every time you need it, you're going to waste your psychic energy as well as your time. My personal ideal is that when I need something, like a written sample of language I need for a proposal, I want to put my finger on it in the least time possible, without having to waste my precious mental resources recreating the path to its location. 

When an office environment is designed, it should be with the same ideal in mind: everything simply at hand needed to support the task. 

Below are some Zen precepts for creating good design which I have adapted from "7 Design Principles, Inspired by Zen Wisdom" by Matthew May.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671947/7-design-principles-inspired-by-zen-wisdom

1. AUSTERITY

Restraint, exclusion, and omission. The goal is to present something that both appears spare and imparts a sense of focus and clarity. 

Zen lesson: Refrain from adding what is not absolutely necessary in the first place.

2. SIMPLICITY

Beauty and utility need not be overstated, overly decorative, or fanciful. The overall effect is fresh, clean, and neat. 

Zen lesson: Eliminate what doesn’t matter to make more room for what does.

3. NATURALNESS

The goal of shizen is to strike a balance between being "of nature" yet distinct from it—to be viewed as being without pretense or artifice, while seeming intentional rather than accidental or haphazard.

Zen lesson: Incorporate naturally occurring patterns and rhythms into your design.

4. SUBTLETY

The Zen view is that precision and finiteness are at odds with nature, implying stagnation and loss of life, and that the power of suggestion is often stronger than that of full disclosure. Leaving something to the imagination piques our curiosity and can move us to action.

Zen lesson: Limit information just enough to pique curiosity and leave something to the imagination.

5. IMPERFECTION, ASYMMETRY

Convey the symmetry of the natural world through clearly asymmetrical and incomplete renderings. The effect is that the viewer supplies the missing symmetry and participates in the creative act.

Zen lesson: Leave room for others to cocreate with you; provide a platform for open innovation.

The last two Zen principles deal with the concept of a "break." There are two kinds of break: Those you make, and those you take.

6. BREAK FROM ROUTINE

When a well-worn pattern is broken, creativity and resourcefulness emerge.

Zen lesson: An interruptive "break" is an important part of any breakthrough design.

7. STILLNESS, TRANQUILLITY

To the Zen practitioner, it is in states of active calm, tranquillity, solitude, and quietude that we find the essence of creative energy.

Zen lesson: Doing something isn’t always better than doing nothing.

When creating an office, easy is good. It pays to keep that in mind

A Classic Loft Story

The building at 5 West 19th Street was converted to a commercial coop in the early 80’s. Converting buildings to coop back then was very popular, more so in residential buildings, but still, in a few commercial buildings. I don’t know how many commercial coop buildings there are exactly, but it’s less than 1% of the overall total of office buildings in NYC. These conversions afforded small business owners the opportunity to control their future in a way they couldn’t have otherwise and some industries gravitated toward them more than others. Photographers were one group that seemed to buy these coops (printers were another) probably because they typically needed larger open spaces and would pioneer in areas that tended to evolve from downtrodden to fashionable where they were constantly getting priced out.

By buying, they could control their destiny.

This worked well for many years and the photographers at 5 West 19th Street prospered.  What they couldn’t have known was the sea-change that would occur when digital photography caused the cost of a photograph to plummet, leading many photographers to have to change their business models. One of the changes was that a large studio space would become a luxury.

The lucky few who had purchased their space at 5 West 19th Street have been able to convert what might have been a burden into a valuable asset: a large loft floor in a very fashionable area of Manhattan that many companies were eager to occupy.

I’ve been fortunate to represent several of these photographers throughout the years and I have one now. In the accompanying picture, you can see the  gorgeous wood floor, windows on all sides, and generous column spacing.  It’s a classic loft in every sense of the word.