In-Person In-Place
8 minute read
“Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much. ”
As we hopefully and cautiously edge out of the pandemic, we evaluate our individual and collective experience and we grieve what we have lost. Tantamount to the loss of an assumed “normality” is our starvation of most in-person experience.
Moving forward, we can and should leverage place and its inherent capability to address in-person starvation in four ways. These are emboldened by the dual nature of each place’s permanent and potential identity and current and potential purpose: a) what place is and can be, and b) what place does and can do.
The design of places must be deliberate to their purpose, and for those places where people can be together, the design must support and enrich human interaction. Facilitator and author Priya Parker prompts us to be clear on the purpose of gatherings, noting that “venues come with scripts…first you determine your venue, then your venue determines which you shows up” (italics mine). Historic messages on appropriate utilization of space, as well as the design elements that connote value and status, come from individual experience. We may expect quiet in a library, no eating in a church, hierarchical seating in a courtroom, or shoes off at the front door. For leaders in an organization, we may also expect larger individual enclosed workspaces and thicker carpeting while employees work at shared open tables and use headphones for enclosure and focus. These messages, or behavior filters, are changing, and designers and decision makers alike are setting the landscape for such changes.
1. Place sustains our collective humanity. Place honors the integrity and import of the shared energy of our social beings—and this brings us solace. Place mitigates the negative effects of social isolation by providing a sense of belonging through the opportunity to join with others in participating in civilization. As urban planner Kevin Lynch indicates, “a distinctive and legible environment not only offers security but also heightens the potential depth and intensity of human experience.” Place offers a venue to share a moment in time with others—to join together in a cause, a belief, a mourning, a healing, a celebration of community—moments which begin to heal the starvation of the in-person that the pandemic brought about. As Professor of Philosophy Mark Kingwell suggests, “Anywhere…can be a place…as long as we are there, to think and talk, to listen and respond…to the sound of one human after another issuing the daily plea: to be heard, to be understood, to be accommodated.”
2. Place encourages respect for the individual whole person. Through its holistic nature, place engages the needs of Human as Being over Human as Capital. Place provides experiential qualities of surprise, of happenstance, of variety and change, in an environment with a delightful ‘buzz’ of energy in the form of multisensory input. Place can support our needs of well-being—body, mind, and spirit. Sharing a place provides us an ability to engage all our senses in connection with others (or in quiet contemplation). We have been starved for these sensory, interpersonal experiences during this pandemic. Artist, writer, and teacher Jenny Odell notes, “The convenience of limitless connectivity has neatly paved over the nuances of in-person conversation, cutting away so much information and context in the process.” We have been in this pandemic for a year now, so it may take time, support, and rest, to reengage all of our senses. We may find ourselves momentarily overstimulated by the shift back to environments with more stimuli, and we may need to be cognizant of individual variances in bandwidth for such adjustment.
3. Because place expands our awareness of our environment, place also expands our awareness of others. Sensing other people’s presence, we may feel encouraged to focus on them, discerning authenticity, agenda, tone, intent, values, and culture; or we can also choose to focus on ourselves. Our environment educates us in Relativity (others exist!) and Scale (we are one of many and are certainly not alone). As we traverse place, we experience the environmental conditions of context: air, temperature, light, humidity, energy, spirit. The re-education that place provides us thereby deepens the human experience and provides opportunities for growth, learning and joy. Place also provides distinct settings, each with a clear purpose. This grounds the sense of what we do in the where we are, and are an experience in themselves. As Professor Sherry Turkle noted (italics mine again), “When Thoreau considered ‘where I live and what I live for’, he tied together location and values. Where we live does not just change how we live; it informs who we become.” As we can re-expand our settings with the opening of public and private venues, our horizons can expand, and our homes may not have to serve so many different needs.
4. Place supports collaborative behaviors. Place facilitates the act of people joining together in creativity, productivity, and—crucially—intentional respite from work. Places like coffee shops, libraries, parks, and offices also bring about the notion of being alone together: solitary work done in parallel paths and in shared environments. We can exchange data, guidance, and professional supervision across place and time through technology, as has now been proven broadly. There is great value, though, in being in the same place at the same time. Understanding each other, and what we intend to convey in our language and behavior, is more easily understood. Hyejin Youn of the Kellogg School of Management states, “If you are presenting a new idea to your company, you will need multiple ways of communicating it, and it will probably not be understood the first time. This is extremely hard to do online compared with face-to-face interactions.” We are more effective and efficient communicators in person.
Considerations for investors in, and designers of, place:
1. Do our places connote dignity and respect for people? Is the purpose of place easy, obvious, available, adaptable, welcoming, encouraging, and energizing?
2. Have we included spaces in which people can comfortably encounter and become familiar with each other, such as food and beverage areas, social centers, and brainstorming spaces? Do our spaces encourage us to interact with people beyond those in a scheduled meeting through puzzles, games, conversation?
3. Have we provided elements of interest in the space that could foster conversation, such as the initiation of a discussion on certain colors, art, textures, furniture, windows, outdoor space, or other displays to encourage interaction and connection as we emerge from isolation?
4. Are we attentive to the ways in which certain qualities of space may affect people differently? For example, the fact that wide-open atriums may inspire some and overwhelm others?
5. Are we sensitive to cultural differences and how people might experience a place differently given their lived experience? Do our places feed existing unequal power structures, or do they allow for true equality of opportunity?
6. Have we addressed human needs of safety, security, and physical and emotional wellness?
7. Do we consider people’s need for intermittent human interaction and separation in ways that they can select? How is their chosen preference supported by permission and policy?
8. Do we provide communal spaces within the office – and places which merge the remote with the in-person setting, providing for same-place, same-time and different-place, same-time connection?
9. Have we considered a variety of configurations of furnishings, boundaries, and access points to define a degree of enclosure for any given group? How can we protect the integrity of the group’s interaction by excluding pedestrian traffic and the potential for interruption? Are we sensitive to the density and square footage of our space?
10. Have we established settings where human interaction, rather than technology, is prioritized, such as ordering food or drink from a person? Do our places allow for and foster the joy of professional companionship?
11. What investment in place are we ready to make now? What is the expected life span of that investment, and when and how will we know what to change?
The utilization of in-place can be a tremendous aid in alleviating the starvation of in-person. Such an achievement requires places which are designed with awareness and respect, supported by leadership policy and practice, and adapted to the dynamics of the organization, the people, and their work requirements.