Place + Change
3 minute read
“The shore has a dual nature, changing with the swing of the tides, belonging now to the land, now to the sea.”
The dynamics of change consume society – its institutions and its individuals. This year’s triumvirate of impacts – pandemic, politics, and pursuit of social justice – and the high degree of uncertainty it wrought, validates that attention. Responding and preparing for change is not a program for either individuals or institutions – it is a skill.
A skill which includes the ability to learn, adapt, create, determine, and perform. People, organizations, and their cultures have shown they can shift to embrace and value these skills. The transition to a digital world - textbook disruptive technology - has laid the groundwork for these skills and facilitated our ability to exercise them in this year of impact.
We do more now ourselves, learning tools and programs; we have adapted to distancing and separation, we have created new rituals and determined new priorities, and above all performed. We have proven many of us can work from outside an office building and we while we may have mixed feelings on where to work, we largely agree that we want to make the choice. The choice to work remotely was in the past often denied until this health crisis forced it – but now we have proven, and become accustomed to, the ability to do so. And organizations explore the impact of place. Listening to, and then stepping away from the perspective of those in the built environment industries, institutions are evaluating how place will change – for them, specifically – exploring their contexts and the impacts.
Such evaluation often includes Moore’s Law – the exponential growth of technology - and is used by some as a reference point for all life. It turns out, layers of the context of civilization move at different paces.
Steward Brand speaks to pace differentials, indicating that the pace of change in civilization varies from fashion (the fastest and reflective of the times), then infrastructure, then society, then governance, then culture and ultimately to nature. It has been suggested that globalization may have flipped culture and governance, but the point remains well taken. When these layers shift – nature faster than society, for example, we have chaos (hurricanes, etc.)
Place – specifically the built environment - bisects all layers, reflecting, supporting, and enabling the needs of the stakeholders. The design and provision of our places struggle to determine and provide the appropriate response to such unknowns – each moving at different paces – while its inherently fixed nature proposes challenges to change. These challenges are being explored and addressed by the best designers – either through evolving existing structures or creating new ones. Place – its interiors and use – are in effect a fulcrum, between the dynamic context in which it lies and the inherent fixed nature of its structures.
Most difficult, sometimes overwhelming, is the impact of change to society and to culture – which Place reflects. The people factor. The most challenging, with the most opportunity.
It turns out, that in the management of changes, there lays great demonstrated success.
People are the best. We change our behaviors, our attitudes, our work as needed to respond to or preempt shifts in the environments. The best of environments, and the tools within, can enable and empower people to do so most successfully. Environments can provide and respond. They can provide options for intelligent life – us – to choose from depending upon the need. Organizations – providers – can and do often give the permission to do so. In the past, sometimes reluctantly; but forced to change by this year’s triumvirate.
Organizations invest in place to enable people, individually or in groups, to perform and provide increased, continual success. It is the skills of people that best manage change. People who are empowered with the choice utilize the environments and tools they need. The investment decision in place – the environment, its qualities, and the culture and policy to support people – will empower those who can perform in the future. The portfolio – literal and figurative - which provides a balance of consistency and predictability, along with elements of response and choice, provide the most successful investment.
Not future proof. Future Ready.