In 1968, Bob Propst and his team of researchers and our research designers published a remarkable book—The Office: A Facility Based on Change. This book served as the software designed to run the first systems furniture, Action Office, introduced by Herman Miller in the same year, and invented by Propst and his team. There were no computers in offices. No fax machines. No e-mail. No cell phones. No search engines. No printers.

There were a lot of white collar workers (seems like a quaint label, doesn’t it?) and a lot paper. There were two kinds of offices—private and bullpen. Nothing much moved, except people (sound familiar?). Propst and his team envisioned an action office, where the facility actually responded to increasing rapid changes in business, working methods, and teams. They put hinges on their panels, and everything was designed to be reconfigured easily. They even invented a profession—facility management—to make all the moves. Flexibility suddenly became a quality everyone wanted.

It’s almost 40 years later. Offices haven’t gone away. Neither has paper. But these days, people work in all sorts of places, with all sorts of technology. Offices are increasingly social places where connections and relationships are established and tended. Is flexibility in work environments that big a deal? What is flexibility anyway, and do we all need the same kind? How much does it cost and how much do we use? STUDIOS Architecture has some interesting answers.

Question: Flexibility in work environments has been hashed and rehashed since the 1960s. How did you come to this new understanding and expression of flexibility?

Christopher Budd, principal: It started out 16 or 17 years ago with a major client in Washington who wanted to reexamine how flexibility was achieved. We wanted to see how flexibility could be achieved first and foremost by the end user or small group. So we looked at the entire system in two ways: first from the end users point of view. How can you effect most change easily without having to bring in outside help, maximize flexibility with the least cost? Second, what’s important for the developer, the people who are taking risks, who own the building?

And so we came up with very different types of infrastructures and approaches than are typically offered on the market, which are often designed with the wrong people in mind. For instance, sometimes panel systems are designed to give certain people flexibility, but not actually the people who need it. How can we design interiors to have the flexibility best suited for clients and projects? We want to be client and design driven.

Question: Did some client say, “We’ve got all this raised floor and we never use it,” or, “We have all this supposedly flexible systems furniture and never move it,” or, “We have to call a facility manager every time we want to change a file cabinet”?

Budd: All buildings pose significant problems in planning, and particularly the Pentagon, where we began a project in September 2001 and applied what we had learned about what we call “appropriate flexibility.” It was an existing building, a historic building. Like many buildings, it looks good from the outside, but we had to face the problems on the inside. In a lot of existing buildings—and I think over the next 20 years, existing buildings are going to be a big part of our portfolio—you cant do everything you’d like to. Maximum flexibility in an older building is a big lie, and total flexibility is very, very expensive.

So what flexibility is actually possible, given the building? What flexibility really benefits the client? We think we should edit flexibility. The Pentagon was planned quite well for 1940—it’s actually an amazing building. The more you understand the inside of the building, the more you appreciate what people were thinking—this building was one of the first totally air-conditioned buildings—and the whole thing is laid out to maximize a certain type of planning. We needed to add some efficiency, because these old buildings are designed with a central corridor flanked by enclosed suites, and you get this triple circulation. The square footage per person is outrageous. We streamlined circulation and allowed many more things to happen flexibly within that structure.

It just made more sense to take what we call “dumb systems”—things like tables, chairs, file cabinets, simple partitions without power and data—and allow them to move and change, versus adding a little bit of expensive flexibility to intelligent systems—power, data, HVAC. That has been our model for a while. In a brand-new building, where column spacing is perfect and the fenestration is right, we don’t need to worry about some of those things, because a raised floor is a perfect application where you can plan almost anything.

Esther Carpi, associate principal: A side effect of our view of flexibility has been the inherently better results you get in the future. Demolition is minimal. The ceiling stays in place, the lighting stays in place, the carpet pretty much stays in place. The walls and windows stay in place. You can move all the other components and reconfigure the space without major construction.

Question: Did the Pentagon ask you to come up with “appropriate flexibility” rather than “total flexibility”?