Government
Government buildings usually fall into the metaphor of looking serious, businesslike and official. And all too often, they are designed to be custom buildings for the current state of each department, with little flexibility to change department sizes or to change how the building is used over time. In addition to being user friendly, perceptually comfortable and resonant to the user, they must be highly flexible to accommodate the changes that occur in government with great frequency. So rather than being fully custom, they need to be highly flexible to accommodate things that had never occurred to the designers at the point of initial design. And they must accommodate disabilities, physical and invisible.
Richfield Municipal Center | Acoustics, Lighting, Daylighting, Thermal Comfort, Indoor Air Quality, AVA
World Trade Conference Center |
Maple Grove Government Center |
“The conference center is, most importantly, not an exercise in technology but an exercise in human occupancy, often used under the pressure or boredom of a meeting. The tasks in a conference center are those of relaxing the attendee, stimulating them and assisting with the process of communications in the most user-friendly ways…
The conference facility, at its best, will support a meeting in as transparent a method as possible. Whether the meeting is media- or presenter-intensive, the most important things to consider are the message and its transmission, the interplay of attendee to presenter, and the potential for this communication to emerge as a memorable event.”
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