Office Connections
. . . in any work community or any office, there are always various human groups—and it is always important to decide how these groups shall be placed, in space. Which should be near each other, which ones further apart? This pattern gives the answer to this question, and in doing so, helps greatly to construct the inner layout of a Work Community or of Self-Governing Workshops and Offices or of Small Services without Red Tape.
Problem:
If two parts of an office are too far apart, people will not move between them as often as they need to; and if they are more than one floor apart, there will be almost no communication between the two.
Background & Research: Not Included on the site—Go read the book!
Solution:
To establish distances between departments, calculate the number of trips per day made between each two departments; get the “nuisance distance” from the graph above; then make sure that the physical distance between the two departments is less than the nuisance distance. Reckon one flight of stairs as about 100 feet, and two flights of stairs as about 300 feet.
Usage:
Keep the buildings which house the departments in line with the Four-story Limit, and get their shape from Building Complex. Give every working group on upper storys its own stair to connect it directly to the public world—Pedestrian Street, Open Stairs; if there are internal corridors between groups, make them large enough to function as streets—Building Thoroughfare; and identify each workgroup clearly, and give it a well-marked entrance, so that people easily find their way from one to another—Family of Entrances . . .
pg. 408