The MENA region is currently experiencing a boom in office construction, as every country in the region lacks the prime grade office space that is so sought after by large companies. In Dubai alone, according to Colliers International, there is currently 4 million square meters of office space under construction. The office, and the way the office is thought about, is transforming just as fast as it is being constructed. The computerization of offices, from the internet to wireless, is completely restructuring the layout of the office. This has resulted in the fundamentals of good office design today meaning that much of the current stock of offices in the MENA region are unsuitable and even the current stock under construction may soon become dated for design savvy clients. Santa Raymond, a leading interior design consultant and co-author of “Tomorrow’s Office — Creating effective and human interior’s,” explained, “If you look at offices in the Middle East there will be a boss who sits at the top of the room in an open plan or in his own office, with everyone else in rows in front of him. There is a very hierarchical situation.” It is this office hierarchy that is changing out of all recognition, with the onset of computerization, in cutting edge office design. “In the brightest offices they are now saying that offices must not reflect your seniority or your pay package but the layout of the office must reflect your task.” Firms have realized that to be as innovative and efficient as possible they have to rid the office of the traditional hierarchical layout and keep things as horizontal as possible.
Open plans and flexibility
A horizontal layout not only allows a more efficient design with regards to employee’s tasks but it also means that the office can be subject to change and is given – what has become the new buzz word in office design – “flexibility”. The ability to change the layout of the office itself with relative ease is increasingly important for many offices. Flexibility translates into offices being designed open plan, with boards as partitions, and structurally to have as few columns as possible. Tarek Sinno, of Nabil Gholam Architecture and Planning (NGAP), told Executive, “the layout of the office with the greatest efficiency is the one with open space where people would come and go … You now don’t have an office but an open space.” Flexibility in time, with the introduction of such concepts as flex-time, has meant that staff can log into work from home, through the internet, or work in cafes and even different countries. Office staff are not tied to their desks as they used to be and office design has responded to this transformation in work practices through flexible and horizontally designed offices. “You go into offices and they are empty 75% of the time, so why have a desk when you are out most of the time?” Raymond rhetorically asked. Sharing desks or ‘hot desking’ is the latest way in achieving office efficiency, in which staff can book a desk before they come into the office, with their belongings in individual trays. “In the brightest offices, such as Bloomberg, they have big open spaces and the CEO has his desk on the floor, he has a meeting room that anyone can use when he is not there. But he does not have his own office,” said Raymond.
With the space that has been created by reducing the number of desks, small meeting rooms and single person concentration rooms have been created. As the open plan office gets rid of any possibility of privacy these small rooms around the perimeter of the office solve this dilemma. Also, with the death of the individual office, rooms for private meetings are essential. Small ‘concentration rooms’ are now essential in open planned offices, designed so people are able to make private phone calls or read quietly. Lounges in offices are also becoming increasing important where employees can just relax with a few colleagues. According to Raymond, “The ambience of the office is very important, as staff are now getting fussier.” Other issues of central importance in satisfying design conscious staff involve ensuring that the light levels are correct, having good furniture, art and plants, and also to ensure that the air quality is good. Getting the right ambience also entails providing the right services. Companies now offer services to their staff such as gyms, daycare, and dry cleaning. Big firms are seeing great benefits in investing in their cafeterias, as staff are then less likely to go out of the office and staff are also happier as they maximize their time off.
As to whether the move to flexible and horizontal offices is permeating the Middle East, Mohammed Arayssi, an architect at Batimat Architects, told Executive, “What has changed the most for us is the way the spaces are partitioned, giving much more control to the people inside with curtains or blinds, using different ways to filter between spaces. Rather than actual differences in the distribution of people in the office, the manager still has 12-16 square meters. The real democratic open spaces [have not arrived] and I don’t think it will come.” However, Arayssi stated that you can see the more open and horizontal trend in office furniture. “The type of actual furniture they design, you see a trend done in that orientation, for example, you have one long table with small partitions that you can remove very easily, if you want to work for a few hours you come in, move the partition and use the space and then move out.” With international companies increasingly occupying much of the office space being constructed, at least in the Gulf, the shift to horizontal offices will no doubt occur eventually. Just as elements of horizontal design have crept into offices in the Middle East, the pressure to attract a highly skilled staff, which is always at a premium, will no doubt force companies to have horizontal layouts. Especially, as various companies compete among each other to have to the most attractive, prestigious and cutting-edge offices.
Iconism
One other way companies have achieved prestige is to create ‘iconic’ buildings. Tarek Sinno explained that “companies are keen to design their buildings so it is not just another office bloc. There is the trend of the high-rise that we now see in the Gulf, a symbol of presence, a symbol of power.” The desire to build the tallest tower in the Gulf is creating intense competition and three towers — Burj Mubarak al-Kabir in Kuwait, Al-Burj in Dubai and Burj Dubai — are all jostling to become the tallest building in the world. The Burj Mubarak al-Kabir in Kuwait is currently poised to win the much sought after title, reaching a structural height of 1,001 meters. Elie Harb, head of Real Estate Magazine, told Executive that “there is a lot of excitement about building the new Mubarak towers, there will not be a problem in filling that space, as people will want to be part of that scene.”
Dubai, in particular, has seen a spate of so-called ‘iconic’ buildings rise across its horizon. The drive to have ‘iconic’ architecture in Dubai and the Emirates has been very profitable, for Iraqi born and AUB educated architect, Zaha Hadid, who is currently designing two new office buildings in Dubai, the Signature Towers and the Opus. These office blocs are just two among many projects being designed by Hadid in the Emirates. The Opus office tower, a $470 million project, is another attempt by the architect, in her post-modernist repertoire, to re-think the office bloc. The project is comprised of separate towers that are strung together to give the appearance of a solid cube that seems to hover off the ground with a, “distinctive void in the middle [of the building].” The Opus ensures that the offices have a high level of ambience and areas for relaxation, executive dining, exercise, and “nap shell” rooms all designed into the office space, so “occupiers need not leave the office.” The Signature Towers, also planned to be built in the Business Bay Development in Dubai, are three towers that intertwine with each other and are designed to share ‘pragmatic’ elements and to rotate to maximize the views towards the creek. The towers, unusually for the general trend of the region, mix offices with residential space.
Offices of Glass and Steel
Both of Zaha Hadid’s office bloc’s use glass and steel as the main construction material, in what is a firmly entrenched trend in the construction of office space in the MENA region. The reason for this, according to Tarek Sinno, is because “glass and steel is sexy, trendy and contemporary. Glass gives you this image of modernity.” However, using glass on a mass scale in the Middle East causes many problems, especially in the Gulf. To solve the problem of letting too much sun in you have to put in double or triple layers of glass and it also means that the air conditioning is on all the time. Despite these draw backs, the sex appeal of glass and steel buildings remains strong. The rising cost of steel and glass caused by the demand in China and the slump of the dollar, as most of the glass is imported from Europe, has meant that developers are beginning to think of alternatives but when building tall the dominance of glass and steel is inevitable. “Glass will always be a part of architecture but I hope that it will not stay as just an aesthetic material as it is now,” Arayssi said. There is a search for methods to use glass and steel in a more environmentally friendly and cost effective way. He sees a future in which glass will be used in a smarter way, outlining that, “Now what is happening is that there is a cross-over between technology and construction materials. You have materials that are working for the building, so it is not something that is very passive.” Innovations constantly occur in the way materials are being used, especially with glass, to make the use of the material more energy efficient and even generate energy. The major obstacle in using these innovative materials is that they are expensive and untested, so a push is needed to encourage developers to use these ‘smarter’ more efficient materials.
‘Greener’ materials
In October 2007, the ruler of Dubai, Shaykh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, issued a resolution mandating that all new buildings built in Dubai must meet certain standards regarding energy efficiency, water conservation, the usage of renewable material and recycled products. This has reportedly caused some companies to go back to the drawing board and re-think the way they are constructing their buildings. Another ‘green’ push that the Emirates are attempting is through the creation of a rating system — styled on the Green Building Council in the US — Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Atkins Architects, designer of the ‘iconic’ Burj al-Arab in Dubai, has been involved in the creation of LEED rating system and is leading the way in the construction of ‘green’ buildings in the Emirates. Dalia Ajrami, a senior architect at Atkins, extolled to Executive the ‘green’ virtues of their latest projects in the Middle East. “The Bahrain World Trade Centre is the first commercial building to harness wind power for energy and the DIFC Lighthouse tower is set to be the first commercial tower in Dubai to reduce its total energy consumption by up to 65%.” The DIFC Lighthouse tower, to be located in the Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC), will be a single use office tower, with 64 floors of prime office space, with the top 120 meters of the tower having three horizontal-axis wind turbines to harness the northwest wind for energy use. Although glass and steel are still the primary construction materials this new project is leading the way in showing how those materials can be made to work with the building. Its glass exterior will have an integrated photovoltaic mesh that harnesses the sun’s energy and provides shade to the façade. This will subsequently reduce the solar glare, which will in turn cut the building’s cooling requirements. As for the future of ‘green’ buildings, Ajrami thinks Dubai will be a leader in the shift to sustainable buildings, but problems remain in the production of locally manufactured building materials. Raymond, however, does not hold the optimism that Ajrami displays and sees Dubai as an “embarrassment”, because most of the buildings being constructed will not last more that 20 years, which of course is anything but sustainable. “In construction there is the idea of embedded energy, which means trying to demolish as little as possible. That is why Dubai is so terrible.”
The Importance of Good Office Design
It is the lack of thought put into the office that has been the main ailment which much of the Gulf has suffered from in the design of the interior and exterior of office buildings. This lack of thought being put into an office space has been the consequence of the pace and speculative nature in which office developments have been constructed in the region.
There is a chance for the second wave of office building projects currently underway in the region to break the prevailing mode, and to move to a more progressive method of office design and construction. “The relationship between how well your company performs and what your building is like, is strong,” says Raymond, “Executives need to engage, good design has a monetary value in performance now, if the building is energy efficient it costs less to run and well designed buildings keep their value.”
