Remote working is not new to us – but neither is it the future
I’ve always said, and firmly believe, that no-one ever has an idea at their desks, whether they are an architect, doctor or educationalist, and I don’t believe the current Covid-19 situation changes my thoughts on that – although I am spending an inordinate amount of time at my home desk for obvious reasons.
What constitutes working remotely is open to interpretation, but has certainly characterised my experience since setting up our practice, Bogle Architects, back in 2012. I remember squatting on the floor of a Guangzhou hotel room with a colleague, hastily building a model of an office scheme, having ‘designed the project’ on the plane from Beijing to Guangzhou. This was as a result of the chap from the Local Design Institute explaining to us that we needed a ‘scheme’ to present to the client immediately on landing, when we thought we were just attending a project briefing. Anyway, the ability to sketch under pressure goes a long way – we didn’t have our usual explanatory diagrams and instead relied on 12 metres of yellow trace paper to convey the scheme, starting with a 1.5 by 1.5-metre dotted diagram to describe the office ‘space plan’ DNA. We went for a foot massage afterwards and watched Manchester United v Everton at 11.00 o’clock at night.
On another occasion I remember building a model of a residential scheme using egg boxes and kitchen scissors in a hotel kitchen in Almaty, Kazakhstan, a gamble that eventually won us the project. There are many more stories along the way in what have been very creative, fun and rewarding times.
Flexible working hours have been part of our ethos for some time as we believe quality of output is more important than being strapped to a desk”
The notion that remote working is a new activity is simply not the case for us. It’s part of the communication process. As an international practice, we are continually communicating through emails, phone calls and video calls, and our team is very used to sketches, photos and ideas being passed across the internet, whether from South America, Asia, the Middle East or wherever we happen to be on any particular day. I’m famous for the fat sketch that might not actually fit on the site, but luckily the guys in the studios understand how to interpret these scribbles and make them workable.
Likewise, flexible working hours for our staff have been part of our ethos for some time now as we believe quality of output is more important than being strapped to a desk for eight or more hours a day.
Body language is a key factor in communication and it is certainly more difficult to interpret over the internet”
So, what has changed in these challenging times? Yes, we are still communicating as a team, albeit not face to face, but the truth is that remote working is far from ideal. The big stumbling block being that physical isolation precludes those magic moments in a studio where you can knock around ideas with colleagues, challenge preconceptions and make mistakes. And that’s the key – because sometimes those very mistakes open doors, sparking that moment of creativity into life. We are humans and we need human interaction to stimulate our creative and emotional responses. Body language is a key factor in this communication and it is certainly more difficult to interpret over the internet. A tilt of the head, a smile, a look of incredulity – these are emotional signifiers that profoundly influence our thinking, questioning whether we are going in the right direction or not.
There is no magic ‘remote’ bullet that will change our design approach and our methods of communication. While we are inevitably becoming more ‘digital’ – a good thing in many respects – you can’t beat a handshake. I look forward to being able to do that again with friends, colleagues and new people I’ve yet to meet.
Is remote working the way forward, and will it stop the office environment? I don’t believe it is: we need space to be together and we need space to think for sure, but we also need architects to be architects, not machines.
