This new network

Category 5 cable threaded through ceiling structures, fed down columns to modular furniture systems and then snaked across raceways embedded in cubicle walls is the status quo. It's the vanilla, one-size-fits-all, coach-class ticket to enterprise cable management in open office environments. It works, it's familiar, and pricing is predictable.

But ceiling feeds and wired furniture corrals don't address evolving workplace needs, say some architects and designers who are exploring alternative office arrangements. These pioneers envision flexible buildings where employees have the tools to alter their work environments as needed to create sometimes private, sometimes collaborative, work areas.

Just imagine . . . an employee could slide movable walls in place for greater privacy, swing open panels for a department meeting or push together desks for a short-term project with a partner - all without the assistance of IT or facilities personnel.

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Telecommunications infrastructure stands in the way of that vision, says Christopher Budd, associate principal at Studios Architecture. "More fluid forms of organization have been inhibited almost solely in terms of how power and data is housed," Budd says.

Consider a typical office cubicle and the cabling that runs through its panels. "A lot of the reasons why those types of systems are used is because they're just one big raceway," Budd says. But, in fact, the zigzag of cables makes the modular furniture less flexible than it was designed to be. Just to shift one panel in one cube typically requires coordinating IT and building personnel.

The inflexibility of cubicle systems affects not only users who have no control over their work environment, but also IT professionals who can't easily access cabling for upgrades or changes. Today, progressive designers and clients are working to solve those shortcomings. They are exploring areas outside the suspended ceiling for running cable, such as in raised floors and exposed cable trays, and outfitting spaces with wireless LANs for untethered connectivity.

The idea is to let employees make decisions about where they work and to make the infrastructure to support that work flexible and accessible. Getting to this point requires companies to think differently about how work gets done and, consequently, how space should be laid out and network infrastructure designed.

"A lot of organizations are accepting that they are relatively complex and that they have different kinds of workers," says Todd DeGarmo, managing partner of Studios' New York and Washington, D.C., offices. "What we've really gotten away from is the one-size-fits-all approach to housing people."

For the Baltimore offices of professional-services firm Andersen, Studios renovated space in a former power plant on the city's historic Inner Harbor. Flexibility was a key design driver. Studios suspended telephone, data and electronic cabling beneath the ceiling in open cable trays for easy access. Instead of fixed furniture systems, Studios created a series of linear spines along which power and data cabling runs. Users can arrange freestanding furniture around a spine any way they prefer. Because the workspaces are populated by a transient group of consultants, seating for the most part is unassigned. Users reserve locations on the days when they plan to work in the office.

A reservation system for work areas also is part of the new global marketing headquarters for software maker SAP in New York, designed by architecture and engineering firm HLW International. Regional salespeople can call ahead and reserve a workspace. Other employees have assigned cubicles - but not of the fixed, orthogonal type. Rather, workspaces feature translucent, semicircular panels that rotate to create private or open configurations. For a change of scenery, staffers can tote laptops to a cafeteria and plug into SAP's wired or wireless network. Internet access stations for clients and visitors round out SAP's connectivity selections.

From the beginning, SAP's internal IT professionals worked with HLW on the network infrastructure required to support all these options. The design team chose to run the cabling in the floor, which let them bring power and data boxes up at any spot. However, the wait for a traditional raised floor system was too long, so the team designed its own, says HLW architect Susan Boyle, who was partner in charge of the SAP project. HLW created a grid of pipes, through which the electrical and data cabling was threaded, and encased the pipes in a shallow, lightweight concrete slab.

"We didn't want to have the network and all the technology pieces come in as a Band-Aid at the end," says Rick Stockton, SAP senior vice president of global events marketing. "When you're trying to build space that is appealing and that people are going to want to work in, you have to bring the IT guys in on the front end. If you don't, you end up with a beautiful space with extension cords everywhere," Stockton says.

HLW's Boyle says the sooner you bring IT on board, the less surprises there are. Technology influences the work process today in a much bigger way than it did 10 years ago, because it's such an integral part of how people work and business gets done, she says. "You're dead in the water now if you don't get that and start very early."

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Contact Senior Writer Ann Bednarz

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