Taking place in the capital’s most exciting venue, the Truman Brewery, a vast reclaimed industrial site in Brick Lane, Tent London is the most comprehensive and diverse design event of the year, showing art and architecture, vintage and contemporary design by emerging and established designers from around the world.

Open Tables is a software application and a spatial environment, which researches and facilitates collaborative working between individuals and groups. The core purpose of Open Tables is to explore the potential for new kinds of collaborative working to emerge in spaces that combine analogue and digital modes of interaction: engaging both the mind and the senses in the navigation and production of information.

Come and see us at Tent London to talk to us about the project. We will be available at the stand throughout the exhibition.

Tent London opening times:
Thursday 18 September: 10.00 – 20.00hrs
Friday 19 September: 10.00 – 20.00hrs
Saturday 20 September: 10.00 – 20.00hrs
Sunday 21 September: 11.00 – 17.00hrs

For more information on Tent London, please visit their website @ www.tentlondon.co.uk
To find out more about our project, please visit project’s website @ www.opntables.com

Open Tables (OT) is an experimental new kind of collaborative working environment. For the Tent Urbantine installation we have defined four research topic areas, looking at contemporary design issues around sustainability, workplace environments, and ubiquitous computing. However, OT can be set up to research any topic depending upon the needs and interests of the client/participant/co-designer – whether bike design or stock markets – and we anticipate producing many OT variations in the future.

At the heart of Open Tables is the OT WebApp, the central repository of discussion material. It’s purpose is to organize information in a way relevant to the topic discussed. Items are collected off the web from a number of defined web feeds. Items are collected and collated into topics using the tags that the describe those items. The WebApp allows OT participants to browse items, filter by topic, tag and mark relevant or rejected depending upon whether you think this item is relevant to the discussed topic or not. You can also leave comments for each item.

Within the OT physical installation the content is interacted with through a series of physical spatial interfaces. The WebApp has a number of XML outputs which allow interface devices at the installation to communicate to one another. Item modified in the physical installation is automaticly updated on the webapp. This also works vice versa. Whilst the information displayed on the webapp is in a particular, already familiar web format, the same information in the installation is displayed through a series of spatial and physical conditions, aimed at promoting social interaction.

On the web, the OT WebApp can be engaged with through the OT website. Feel free to browse/tag/relate items. All information is collected and displayed in the space relevant to generate discussion. If you register you are also able to add items yourself as well as subscribe to our newsletter to be notified where next physical installation will be taking place.

The four research topics that OT is currently running are:

SUSTAINABILITY IN EDUCATION

RESEARCHING RECYCLING

GLOBAL NETWORKS AND THE INTERACTIVE EVERYDAY

COLLABORATIVE WORKING ENVIRONMENTS

If you have a blog, or would like to recommend a website which addresses any of these issues, and you would like to have your content fed into the OT system for the Tent Urbantine installation, then please submit your feed to info@opntables.com

The feeds that you submit to the Sustainability in Education topic will be feeding into a live EU funded research project into design education, and will be shown at the DEEDS 360 degrees conference (http://artsresearch.brighton.ac.uk/events/deeds-360degrees) in Brighton on Saturday 20th September 2008.

For more information about Open Tables, please visit http://www.opntables.com or our blog http://blog.opntables.com or drop us an email at info@opntables.com

Open Tables is a Working Architecture Group [WAG] project. http://www.wag-architecture.co.uk

The exhibition documents WAG’s winning scheme for the Workspace Group Urbantine Project®Tent competition, and the runners-up schemes

The exhibition is launching with a panel discussion at 7.45 pm on September 11th, which should be interesting. I will be contributing to the discussion with the other invited contributors listed below. The discussion will address issues around new craftsmanship, the analogue space of virtual communication, sensory environments and adaptive structures.

Panelists:

Lesley Gavin [BT futurologists]
Olivier Geoffroy [untothislast]
Jon Goodbun [winner of the Workspace Group Urbantine Project®Tent), WAG]
Usman Haque [Haque design and research]
Alvise Simondetti [Foresight & Innovation at Arup]

Chair: Christian Derix [nous, Aedas R&D]

If you would like to follow Open Tables development, we have set-up a blog that is regularly updated.

http://opentables.tumblr.com/

You can also read more about this year’s Tent London here and about our project here.

Open Tables Ecology is a study in contemporary interaction theory, or Ubiquitous Computing.

Ubiquitous Computing is based upon using the particularities of real places and spaces to provide the basis for our interactions with digital media. It explores how everyday objects and familiar places can help us to interact with and create ‘local’ information in a global network. This is the opposite of the old concept of ‘cyberspace’, or indeed the current experience of being on line, which is always the same where ever you are…

We started this project by asking how can we create a physical space which facilitates the navigation, selection and creation of ideas. For us, this is in fact part of a bigger study, into creating a hybrid real space/web platform to facilitate the production of open source design (analogous to open source software).

The proposal is for an environment which will facilitate open source thinking, between individuals and groups working and playing in the installation space (and perhaps others working in other places, and online). We would like to really test this by hiring the space for a few hours each day to local companies to use for brainstorming workshops.

The installation is conceptually organised into digitally enhanced ‘tables’ and ‘walls’. In addition, there are hybrid objects: these are found and recycled everyday items, bought from architectural salvage yards and the like, which are physically and technologically manipulated and adjusted to create usable hybrid objects which channel and interface RSS feeds. These are categorised as ‘Wall-Objects’ and ‘Table-Objects’
The ‘tables’ are for working on individually and collectively, and the ‘walls’ are for displaying the work of the ‘tables’. For example, a workgroup at one of the tables or ‘table-objects’ start writing some ideas. The computer (actually a piece of RSS aggregator software) identifies keywords on the table (inputted on the table or by mobile), and starts to search RSS feeds for posts tagged with the keywords. As these feeds start to display or get projected onto the various table-objects, the workgroups can tag and cross reference them. This primary amended content then gets displayed on the walls and wall-objects, to be seen and responded to by the larger community.

Graphic material in images, source: http://www.visualcomplexity.com

Competition team:

WAG: Working Architecture Group are Jon Goodbun, Filip Visnjic and Cordula Weisser.
WAG is an eco-innovative design and research practice, whose interests range from urbanism and ecology to architectural furniture and computer aided manufacture. We believe that the architectural research that WAG has been involved in, produced through our teaching, writing and built practice, enables us to articulate, explore and develop the core aims and values of our clients, in interesting and powerful new ways. Our office is near Spitalfields Market, in East London, and our portfolio includes residential, retail, exhibition, bar and branding projects, for clients including BBC, YMCA, German Embassy and British Museum.

For Open Tables WAG are leading a cross-disciplinary design team, which includes students from Schumacher College ( Fabio Barone (software developer) and Amalie Lauer (engineer)), and interaction designer Alexander Kohlhofer (plasticshore.com).

WAG/Jon Goodbun general quote:

“Whenever I try to describe the ideas behind our work at WAG, or my broader consultancy and academic research, I tend to use words like holism, ecology, and cybernetics a lot. These ideas are able to capture and describe the notion that we live in a globally networked, modern world, but that this ‘space of flows’ is fundamentally interconnected to the ‘Spaceship Earth’ that we are travelling on. We rely upon the biosphere for vast inputs of Natural Capital every year into our production and consumption economies/ecologies, and we need to find conceptual and practical ways to conceive of ourselves as personally networked into these natural and technological ecologies, in a ‘local’ way. We need to build bridges between the local and the global. The fact that both ‘economy’ and ‘ecology’ share the same etymological root from Greek oikos ‘house’, suggests that they are both in fact inextricable from the very concept of architecture – both effectively meaning ‘the science of the house’, or ‘the science of managing the home’. “

Alexander Kohlhofer (plasticshore.com) blurb:

As a designer Alexander Kohlhofer embodies strong artistic sensibilities with a passion for and expertise in contemporary technologies. He has worked on projects with the British Council, the Tate Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, the Arts Council, Amnesty International and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) and many others.

He has presented at international venues, conducted workshops abroad and has lived and worked in the US, UK, Germany and Austria. Until last year he was creative director of Bafta Award winners Soda Creative, world renowned for Soda Constructor. He is also a founding member and director of Munich based Schoene Neue Kinder in Germany.

His fascination for social software is expressed in his current start ups: the award winning online multiplayer-strategy game Weewar (http://weewar.com) and the agile team ware No Kahuna (http://nokahuna.com).

You can learn more about Alexander Kohlhofer at http://plasticshore.com

Submission Sheets:

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of design in workplace and corporate environments. A good workplace, or office, is planned in such a way that it embodies and promotes the values, ambitions and structures of an organisation. It might encourage teams to develop or work together, or enable communications between individuals or parts of a company, or simply just help productive concentration, by the way that it organises views, desks, circulation, refreshment and lounge spaces. The organisation of a workspace should be planned in accordance with the values, business plan and culture of a company – visualising and manifesting them. A badly planned environment can be wasteful enough to derail destination and vision.

There are countless studies that document the positive effects that a well planned space can have on the productivity and general well being of workers. It is equally clear that companies who provide attractive, healthy environments that are uplifting to be in, are much more successful at recruiting and retaining the best individuals, and have much stronger teams.

Furthermore, your corporate environment not only structures your internal organisational consciousness, it also emits powerful signals to the outside world, as an image of a company. Just as a company should storyboard the typically daily experience of its employees, it should just as importantly plan the experience of any visitors – what do they see when they arrive, what is their first experience as they walk through the door? What information are they give, by what medium?, Who do they first meet, where and how? The entrance and reception areas of a company are interfaces to the world: 3D adverts.

WAG can help you evaluate and develop your existing and potential plans. Whilst it is possible to occupy successfully a ‘self-planned’ or ‘as found’ space, the likelihood is that your space is only being used to 60-70% of its potential.

A good design study would start by auditing the ways that the company is currently occupying space, which would include conducting surveys and recordings of existing movement, working and occupation patterns. We would consult with directors and employees, through interviews, questionnaires and workshops, exploring existing, perceived and ideal workplace conditions.

Building upon the aspirations and needs of the individuals and organisations that occupy the building, this kind of study would explore various spatial organisation options that embody and articulate different corporate values and cultures. We can then help you to understand which kind of organisation and space is most suitable for you. For example, are the directors of the different departments situated in the midst of their respective teams, or are they close to each other, in a power space? Are there breakout lounge spaces – for each team or shared spaces? What kind of office layout is most suitable for your corporate culture – Cellular offices, open plan, hotdesking…?

This study would set out the kinds of costs and time periods associated with various development options. It would also of course also set out the kind legislation that you need to be aware of, and which needs to be designed for – in particular regarding disabled access, building control and planning, and general environmental responsibilities.

In you agree that this kind of work is required, then we would suggest that we meet the various directors at your building. You can show us around, and we can have a general question and answer session. We can also present some of our work. If you are then interested in taking things further, we can draw up from this discussion a detailed proposal and scope of work for a feasibility study, and an overview of the design process that would happen after that.

I hope this helps to clarify what we can do. Give us a call on 020 73772423 if you have any questions.

On this project we worked within a very tight budget to deliver increadible value to the client. We were appointed to reorganise and rebrand the reception area of Central YMCA on Gt Russell St, London. We started the project by conducting a 24 hr survey of the use of the building, monitoring who came in, how long they stayed etc. We also interviewed thereceptionists and built their needs into the brief.
Our solution was not what the client initially thought that they needed, although they fully supported our analysis and design proposal.
We audited the materials in the old reception area to see what could be recycled – many storage systems could be reused within new frameworks, with new facias, for example.
There were a number of CDM challenges in relation to programme and Health and Safety, as the sports club remained open throughout the course of the works, and work had to be sequenced around the space with temporary facilities as part of the design.
When pitching for the job we partnered with a management contractor. However, due to the tight budget and programme, they pulled out, and all other quotes attempted to take advantage of the situation, and were way above the clients budget. We were able to resolve this by us taking on the construction and project management appointments, and the client taking direct contracts with each appointed sub-contractor.
The central feature of the new reception area was a concrete desk, which featured special cast mouldings. We developed the moulds and helped produce the casts, at the workshops of Pallam Precast in Enfield.This work latercontributed to a RIBA funded and Concrete Centre supported research project into the use of CADCAM produced formwork for concrete.
Date of Commission: May 2004
Start of Works: August 2004
Completion of Works: September 2004, on time for opening by the Minister for Sport.

Designed with fabricators Pellam Precast and engineers Atelier One.

Year: 2003
Project description: Feasibility study for entrance canopy and visitor experience
Estimated contract sum: £250,000
WaG developed a new entrance experience for audience visitors as part of the ‘This is Television’ feasibility study, lead by graphics consultants Lucy or Robert.

WAG personnel: design and ideas consultants

Project description: Part of Project Touch think tank into the future of retail, lead by branding and management consultants Nowhere

Contract sum: N/A