{"id":2738,"date":"2014-04-17T09:34:55","date_gmt":"2014-04-17T09:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blogs\/the-new-office-workscape-2\/"},"modified":"2017-07-25T09:40:01","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T13:40:01","slug":"the-new-office-workscape-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/the-new-office-workscape-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The new office workscape"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fourth International Utzon Symposium was held in the Sydney Opera House March 7-9. The work of the late Danish architect, Jorn Utzon, is renowned globally and his vision for the Sydney Opera House has been formally recognised with its inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007.<\/p>\n

The Symposium brought together the full lifecycle of academia \u2013 design students, PhDs, lecturers and professors \u2013 and an incredibly diverse range of practitioners \u2013 architects, engineers, BIM modellers, and conservation planners \u2013 even facility managers. The conference themes covered Utzon\u2019s humanist philosophy and dedication to a collaborative design process, the transcendent poetry of epic architecture, transcultural influences in Utzon\u2019s work, the dilemmas of living with and adapting world heritage with the focus question across all fields being \u201cwhat would Utzon do now?\u201d<\/p>\n

The papers ranged from technical (water proofing ceramic fa\u00e7ade glazing units\/orientation and daylighting in Utzon\u2019s houses) through to incredibly personal and sometimes viciously political (testimony from Utzon\u2019s colleagues, friends and family, recounts of the process to select the design, defending the completion of the building by Hall Todd and Littlemore.)<\/p>\n

The organisers where keen to extend Utzon\u2019s thinking, and rather than just viewing Utzon\u2019s contribution from an historic perspective, engage with contemporary and future discourse across architecture and urbanism. 91Ó°ÊÓ submitted two papers addressing the city-making theme. James Rosenwax looked at the development challenges of Western Sydney, and Andrew Laing and I offered a perspective on how the changing workplace is reshaping our cities. We set out five propositions for the emerging workscape that recasts the office as an urban proposition, rather than a private arrangement:<\/p>\n