Fantastically Flexible

Interior glass systems: meeting the need for adaptable, optimized space utilization

As highly complex, function-specific spaces, today’s health-care, industrial, and commercial buildings must respond to multiple conflicting demands over time. These facilities therefore require a high level of flexibility to meet constantly evolving needs.

“Buildings planned to accommodate change from the design stage up front will be most efficient, functional, and inspirational to workers, visitors, and building owners over their lifetime,” states Sheryl Hai-Ami, administration officer, The Sliding Door Company, Westlake Village, California.

Consequently, building owners should think long and hard before building with traditional studs and drywall and designing highly specialized programmed spaces, cautions Karen Thomas, CID, LEED AP BD+C, principal, LPA Inc., Irvine, California.

While initial build-out costs may be less, such short-sighted design decisions will likely lead to more costly remodels down the line when program requirements and work processes inevitably change.

“Flexibility and adaptability are critically important and a key factor in building resilience,” states F. Jeffrey Murray, FAIA, LEED AP, director/architect/practice leader, CH2M, Pittsburgh. “A facility that becomes out of date or incapable of supporting the activities planned to occur loses its value.”

Offering some historic perspective, Suzanne Blair, associate principal, workplace studio leader, SERA Architects, Portland, observes that the primary needs and tools in her firm’s architectural offices are dramatically different from what they were just five to 10 years ago.

“Accommodating future needs of the users, as well as the future growth and delivery model of the company are difficult tasks but should be considered from the start of every workplace project,” she says.

To support this essential level of adaptability, design solutions like interior glass doors, sliders, swing doors, barn doors, and stacking room dividers enable buildings to quickly and inexpensively adapt to rapidly changing facility needs and functions.

For example, dividing an open space into smaller, private rooms is an easy retrofit. Or even more effective, proactively designing the floorplate with various glass partitions lends much flexibility to shifting space utilization and function.

Evolving Health-Care Spaces

Supporting such flexible, functional space requirements is particularly essential for today’s health-care facilities.

Whereas the typical doctors’ office of the early 1990s consisted of a small waiting area with a couple exam rooms and doctor’s offices, today’s outpatient facilities are much more robust operations with physicians from various specialties, social workers, dieticians, pharmacists, etc. making up a larger, integrated team.

“This shift has really been driven by the focus on population health and evolving relationships of physicians to hospitals and insurers,” reports Troy Hoggard, senior vice president, Cannon Design, Chicago. As a result, “medical office design is beginning to track along with and catch up to commercial workplace design in dynamic, exciting ways.”

Primarily, these health-care spaces have evolved into open-plan, module-based layouts where team members may need to gather to discuss a patient’s situation, break up to do some individual work, and then huddle once again.

“To support this kind of extensive collaboration, health-care designers need to infuse a diverse types of spaces into health-care environments,” he says.

In response, CannonDesign recommends the following:

• Touchdown spaces: places where staff can sit for a few moments to jot something down, review notes, or look at a chart.
• True open-office environments: open spaces where teams and individuals can connect, huddle, and collaborate.
• Consult rooms: more traditional rooms where folks can connect for quiet, private meetings with patients.

Modular Planning

Another important design strategy for commercial and industrial facilities, particularly health-care facilities, is modular planning to support multiuse spaces. Described as repetitive designs that are easy to expand or reduce, these modules are highly functional and cost effective. With each module incorporating the same infrastructure and dimensions, facilities can quickly reconfigure these spaces to accommodate current needs.

“Modern work styles require space to support a variety of different activities, and if one were to designate spaces specifically for one activity, then they would go unused, possibly for a significant proportion of the time,” Murray states. “This is a cost that is hard to justify and really a waste of resources.”

The goal, says David Lubin, associate principal, HKS, Dallas, is to design spaces with an eye on what “could be” or “might happen” versus a single-function approach.

“When applied thoughtfully, the use of modular planning can provide organization and rationale to a design while providing a client with a more fiscally responsible product,” suggests Darin Daguanno, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, design principal, SmithGroupJJR, Detroit.

For example, in a health-care clinic, multiple specialties might alternate days of operation and/or one particular clinic might require twice as much space on one day of the week.

“Health workplace designs need to be ready to accommodate this kind of constant flexing,” states Hoggard. “So, the more one can do to offer spaces that can accommodate a wide range of specialties, the stronger and more adaptable the facility will be.” For instance, a conference room can be closed off and double as smaller consultation areas when needed.

Tasked with keeping cost and space requirements down, health-care providers require the ability to provide these clinics with additional space when they need it and retract it when they don’t.

Getting into more specifics, the exam room configuration, as the most replicated unit, usually sets the standard for clinic modularity.

While diagnostic rooms will vary more based on medical equipment and functional need, a highly efficient clinic can find a common module to align with a standard exam room. In keeping the exam and diagnostic rooms identical in size, shape, layout, and possible equipment storage, this enables the clinic to flex up and down with patient volumes.

Furthermore, patient care is enhanced as staff can quickly locate essential services and materials within these repetitive modules.

“Patient rooms are arranged so that light switches, medical gas outlets, nurse call buttons, and supplies can be readily reached or retrieved within the least amount of time and effort,” states Rick Wood, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, principal, LPA Inc., Irvine, California. Similarly, “supply rooms are sized and arranged so they can be stocked consistently in each nursing unit based on the type of patient or service provided.”

While a few specialties—e.g., orthopedic—may require specific equipment, multiuse principles can still be applied, as the equipment can be anchored in the center of spaces to allow for flexing on either side.

In fact, this approach has been incorporated in many newer dental offices where the X-ray machines are stored between two exam rooms inside a closet and used in either room when needed. The storage enclosure between the patient rooms also serves to keep various supplies handy and accessible.

Leveraging key construction benefits, Murray points out that modularity enables the structural and building service systems to be designed in a more efficient, cost-effective manner, and can simplify construction by facilitating off-site fabrication and partial assembly.

Along these lines, CannonDesign offers a proprietary clinic module: a universal office configuration supporting a myriad of uses and purposes.

The universal grid platform presents the optimum vertical and horizontal dimensions for a building’s structure that is also vetted for engineering soundness and construction efficiency. “The platform helps ‘future proof’ health facilities. Designs employing the grid have proven almost infinitely adaptable. Moreover, facilities leveraging the grid can reduce the typical 10- to 18-month span from facility planning to groundbreaking by up to 80 percent,” Hoggard reports.

Outlining the basic process of integrating standardization into the design, CannonDesign starts with tested prototype room models, complete with equipment and furnishing, in building information modeling. “Based on deep dialog and often lean operations mapping, the prototypes are customized for each client,” he explains.

Next, the architectural team often creates cardboard mockups, at full scale for key rooms, so that all the stakeholders can test the standard rooms along with their teams and equipment. The architects then work together with the end users to convert or extend these room standards for use across their campuses.

Overall, the firm seeks to work closely with its health-care clients to help promote standardization amongst their facilities to enhance usability and longevity. “It really does require a strategic approach, as it can impact everything from wood finishes to the stacking and structure of the building, but when done well, it can drive undeniable return on investment,” Hoggard states.

Enter Interior Glass Solutions

Matching up well with these modular designs are interior glass doors. Requiring less planning, they offer changing space needs based on function.

“Interior glass door solutions save space and provide energy cost saving options that can be integrated into any floorplan design,” Hai-Ami reports.

“These products allow for more options,” agrees Tom Clark, vice president of operations/senior project manager, Anderson Construction, Oxnard, California. “From inception to completion, it’s all about providing the client with options. But the trick is prescreening the options so that a ‘paralysis by analysis’ scenario doesn’t come into play.”

Case in point, a number of Lens Crafters contact lens exam rooms have incorporated sliding glass panels that close for privacy while bringing in natural light.

“The contact lens rooms can easily be repurposed and used as conference rooms or consultation rooms with a minute’s notice,” Hai-Ami reports.

In fact, this type of multipurposing is quite common in health-care clinics. Whereas rooms are regularly used for examining patients, the clinic space must also support occasional staff meetings. However, building a large conference area that cannot be divided is wasteful use of resources.

“The flexibility of quickly dividing a larger room into smaller ones is cost effective so sliding partitions are an effective solution for these situations,” Hoggard explains.

Beyond this type of a solution, CannonDesign commonly specifies sliding glass doors in nonclinical areas, public lobbies, and clerical spaces. In specific inpatient areas, like the ICU, sliding glass doors are also very common to allow visualization of the patient from nursing work areas.

“These sliding doors can be very helpful, particularly where you have health-care or research spaces inside larger spaces like a series of treatment spaces off a central support area,” Murray notes.

Describing the sliding doors and modular glass fronts as a “wonderful, nice-to-have solution” in private offices and conference rooms, LPA’s Thomas notes that that they typically allow for a more precise and predictable construction process than traditional interior glazing.

“In rooms where significant width and ease of access is required, such as intensive care rooms, sliding breakaway glass doors are optimal and almost exclusively used,” Wood adds. “Sliding glass doors in ICUs also provide the greatest visibility and the least obstruction of any door, in addition to maintaining some audible attenuation.”

Taking up a smaller footprint, as compared to typical swing doors, sliding doors can free up 9 square feet of usable space. Combined with natural light, these interior spaces will also feel larger in size and benefit from a daylighting-induced morale boost.

“When you take away door swings from every single gowning room or office space, you save a ton of space,” says Hoggard.

“When working with enclosed spaces, such as huddle rooms or even small offices less than 100 square feet, sliding doors are critical to making these spaces work functionally,” adds Rich Bonnin, interiors design principal, HGA Architects and Engineers, Minneapolis.

Stacking sliders truly optimize the opening so that larger furniture can easily be moved and larger meetings can quickly take place with no advanced notice required.

While architects may have to make the case for investing in these types of products, Lubin says that the benefits typically outweigh the initial spend by providing transparency—both visual and cultural—daylight and views, and branding opportunities.

Transparency also fosters trust, which is vital in working environments and speaks silent volumes to promoting teamwork.

Lubin adds that stacking room partitions in specific areas also provide cost-effective, multifunctional, divisible spaces for group interaction.

Bonnin agrees, pointing out that as training practices evolve toward more interactive models, there is a need for additional room configuration to support breakout space. “These often include both high-tech and low-tech collaborative tools, such as white boards, which can become a part of the stackable wall system.”

For example, some manufacturers offer milky and white glass types, which double as dry-erase boards used in training rooms.

On a related note, products such as room dividers and barn doors, which support clutter-free spaces, are also seen as an asset to building designs.

In fact, research has shown that cluttered spaces decrease productivity and impairs creative thinking by overloading one’s senses.

For example, a study published by researchers at Princeton University’s Neuroscience Institute concluded that physical clutter competes for one’s attention and results in decreased performance and increased stress.

“The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging and other physiological measurement tools to map the brain’s responses to organized and disorganized stimuli and to monitor task performance,” explains Erin Rooney Doland, published author on clutter and organization on her blog, The Unclutter.

“The conclusions were strong: if you want to focus to the best of your ability and process information as effectively as possible, you need to clear the clutter from your home and work environment,” states Doland.

Yet another noted benefit of glass door partitions is optimized interior daylighting.

Beyond the often referenced Heschong Mahone studies—establishing a positive correlation between daylighting and student test scores—research continues to validate what the building industry has intuitively known all along: natural light positively enhances well-being and productivity.

Case in point, a Swiss Federal Institute of Technology study conducted a couple years ago revealed that employees working in naturally lit buildings experienced higher energy levels and fewer incidences of vision fatigue as compared to workspaces with only electrical lighting.

As published in the American Psychological Association’s Behavioral Neuroscience journal, the Swiss study also found the test subjects in naturally lit rooms were less sleepy by the evening and showcased better cognitive performance than test subjects inside artificially lit spaces.

Open Versus Closed Spaces

Another major role that interior glass partitions and stacking sliders play in commercial building designs is simultaneously supporting quiet, closed spaces and open, collaborative environments.

“Today’s knowledge workers perform a variety of work tasks on any given day, some requiring quiet, focused concentration, and others depending on interaction with others,” Murray relates. “Designing spaces to accommodate focused work that avoids the need to create permanently closed, traditional ‘office space’ can greatly improve space utilization and reduce costs.”

The fact is that today’s workforce, regardless of age, require a variety of spaces, providing them with the freedom to choose where, with whom, and how they work, whether individually or in collaboration with small or larger groups, Lubin says.

“Thoughtful and proximal blending of a variety of spaces for socializing, collaborating, focus, and rejuvenation is key to the office ecosystem of today,” he adds. “Specifically, ad hoc, reservable, open, and enclosed team spaces blend design, functionality, materiality, technology, furniture, and performance to achieve a successful/usable matrix of spaces for people to interact.”

Backing up these observations with hard data, Gensler’s 2016 U.S. Workplace Survey measured four elements of workplace design that foster innovation: individual focus work, collaboration, socializing—informal gathering that fosters trust and teamwork—and learning. According to the design firm’s research findings, choice of work settings contributes the most to employees feeling that their workplace fosters innovation.

Giving employees the ability to move freely around their work environment and work in different settings promotes creativity. Perhaps this is why government workers reported the lowest levels of choice in Gensler’s survey as they are largely tethered to their assignment seats.

“That lack of choice ends up interfering with both focus and collaborative work, and cuts down the sense of empowerment that motivates workers,” reports Robert A. Peck, government practice area leader, principal, Gensler, Washington, D.C., in a recent Gensler blog post, “Unlocking Innovation in the Government Workplace”. “The most innovative environments are those that foster both creative group work and creative individual thinking and provide spaces for both.”

Peck observes that legacy government workplaces tend to be unidimensional—either predominantly closed offices with meeting rooms or predominantly open work areas with few focus rooms and inadequate meeting room space. “In those legacy spaces, we rarely see a good mix of spaces or the café/pantry areas that double as informal meeting spaces and are often a hallmark of creative offices.”

While several systems and products would typically be required to create that desired, and arguably required, mix of open and closed environments, what’s unique about interior glass partitions is the fact that they can simultaneously support these two conflicting needs for enclosed privacy and open transparency, and personal choice.

Utilized as private offices or small conference areas, employees are afforded the quiet, private environment they need. At the same time, the all-glass walls help retain the openness and collaborative feeling that most office settings are seeking today.

Incorporating glass partitions in many of their coworking facilities, Serendipity Labs CEO John Arenas says that providing people with a variety of work settings based upon the activity they’re engaged in directly impacts creativity and innovation.

“We believe the trend going forward is having the right mix of spaces and opportunities to work in the ways you need to work,” states Arenas in a “Future of Workplace Trends for Startups” video. “That enables serendipities interactions that might otherwise not have happened and brings on creativity and new ideas.”

“It is critically important to provide an appropriate mix of these open and closed environments,” agrees LPA’s Thomas, “and the ratio varies for each end user based upon their business, work process, and culture.”

Supporting a high level of flexibility in accommodating the occasional all-hands meetings and group gatherings, Thomas is a big fan of stacking room dividers for breakrooms or large meeting rooms.

That said, it’s important to evaluate the acoustical integrity of the stacking room dividers when they are in the closed position, as breakrooms can be very noisy and easily transfer sound to adjacent office spaces. Furthermore, large meeting rooms require acoustical privacy and the ability to minimize confidential voice transfer to adjacent spaces.

To accommodate both individual and teamworking requirements, SERA Architects employs adaptability at multiple scales to support dynamic, changing needs. Along these lines, Blair recommends:

• Diverse space types distributed across the building, allowing for individual choice of work environments (e.g., quiet and busy spaces for both single occupants and team)
• Individual control of spaces for tuning environments to unique needs (for example, shades, lighting, mechanical systems, etc.)
• Flexible or modular systems—such as movable walls, acoustic panels, or furniture—that can be changed over periods of time, either by users or by facilities teams

Integrated Building Systems

To optimally apply solutions like interior glass systems, along with other key building systems and materials, integrated sustainable design continues to evolve as a popular project management strategy.

Dating back to the 1970s with key studies, such as the U.S. Veteran Administration’s Hospital Building System Research Study Report (for more, see section Modular Planning and Walk Decks from the 1970s), the idea is examining and coordinating the interrelationships of building services and subsystems early on in the design. This way, the optimal pooling of resources and expertise can occur with the building owner, end user, maintenance staff, architects, engineers, and contractors all sitting at one table at the point before any key decisions are made regarding building orientation, building shape, etc.

As opposed to a traditional linear project model, where each discipline completes their design and then passes the plans onto the next building team member, integrated design enables the project design and coordination to take place holistically.

“Having everyone at the table from the outset of a project ensures everyone’s voices and needs are heard, and that there are fewer challenges as the project progresses,” Hoggard relates.

In this setting, building occupants share their usability needs, facility managers relate maintenance concerns, contractors lend their expertise on constructability, and building owners communicate the overall vision. This synergistic approach breaks down silos and equips architects and engineers with the information they need to create the most optimal design solution for the project.

“Early onboarding and collaboration provides the opportunity to align on priorities that impact performance, cost, and schedule, which lead to more efficient and productive outcomes,” Blair states. “This allows for more thorough evaluation of design ideas and helps improve budget certainty much earlier in the process.”

Furthermore, this early-on involvement creates more ownership of project goals across all trades, says Blair, as building team members look for opportunities to improve the design, performance, delivery, and constructability.

By resolving any clash detection and finalizing on the design much earlier on in the process, change orders are drastically reduced and project construction occurs much more seamlessly. In addition, the application of integrated building systems leads to a much more efficient, cost-effective design and a higher likelihood of delivering the keys to the owner on time.

“When these models are executed well, they can lead to reduced risk for clients, accelerated project delivery timelines and revenue capture, enhanced quality of outcomes, and improved cost efficiency,” Hoggard adds.

Sharing some best practices for integrated sustainable design, the folks at LPA relate the following:

• Do more with less: To minimize the building’s environmental footprint, apply materials in the most efficient, resourceful way.
• Enrich lives: Deliver healthier working environments through the use of nontoxic building materials, efficient mechanical systems and access to day light and views.
• Build smart: Maximize operational efficiency and reduce maintenance costs through the integration of architecture, interiors, landscaping, mechanical, and structural design.
• Create value: A true building team partnership will ultimately create and build a space that contributes to the owner’s overall bottom line.

Walk-Deck Ceilings

As an example of a potential design solution that might emerge from an integrated system design, a walk-deck ceiling system optimizes operational efficiencies by enabling mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems maintenance without disrupting day-to-day occupant use in the space below.

For instance, in a research or manufacturing facility, these systems pay for themselves through reduced production downtime and exposure within the cleanroom environment.

“Sometimes it has to do with intellectual property protection, sometimes it is safety driven, and sometimes it is required to maintain containment or cleanliness requirements,” Murray shares. “The more specialized the environment, the more value there is in maintaining the environment outside the space. This is critical for many of the advanced research environments we design.”

Walk-deck ceilings are also ideal for health-care environments. “This is definitely important for inpatient facilities to avoid disrupting the patient experience in those settings,” reports Hoggard.

For instance, to install a new 220-volt outlet in a patient room, maintenance personnel can quickly access the electrical distribution zone above the deck and make the upgrade without having to climb of a ladder and break into the patient room ceiling.

Access to the correct circuit can be easily accessed above the walk deck, and the wires in a conduit can be dropped down in the wall into the patient room. Ultimately, only a small opening in the patient room wall is required for a black box and plug to quickly be installed.

“Good design will allow items that need access in the ceiling to be away from sensitive patient areas,” Hoggard explains. “Additionally, small, portable containment devices allow work above the ceiling without disrupting patient care.”

To help support the incorporation of these advantageous walk-deck ceilings, various interior door and panel solutions marry the benefits of natural light, transparency, privacy, and optimized space usage with limited occupant disruption to MEP maintenance.

Another integrated design solution example is the application of open-plenum ceilings. Not only do these open designs lend a certain architectural look, but the sharing of lighting, HVAC, and plumbing systems can save thousands of dollars every year in energy cost.

Open-plenum ceilings also come at a lower first cost. As documented by Barry Donaldson & Associates, Croton on Hudson, New York, in a Ceilings & Interior Systems Construction Association survey, initial construction cost of a suspended ceiling can range from almost 15 percent to 22 percent more than an exposed structure.

Also supporting these designs, glass door systems can be configured to enclose a space around the perimeter while leaving the space above open. This way, building occupants can simultaneously capitalize on the benefits of open ceilings along with the optimized space utilization, privacy, and daylighting advantages of interior glass partitions.

Moving Forward

Whether it’s via integrated design, modular planning, multiuse designs, or all of the above, flexibility and adaptability are hands down essential in today’s commercial buildings.

“It’s incredibly important,” Lubin asserts. “Flexibility paired with embedded technology enables the built environment to adapt to support a company’s business drivers as they change—sometimes overnight.”

Amongst the products most ideal to support these needs, interior glass doors—not to mention sliders, stationary panels, swing doors, barn doors, and pass through windows—can help deliver the high level of adaptability that is essential in today’s commercial buildings.

Modular Planning and Walk Decks from the 1970s

Documenting the inefficiencies created by improper planning and coordination, an eye-opening, unpublished survey tucked away in the U.S. Veteran Administration’s archives, studied facility changes in 10 private hospitals and 10 VA hospitals in the early 1970s.

As reported in the VA Hospital Building System Research Study Report, subsequently updated in 2006, approximately five times the original construction cost was spent on major acute care facility renovations over a typical lifespan of 50 years.

In addition to these astronomical costs, these hospitals have suffered from significant downtime and disruptions in patient care, while the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems have undergone updates and design changes.

Utilizing the survey as a jumping point, the main point of the study lays out some seminal building planning strategies, such as integrated building systems, which are very much in use today.

For example, by utilizing modular planning—where each module is set up with the same organizing principles and ideally, its own utilities—an individual module can ultimately be shut down to upgrade services with minimal disruption of building ongoing operations.

Similarly, the report recommended organizing utility operations in defined vertical and horizontal zones, and building in the infrastructure for future needs. For instance, including a zone for a return air duct even though the current design only requires initially an exhaust system.

Another noted recommendation was separating clinical and other functions from utility distribution with a walk-deck ceiling system. This way, any fixes or upgrades can be easily accomplished up in the deck with no disruption to the spaces below.

Culling more valuable recommendations from the VA study, the ongoing process of churn in hospital environments can be further mitigated by identifying permanent versus adaptable elements and designing the permanent elements for the longest possible range of use. For example, oversizing air trunk ducts so that they don’t have to be ripped out if the air supply needs to be increased in the future.

Yet another best practice, minimizing structural constraints by providing a long-span structure in at least one dimension, provides flexibility in functional plan layouts and accommodates future changes without interference from columns or shear walls. Along these lines, the report also recommends designing floor loading to accommodate a reasonable range of functions in each building module.

Putting this all into practice, the VA awarded a contract to four design firms to apply these research findings to the design and construction of 500-bed VA Loma Linda Healthcare System facility in Southern California.

By employing strategies such as an integrated building system process, modular planning, and the incorporation of a walk-deck ceiling system, the building was completed six months faster than a conventional project with substantial cost reductions for a number of building components, including the mechanical systems and interior partitions. Change orders were reduced to almost none, patient and workflow disruption was reduced substantially, and the ability to support future changes was enhanced greatly.

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