The Welcoming Workplace: rethinking office design to enable growing numbers of older people to participate in the 21st century knowledge economy

In the early years of the 21st century, there are growing numbers of older workers who will not retire from the office workplace but will remain at work for longer, many of them on a consultancy, special-project or part-time basis. Several factors are driving this trend: a shortfall in pension funds; a management emphasis on retaining knowledge and experience built up over the years; ago and disability discrimination legislation offering more protection to older workers; and, above all, the plain demographic facts of population ageing (one or two adults int he European Union will be over 50 by 2020).

At the same time at the age balance of the workforce is changing, the type of work we do in offices in changing too. Today, much of the repetitive process work that once occupied vast numbers of office workers is done by computers. The contemporary workplace is increasingly the setting for a new type of work for which the most common term is 'knowledge work'. This type of work depends not so much on formula and process within a supervised hierarchy but on applying theoretical knowledge and learning as part of a culture of collaboration, sharing and initiative.

Taken together, the ageing of the workforce and emergence of new patterns of knowledge work present a critical challenge to current practice in office design, which has traditionally been geared to younger workforces rather than older ones and simple, linear, process-driven work patterns rather then more comlex knowledge-based ones. Technological advance with intelligent building systems and wireless technologies underpin this paradigm shift, supporting working styles that are more mobile and networked and work environments that can be customised to individual needs and abilities.

This project addresses ways in which the office environment can be redesigned to offer greater levels of comfort and flexibility in the new age of the odler knowledge worker. It builds on a strong record of investigation, expertise and publication by the research team at the Royal College of Art, led by Professor Jeremy Myerson working closely with practising architect Dr John Smith.

The study seeks to examine the interconnected factors that make up the office environment- physical, spatial, technological, economic, social, cultural and philosophical - and develop a theoretical framework within which a programme of user research and design interventions on specific workplace sites can be planned and delivered. Significantly, the project will pilot a number of new design research techniques, including the use of 'mode-mapping' as a rapid ethnographic technique used in conjunction with architectural drawings and space plans.

By observing the movements and motivations of older knowledge workers and plotting their daily lives in time, place and space, the project will seek to generate new conceptual approaches to office design that offer an alternative to the current model derived from the factory floor. These will be simulated and tested in situ and the results of the entire project disseminated to academic, design and office professional audiences through a major book, exhibition, conference and design guidance document.

Given the growing pensions crisis and anticipated 'knowledge gap' in the UK workforce, the subject described above is of real concern to Government. If we are all going to have extended working lives in the 21st century, the places in which we work will need to flex and adapt to make us want to keep on working. This research project sets out to explore ways to achieve this.