Page 75 - ArchDC_Summer 2020

One of the collaborative hub spaces, with the pantry in the right background.

Organizations, like people, can become set in their ways.
That was true for the Urban Institute, a non-profit think tank
that conducts economic and social policy research in a range
of subject areas including health, housing, and taxation.
Founded in 1968, the institute spent its first 50 years in the
same office space in DC’s West End. Workplace models
changed dramatically over the course of that half-century,
moving toward more open and informal environments,
but the institute’s scholars and other staff members had
grown accustomed to the spacious private offices and
compartmentalization of their long-time headquarters.
As the institute prepared to move into a new building in
Southwest DC last year, its president, Sarah Rosen Wartell, saw
an opportunity to “de-silo” the organization’s various research
centers and encourage intellectual cross-pollination. That
broad goal was among the priorities laid out for the project Staff pantry.
team at HYL Architecture, which was hired to design the new
office space. Wartell’s idea remained disquieting, however, to HYL embarked on an intensive research and programming
many of her colleagues, some of whom even expressed concern effort aimed at fully understanding how the institute’s staff
that imposing a more collaborative work environment could worked, how its constituent policy centers interacted (or didn’t),
diminish the institute’s effectiveness. and how much workspace each staff member really needed
“There was a lot of resistance to change,” said Whitney now that computerization has reduced reliance on physical
Loke, AIA, LEED AP, principal at HYL. “It was not our role to documents and files. Meanwhile, the design team began testing
try to convince them. We were there to listen, not to push a possible layouts in the new building, which is nestled between
certain agenda, even if it happened to be the president’s agenda.” L’Enfant Plaza and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban

STAIRWAY TO COLLABORATION 73