Tea matters (130/365)

[white_hart]

The trouble with architects is that they seem to see buildings as primarily artistic, and not functional. Which is why every time we have a meeting about our new building it ends up overrunning with lots of people asking questions such as:

Where are people supposed to make tea?

Will there be a quiet space for people to sit and eat lunch?

If the kitchen is in the open foyer area, how do we make sure that people don't take other people's food, or personal mugs, or wine that's cooling for receptions? And who is going to tidy things up when (inevitably) people don't put their cups in the dishwasher?

Yes, but really, tea is actually important, and it just feels like it's been shoved in here as an afterthought. And no, saying "but there will be a cafe in the building" doesn't help, because who wants to pay through the nose for a teabag and some indifferently hot water?

And that is why this afternoon's committee meeting overran by 45 minutes and left me incapable of spending the rest of the day doing anything other than filing my email. Which, to be fair, did need doing.

Comments

[lilliburlero]

I used to work in a classic of Bad Brutalism - I saw the plans once, and it was clear the architect had a vision of airy sunlit openness which in the real, subject-to-physics world just translated into mysterious, dank wasted space that 40 years of human, institutional use had filled with mouldering ceiling tiles, wobbly partitions and a foyer-to-common-room conversion so inept that it was heated with those wall-mounted heaters that they have in outdoor smoking areas. For all the futurism, they'd never envisaged a time when there wouldn't be a tea lady and trolley on hand to serve the staff their coffee and buns and do the washing-up afterwards...

[girlyswot]

Either that, or they make EVERYTHING out of glass with not a moment’s thought for those of us who are scared of heights.

[tree_and_leaf]

Either way, they hate windows that open.

[joyeuce]

The last library I worked in had the kitchen area in the basement (not open to the public), in a corner with the photocopier and the ladies' loo. Which was at least sociable, in a weird kind of way. However, the staff break room, which was the only place in the building you could go to eat your lunch other than at your desk, was on the fourth floor.

[caulkhead]

"the kitchen being in a bookable meeting room"

WTF. Admittedly, our staff lunch room is bookable as a meeting room, but not between 12 and 2, and there's also room to eat in the (separate) kitchen.

[girlyswot]

Oh, yes. Who needs fresh air?

[nineveh_uk]

Or even confidential work phone calls. On yes, they say, let's have lots of lovely shared office and open plan and no meeting rooms. Well, I like my office mates and can make 95% of work phone calls in their presence because it's all data they have access to even though it's not always ideal. But DPA exists and sometimes I need to go and steal my boss's officdl which is hardly ideal.

[serriadh]

This will be even better when we're doing "hybrid" model which will involve being in a Teams meeting in a shared office space.

[serriadh]

I boggled our Estates Planning people when I said we'd need space for a larger fridge in our new kitchen/staffroom area because the University required us to make budget savings and we don't have communal milk anymore. They just could not get their head around the fact that 20+ people bringing in their own milk will take more space.

Our latest architectural brilliance is a building where the stairs aren't quite wide enough for two people to walk up comfortably. They thought this would be fine because it's a sort of airy open-plan sort of building with a central atrium (what is it with architects and atria?) and people would naturally use one staircase for going up and the other for going down. Goodness knows how it meets fire regs.

(Yes, we could run a kitty, but then we'd have people wanting to pay pro-rata for how often they're in the office and people wanting to pay the same as the dairy-milk people when they're one of a few who need almond milk etc. etc. etc. and whoever was in charge of the kitty would lose the will to live.)

[serriadh]

We had the opposite problem when architects designed a building with two drama studios (for teaching students) which had floor-to-ceiling windows on at least one side. Despite the "requirements capture" specifying the need to create a black box environment, hang and test different lighting rigs, etc. etc. Natural Light Is Good For Art!! they said. It Is Creative To See Outdoors!!

[mountainkiss]

I like the two ways in which the title of this post can be read.

[mountainkiss]

No, sorry, it is not at all obvious to me why there cannot be surreptitious kettles and I am not sure that any argument could convince me.

[jinty]

Oh god yes.

My oldest friend from school is an architect (a prof of architecture & built environment in fact) and this is def a discussion I have had with her! I think she would be up for making the architect work in the building for a year afterwards but even so she has her own blind spots: I went with her to see my old college accommodation (the Florey building on St Clements, totally too warm, expanses of glass, pillars *inside* the rooms for stupid presentation reasons rather than to increase livability). Her and her architect friends swooned over it, me who had lived there hated it.

[alithea]

I know! The admins had it blocked out over lunchtimes on their booking forms, then they introduced a uni wide room booking app...

[jinty]

If it was a chilcare or early years school environment then there would be a health and safety argument, surely.

[white_hart]

Yes, perenialanna works in a primary school so I assume it's to do with small children and boiling water not mixing.

[mountainkiss]

Very happy to believe this but not obvious to me. Can’t see how v young children can get harmed by surreptitious kettles that they themselves cannot operate. But a domain of which I know nothing so very happy to be corrected.

[sollers]

There is a story about some architects who had to design a new seminary. The plans were passed to the Pope for approval and came back with the annotation “Suntne angeli?”*

After some puzzlement they realised what the problem was. They hadn’t allowed for any toilets.

*”Are they angels?”

[girlyswot]

The kettles would be hidden from e.g. senior management or the health and safety officer. But small children are good at finding things, good at pressing buttons, and bad at evaluating the personal risk to them. It would be a really, really bad idea.

[mountainkiss]

I was assuming the kettles were genuinely surreptitious and therefore the small children had to find them, fill them with water and plug them in. That seemed a stretch to me. But my original assumption might be erroneous.

[jinty]

Small children can & will pull on cables which then tumble the kettle onto them. It's a thing. Given enough kettles, enough cables, and enough small children it will inevitably happen, and even if it only happened very infrequently, the price would be perennial vigilance, which rather ruins the calming effects that you should get from a nice cuppa.

[nineveh_uk]

I can't wait!

[perennialanna]

Because we are a primary school. Small children and boiling water are a very bad combination.

[perennialanna]

Small children will always find things. Apart from their own reading books, lunchboxes, glasses, shoes, and even, rather spectacularly, their underpants. But if it's dangerous and shouldn't be anywhere near them, I give it five minutes tops.

[mountainkiss]

And then they can set it up and make it work? I think I’m now wondering if our definitions of small are very different. (I mean, obviously I defer to the person who knows the actual domain, but it still surprises me.)