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

[perennialanna]

4 year olds to 11 year olds, of varying degrees of dexterity and not an ounce of forethought amongst them.

My own children (9 and 11 now) can use a kettle safely, because I taught them (along with the toaster and the microwave).

[white_hart]

If they try to ban fans in our new building I will have to start shouting about discrimination against menopausal women!

[white_hart]

I'm not sure the architects have really grasped that we are a large department. Their plans for the foyer had a table for about 8 people and they said "you could have Faculty meetings or dinners here!". Um, no we couldn't, we have 80 permanent postholders plus lots of fixed-term and college people!

[white_hart]

I have raised openable windows several times at meetings about our building, but I'm still slightly worried that we won't have them.

[white_hart]

Ours is going to have a black box theatre, but it will be in the basement so can't really have Unexpected Windows.

[white_hart]

When we had our current building refurbished, instead of the basic and functional venetian blinds the refurbished offices got nice new venetian blinds which turned out to be full of tiny perforations. Oddly enough, these proved to be absolutely useless when it came to stopping the sun shining into people's eyes or onto their computer screens, and they ended up having to fit roller blinds behind the venetian blinds...

[white_hart]

If it doesn't have a kettle, how can it be a tea making station?

[white_hart]

My current classic of mid-20th century architecture (as featured in Endeavour has its downsides, but generally isn't too bad apart from some of the electrics where they never imagined 21st century requirements for power sockets.

I think the architects of the new building are assuming most people will get their tea from the cafe downstairs, which suggests to me that they are all paid too much.

[white_hart]

Even in central admin at our place, where they don't provide tea and coffee, they do provide milk because they understand the chaos that everyone bringing their own milk would cause!

Ours is also going to be an airy building with a central atrium. Apparently they're "taking inspiration from college quads"...

[white_hart]

Or possibly architects should have to spend a year working in a cutting-edge building as part of their training...

[white_hart]

We do have toilets, at least, though my department keep expressing bafflement that the plans include lots of gendered toilets and not just single-occupancy unisex ones.

[conuly]

My nieces once lost their swim caps in between the *pool* and the *shower*. No, there's no distance. I actually hauled them back to the pool to look for them. The swim teacher got involved. No luck, I had to eat the cost.

[conuly]

Children are a lot brighter than you think. An electric kettle is just not that difficult to figure out.

[conuly]

Apparently, the problems with windows that open are threefold.

1. If you want to make your building energy-efficient, you actively need to thwart the people who are using it, who are bound to open windows and suddenly drop your efficiency down to nil.

2. If your building is too high, openable windows do not mix with open-plan offices, the phrase "wind tunnel" came into play, and while nobody likes open-plan offices nobody is willing to just close them up because what the heck do the workers know?

3. God forbid somebody jumps out, whoever owns the building is on the hook for that.

[conuly]

Oh, no, there are ways to make that happen.

[conuly]

My father used to make sun tea, but that's not really a. fast b. something I'd trust to an office environment.

(Note: If you're going to make sun tea, you MUST wash all equipment with soap and then boil it before and after use. Otherwise the risk level is just too high. And obviously if it looks or smells bad, weird, "off", or otherwise contaminated then you need to dump it all down the drain.)

[conuly]

Airy building with central atrium = loud and noisy. I bet they're not doing any real soundproofing or even some baffles.

[white_hart]

I make cold-brewed tea in the summer when it's really hot, but not in the office.

[conuly]

You heard about the architect whose new building melted a car? Apparently, he did it twice.

[conuly]

Indeed.

[perennialanna]

My house was last rewired in 2005 and the electrician clearly didn't anticipate 2020s socket requirements...

[alithea]

Quite. Just a fridge and a sink and a small section of worktop. I suspect they were supposed to have hot water dispensers but the uni were too cheap to buy more than one.

[caulkhead]

Was one of them the Walkie Talkie in London? (I forget what it's officially called) - if not, that makes three times.

[conuly]

I think one was in London but I don't know that it's that one.

[serriadh]

They might just see it as a challenge!