I recall the police saying after the Weatherhead shooting that they had a more difficult time navigating the building because of its design, which apparently slowed their (and the medics’) response. Having never been there, I can’t confirm that, but it seems plausible. To your points, organizations might want to focus on how others use their space as well as those within.

I think it’s a delicate balance between reality and aspiration, whether that’s crafted in words (e.g., the difference between description and vision) or in concrete (e.g., the ‘old’ building and the ‘new’ building).

The physical environment can ease us or force us to ‘be’ certain ways; often by capturing or focusing our attention on some characteristics and not others, the environment keeps some much more salient. These characteristics can feel comfortable, like a bit of a stretch, or like a misfit… depending not only on how different the vision is from the current reality, but ALSO depending on how effectively leaders help us interpret the built environment and our relationship to it.

Weatherhead’s building is an extreme case in some ways, because Gehry’s style is such a radical departure from conventional ‘academical’ buildings like at UVA or institutional buildings like at so many state universities. … Gehry’s style (probably) requires a bit of an architecture education to ‘get’–to really understand what it’s about. Even though Gehry, his fans, and probably anyone would react emotionally to his buildings, it’s an open question what any building “means”. What’s the label to put on that feeling?
While emotionally resonant, ones reaction to the buildings (since they are so different from the norm) needs to be shaped, by the community collectively and the leaders. Let’s think about this one for a post of its own….?

this post is interesting. Do you think there is a tension, when designing a new corporate building, between making it authentic based on its current identity, versus making it inspiring, with a view toward what leaders want it to be, in the future?

When the Weatherhead School of Management moved into its Gehry-designed building in 2002, we were told that it was intentionally uncomfortable in some ways, because the building was intended to challenge us to move in the direction of our aspirations. I’m still not sure whether that worked as a strategy…