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Working ✍️ Help design the worst possible office environment

I bought a bike from a guy who does traffic signal control programming and monitoring for his state. I met him at his office to buy the bike. This is his office:

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Dan said:
Garage? Check. Portable sign? Check.

Still, cladding is brick with some vinyl siding. There's a metal standing seam roof. Parking is paved. It's an architectural masterpiece compared to this or this.
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Oh yeah, those are way worse! I'll add a little context to the little town of Rhodehiss so you get an idea of life there. I did my college internship at the neighboring town, and we often helped them address code enforcement issues because they had an almost non-existent staff. We got called to look at a house right on the edge of the town limits. Apparently the top portion had caught on fire several years before. Rather than fix it or demolish the whole house, the homeowner opted to tear the top half off, board off the stairs, and just live in the bottom portion. We were not there for the house condition though. It was because he had several emu's on the property.
 
Here's Hope Township hall. The township hall is the building on the right and doesn't look too bad, but note there are two buildings in the picture. Guess which one used to be the hall.
 
Here is a high school in the adjacent county. There are actually 2 high schools of this design in this county. They haven't aged well either.

I guess the architect got out his circle template but then had the square template too for the rear addition.

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A local government office where you answer directly to the chief elected official who is politically opposed to you, believes in micromanagement, constantly changes her mind, and doesn't take any meds. At least, that's the worst possible office environment in my experience.

/Lookin' at you Ann
 
Maister said:
Who decorated that room? It's totally lacking a gibbet on the east side and no floor drain for all the blood. In other words, bad dungeon feng shui.
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Well, they did nicely label the storm drain and it's direction of flow.

So, Dan's got that going for him, which is nice.

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Faust_Motel said:
The drive-up window! I wonder if they have drive-thru subdvision approvals.
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Our office had a drive thru window before we moved in. They took it out and replaced it with a large single pane of glass. I attempted to try and keep it so we could do water payments through it rather than have people have to park and come in. In the end, the office layout didn't work and we moved water downstairs, plus the drive thru lane was pretty short and we would have had people backed up in the street. The town hall here has one though, and before I could pay my water bill online, I used to pay it that way. It's actually pretty convenient and a nice thing to have in rural communities that have limited internet infrastructure and/or people who refuse to use it.
 
Winner winner chicken dinner!
  • Building signage by the DOT ✓
  • Gravel parking ✓
  • Continuous curb cuts on the front and corner side frontages ✓
  • Two pre-fab buildings on the site, one attached to a block gas station-like structure that contains the actual town hall ✓
  • Integral highway / public works department garages ✓
  • Shipping container as an accessory structure ✓
  • Zero landscaping ✓
  • Big piles of dirt and rock visible in the back ✓
  • Sign code violation across the street ✓ (yes, this town has zoning)
Some communities have absolutely no sense of pride. How can a citizen respect their local government if it's in a building that could double as a body shop?

A lot of American communities put an image of their seat of their city, town, or village hall in their seal. A rule of thumb - if you would be ashamed to put the building that's your seat of government in your seal or on your letterhead, it's probably an awful building.
 
An aside: from the excellent Living With Beauty report by the UK Building Beautiful Building Better Commission:

Civic pride. Beyond points concerning procurement mechanisms, there lies a deeper cultural question about public buildings. Surely, they should be worthy of their civic purpose, popular and beautiful? Many of the proudest buildings in England’s towns and cities are civic buildings built with public funds, particularly in the nineteenth century: the Houses of Parliament in London, Leeds or Rochdale Town Hall, or St George’s Hall in Liverpool. However, somehow, somewhere, we have lost not just the ability but even the desire to create public buildings of beauty and moral worth. We were very struck by the evidence of Anna Mansfield, who told us earlier this year:

"I was working on a PFI project ten years ago, and we were told by the contractor to put in a more expensive material that looked cheaper, because there was real sensitivity about anything in the NHS looking expensive."

This is ridiculous. A hospital is a noble building built for a noble purpose. It should not be built to look disposable and cheap. We need to rediscover the confidence and ability to create public buildings of popular beauty and civic pride. The response to this proposal in our interim report has been almost universally popular, with consistent praise for the quality of Victorian as opposed to more recent civic buildings.
 
JNA said:
No windows, cubicles with walls that you cant see over.
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Bubba said:
Oh, so you've been to the FEMA Region IV office?
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That was my city's planning and building division offices for several years. Old strip mall storefront. And the back wall with door to the rear parking lot had water cascading in whenever it rained. That was the break room.
 
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