The committees that handle the design decisions, and the architects that design the projects are amalgamating many disparate functions, often leading to a chimera (defined as: 1. an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts; 2. an illusion or fabrication of the mind, especially an unrealizable dream) of a building design.

While we can't fault our politicians and bureaucrats for trying to save taxpayers dollars, they are often responsible for creating facilities that serve no one especially well.

The drive to an efficient economy is producing a variety of interesting by-products along the route. As part of the process of getting the best bang for the buck, it's not only the employees that are having to multi-task. The idea of smart-sizing and working smarter is being applied to buildings with increasing frequency, the multi-purpose room is apparently coming into its own in the nineties. Schools, community and civic facilities are looking for ways to pack the maximum functionality into a given square footage of building. The cost of real estate and the cost of construction are driving governments at all levels to justify the construction costs for taxpayer supported projects. The committees that handle the design decisions, and the architects that design the projects are amalgamating many disparate functions, often leading to a chimera (defined as: 1. an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts; 2. an illusion or fabrication of the mind, especially an unrealizable dream) of a building design.

The concept of a multi-purpose facility is not flawed in itself. It is quite possible to build functional and effective multi-purpose venues that give up little or no performance for each of the required purposes for which it is intended to support. Many large and well funded multi-purpose facilities exist to prove the point. The key is well funded; at smaller scales, typical of community, school and civic facilities, the project is very much bottom line driven, there are no well to do alumni to call upon. The multi-purpose portion of a facility is not going to be built for the same cost per square foot as the rest of the building, and once the detailed information is passed along to the cost consultant, it will likely have a per square foot cost far in excess of what either the building committee or the architect had expected. The more divergent the requirements for the facility are, the greater the expense to accommodate them.

For many municipalities and schools, the multi-purpose room is the only method available for accommodating community theatre and music groups in need of a venue. For some municipalities, incorporating a theatre function into new civic construction is the only way the construction budget can be justified, otherwise the new building would just be a monument to the local government (I have dubbed this an Oedifice Complex [sic]). This is resulting in some spectacularly unusual combinations such as a council chamber/theatre, or council chamber/recital halls (you think I'm making this up). There are many more combinations in school construction, the cafeteria/theatre/drama room/assembly room (or cafetorium) is a common one. While we can't fault our politicians and bureaucrats for trying to save taxpayers dollars, they are often responsible for creating facilities that serve no one especially well.

The committees charged with the responsibility of creating programs for the spaces often do not understand what it is that makes a space suitable for the purpose. Much like the old saw about an elephant being a mouse created by a committee, the building program developed for a multi-purpose facility or room will often be built upon incomplete understanding of the issues and tradeoffs involved. Just like the old Saturday Night Live skit about the product that is a dessert topping and a floor wax, it is quite possible to produce a final product quite unappetizing to all. It is important that the committees and the designers understand that it takes more than two or three hundred seats and a raised platform to make a facility that will support lectures, assemblies, music and drama delivery equally well. A room that looks promising when sketched in on the schematic design drawings tends to look a lot less achievable once the design details have been put in place.

This is an issue of concern for consultants designing room acoustics and production systems for these facilities, and more so an issue for the systems contractors who have to install and maintain the systems, as they both have to address the users' needs long after the design committee has launched the program into an un-alterable path. The consultant is the first on the scene, and is faced with the difficult task of pointing out all of the primary issues that may have been overlooked as part of the facility program definition. This may be as basic as a forgotten allowance for stage lighting locations (or having all the lighting coming from the wrong direction) or the location of high noise sources adjacent to the multi-use space, or doors in peculiar or inappropriate locations, a lack of sound and light locks, or my all time favourite; large windows and skylights scattered through the space, at least one of which can't be equipped with a black-out blind.

There are always acoustical issues; the conflict between the desired reverberation time for music and speech, background noise requirements, noise isolation from other spaces, noise isolation from outside. These are often not considered by the design committee or designer. It may seem like a good idea to make up for the lack of wing space on a stage by placing the music/drama room adjacent to the stage and putting a large roll-up door in the wall between them. The closed roll-up door would have an STC rating of 25, which means that there would be no possibility of using the stage space and music room simultaneously, creating a new conflict for the facility manager to deal with. Another popular option is an operable partition between two spaces as in the stage house and the auditorium; or the stage house and a gymnasium; and expecting to be able to make full use of each space. An operable partition, even a superior model, is unlikely to field test higher than STC 30-35 due to improper seating of seals, or wear and tear. This is not enough to have a basketball game on one side and a drama rehearsal on the other.

That is chimera system design at its worst, and it usually makes it impossible to sort out what the original needs of the user may have been.

As I said earlier, it's not that a multi-purpose facility can't be built, it's just that the building should not be an architectural equivalent of a committee.

The consultant will also be the one faced with developing audio, video and control system designs to fit the committee's program. The committee will often define the technical requirements because the actual users probably won't be in place by the time the design is initiated, or if they do exist already, because the design committee has filtered the users list of requirements through the "what's possible" filter before including the edited requirements in the program. It is infinitely worse when the school district's purchasing department has amalgamated several equipment lists from several different suppliers, and hands it to the consultant as the user's list of required features. That is chimera system design at its worst, and it usually makes it impossible to sort out what the original needs of the user may have been. It is even better when the purchasing department doesn't want to let the consultant talk directly to the end users for fear that they will just spend too much money.

In a facility that has to support many functions of distinctly different types, the technical system design can get very cumbersome. Getting the functionality and simplicity usually required for changing between one function and the next will invariably add significant cost to the system. In the example I alluded to earlier, where a council chamber is also used as a theatre, there are essentially two systems required; one mostly automatic one for city council meetings that should not require an operator, and would be immune to any system configuration changes that may occur in the theatre system. The second system is a theatre production system with hands-on operator control, direct control of sources, patch bays for signal routing, effects, audio playback etc. While these two systems may share a handful of system components (like the rack) that can be made common without sacrificing reliability, they are essentially two separate systems. While the council system is automatic and fool-proofed against accidental routing changes required for theatre, it still has a weak link.

In order to use the stage for drama instead of local government (there's a difference?), the council desks have to be removed, and in order for them to be removed, they have to have connectors to allow audio, video and control cables to be disconnected. This adds a major expense in providing a cabling system with multipin connectors, floor trenches or pockets, secure attachments to prevent the desks being separated without disconnecting the cables, etc. This means that there is still a person needed to effect the change-over because there is a physical labor component that can not be automated or programmed electronically. You could add a large motor driven turntable that would rotate the entire council desk and council backdrop out of the way to make room for the theatre function (you still think I'm making this up), and that would only add perhaps $150,000 to the project. At a construction cost of $125/square foot, that turntable budget would build a 1200 square foot room. The council chamber in question is about 2000 square feet. It's interesting how a project driven by a need to keep the costs low ends up costing this much.

The systems contractor is also faced with some interesting challenges. By combining systems of widely different function, there is more cross-market skill required. In the council chamber example, which featured a full blown A/V presentation system and a conventional council chamber speech reinforcement system, also had a theatre production system component. Having access to this broad a product range can be difficult for contractors, as there are few that are such generalists to have direct access to the hardware and the people in-house with expertise in all those areas. The manufacturers are not often interested in setting up dealers for a specific project if there is no likelihood of further support in sales. The local A/V contractor would not normally need to purchase the mixing consoles and production equipment associated with theatre systems. A theatre system contractor would not normally need video display and presentation equipment, or touch-screen control system equipment for theatre use. This means more second-sourced equipment and generally higher prices. There is no alternative though, the consultant will not want to split the system contract up because there is too much interconnection and interactive functionality required of the completed system. This means buying, renting or borrowing the needed knowledge to complete the installation, also adding to the costs of the project.

This cross-market situation also means that the contractors background will influence how well they interpret the users request for performance or feature changes. If the theatre user group is the most active, an A/V contractor may not relate well to the users concerns about mixing functionality. If the contractor has a theatre background, complaints about sporadic sync loss with computer video signals may not seem like the serious problem that it would be when it happens during a presentation. Not a language barrier so much as an experience barrier. If the contractor does not have a first hand grasp of the users' operational needs, it is much harder to glean enough information to implement changes that will work for the user.

As I said earlier, it's not that a multi-purpose facility can't be built, it's just that the building should not be an architectural equivalent of a committee. Rather than a convenient amalgamation of several potentially incompatible ideas, a multi-purpose facility has to be considered in the light of the real world requirements for each purpose. Like Oblio found in the movie "The Point", a point in every direction is the same as no point at all. If the only real purpose in multi-purpose is to save money, then that design concept should be tested first and tested early, because the greater likelihood is that by the time the building is made sufficiently capable of truly supporting any of the required functions, it won't be cheaper.

The design committee and the architects will often make compromises during the design process to control costs or to try to reach the middle ground between several conflicting requirements. Compromise is one of the fundamental tenants of engineering (stronger but heavier, lighter but less rigid, faster but less economical etc.) that these design groups will use in defence of their decisions regarding this architectural conflict resolution, but there is a fundamental difference here. In the engineering process, it is critical that you never lose sight of the purpose of the system you are engineering, be that an aircraft, a bridge, or a nuclear plant, and the compromises can never reduce the ability to serve its purpose. In the design compromises made in a multi-purpose facility, the compromise is often in the functionality of the room for one purpose or another. The design team may think of some compromise as a reasonable trade-off, but for the end user it is often a much more binary situation, it either works or it doesn't. Eighty percent of a water pipe won't carry water to where it's needed.

The last thing anyone wants to be involved in is a project that will be a disappointment to all the end users, and a poorly conceived multi-purpose facility can be like a bad all-season radial; of no purpose at all.