Knowledge-Based Participation to Identify Demands of a Future City Administration: Dresden Case Study

Due to accelerated structural changes in the city administration of Dresden, a new administrative center is planned for several thousands of employees. In the framework of a scientific collaboration, inter alia we researched and evaluated demands of future city administrations by way of a participative workshop-series in order to inquire the employee´s and organisation´s implicit knowledge as an information basis for decision making in the subsequent architectural design works.
In a series of workshops with representatives of the departments that will potentially move into the planned new building, explicit and implicit knowledge of the knowledge bearers was collected in various formats. The structure and content of the workshops was developed according to the Backcasting Method, which anticipates long-term objectives (framework specifications of the city administration and the project manager) and therefrom derives measures for achieving them. By analyzing the existing structures in the departments, discussing with the employees and validating their statements and needs made through the evaluation of references and the co-creative development of concept models, a catalogue of spatial needs was created.
By use of this preliminary planning-process we were able to set a scientific foundation for subsequent design-and-development processes for architects, civil engineers, and interior designers of the envisioned public construction project. The bottom-up-approach will ensure a sustainable design for organisational and spatial issues for the municipality by purposefully using the implicit knowledge of the prospective users. The collected data give intelligence about future office development and about specific interlinkages of the departments in regards to communication, working methods, operations and future consolidations.