This article first appeared in City & Country, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 6, 2021 - December 12, 2021

From a very young age, Robert Mankin knew he wanted to be an architect.

“My father was a contractor in the US and I was always around building projects. From that experience, I enjoyed the idea of building something and leaving something behind that is permanent that people could live and work in,” he says.

“By the time I was in high school, when I was 13 or 14, I knew that I wanted to become an architect.”

Today, Mankin is a partner at global architecture, planning and design firm NBBJ, which he joined in 2000, and leads the firm’s global design practice. NBBJ has 12 offices across North America, Europe and Asia.

Mankin studied architecture at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he found inspiration from two architects whose design philosophies resonated with his. They were American architect Eero Saarinen, who did the TWA Terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, and Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who experimented a lot with concrete in his time and practised until he was over 100 years old.

“What I like about both architects, particularly Saarinen, is that their design is very much centred around the client’s needs, goals and aspirations, as well as their business. In many ways, that is the philosophy of our firm, NBBJ,” says Mankin.

Over the years, his design philosophy has broadened. “The thing that has grown as part of my philosophy is that we always want to design something future-facing. The client may not be ready to do something or take the big leap forward, but it is our responsibility as architects to inform the client where the world is going,” he says.

Mankin was involved in the Samsung America Headquarters project, which was completed in 2005. It is a 1.1 million sq ft or 100,000 sq m building comprising offices, a research facility, clean room, data centre, cafeteria, fitness space, retail outlets, gardens and a courtyard that connects the entire 10-storey structure.

Having worked with Samsung in South Korea before, Mankin and his team took what they learnt from their previous experience and studied how they could design the building so that it could compete with the likes of Apple and Facebook, and also attract and retain talent. Moreover, the future-facing element they included involved creating a connection within the building to promote human interaction.

“In the original brief, there was a request for two buildings to serve two divisions — one was to be an R&D building and the other, an administrative building. We could have done two buildings, but it would not have been transformative, which is what Samsung is all about. So, we suggested taking the two buildings and bringing them together and connecting them into one building,” says Mankin, adding that the design provided future flexibility and better interaction among employees, helping to create more human connections in the workplace.

Additionally, the design broke up the office space, so that there would be a garden level every two floors. This would allow employees to take advantage of nature and the California climate.

“There were plants in the garden levels but not overwhelmingly so for maintenance purposes while some levels had conference rooms, a gym — the main purpose was for people to gain access to nature, to encourage health and movement through the building, to get people off their seats,” says Mankin.

Moveover, the building was elevated to create a way for the public to walk on-site without compromising security.

Mankin was also involved in the Tencent Headquarters building in China, which was completed in 2018. The development covers 270,000 sq m and is more than 50 storeys or 250m tall. The two towers are connected via bridges and there is a rooftop garden.

“Tencent was looking to build a new headquarters for about 10,000 employees in the Binhai district of Shenzhen, which is the new technology and business hub. The opportunity that presented itself was that 40% of their brief was amenities such as a café, exhibition space, gymnasium and research library,” he says.

Traditionally, amenities are at the bottom of the building while the offices are at the top. To change things up, Mankin included “linked floors” or “linked zones”.

“At the base is the lobby, with the exhibition space and cafeteria link. And pulling up into the centre is what we call the health link, with the gymnasium, the basketball court, the running track and so on. Right at the top is what we called the ‘knowledge link’, where Tencent University is,” he explains.

“So, the idea is that you pull these [amenities] up into the building, so that people move through the building in a different way than what they do in a normal building,” he adds, pointing out that the lifts on the transfer floors were placed at the linked levels so employees could take a different route to their office if they so desired.

The future-facing aspects of this design was taking into consideration the average age of Tencent’s employees and users, who were about 27 or 28 years old. As a result, the building’s design addressed the wants and expectations of the younger generation and would help to attract and retain the best talent possible.

A project that Mankin is working on is the Hana Financial Group’s new headquarters in Cheongna, South Korea. NBBJ was appointed in February 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic, so the building is designed to provide employees with a healthier work environment.

“Covid has not created any new trends in the workplace but it has accelerated trends that started in the years prior. And one of these is around health and health in the workplace,” he says.

“At NBBJ, when we think about health, we think not just about individual health but also the company’s health and how we can design a building that would ensure the employees aren’t only healthy but have a choice in how they work. We are also promoting the company’s health, namely its long-term financial success.

“We were thinking about these things prior to Covid and then we had the opportunity to move these to the front as we designed the new headquarters.”

The Hana headquarters will comprise a series of looping public pathways that traverse the building from bottom to top, connecting major hubs with amenity pavilions and programmed spaces in a park-like environment with plenty of fresh air and green spaces. 

As the interview drew to a close, Mankin shared his thoughts on what architecture means to him and offered his advice to the next generation of architects.

“Architecture for me is creating spaces that lift people’s spirits and enable them to achieve something greater, whether it is work, family or play. Architecture is also a craft; a great idea that is poorly built is not a great idea. A great idea is a well-crafted and well-executed build,” he says.

“My advice for future generations is strive to be a generalist, strive to understand all professions, not just the design or production, or one building type. Our profession is rapidly changing and is so broad that for future generations of architects, it is important to have as broad a set of skills and understanding as they can possibly have, so that they can adapt and sustain their profession.”

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