July 31, 2002—Michael Brill, president of BOSTI Associates, an architectural theorist and professor of design at the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, died unexpectedly July 26, in Buffalo General Hospital. Brill was 66.
For the last 30 years, Brill brought a heightened level of inquiry into the workplace environment, shattering commonplace design solutions. He explored new concepts in the relationship between person and environment to improve work performance and job satisfaction.
His researched-based workplace analysis resulted in performance planning, design concepts and innovative “new officing.”
A major work regarding the workplace environment, Using Office Design to Increase Productivity (1985), has become an industry “bible” often consulted regarding productivity questions. The two-volume study was based on interviews with more than 10,000 employees from 100 organizations. One of his more recent publications, Disproving Widespread Myths about Workplace Design, co-authored with his wife Sue Weidermann, who is an environmental psychologist and head of BOSTI research, called into question many assumptions about design of today’s and tomorrow’s workplaces. Key focus of the study explores determinants of productivity and satisfaction, specifically the need for distraction-free work and learning-laden informal interactions.
Two other recent publications, among many, The Office as a Tool and New Offices, No Offices, Now Offices . . . Wild Times in the World of Office Work expand on workplace design concepts.
Brill was author of more than 75 publications, from books and monographs, to articles and papers. He received numerous awards through the years, including the Distinguished Author Award from the International Facility Management Association (IFMA). He was made an honorary member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). He was a policy adviser to the National Endowment for the Arts Design Arts Program, 1982-1984; chairman of the architectural review panel of the state Council on the Arts, 1977-1980; a member of the architectural review panel of the Massachusetts Council on the Arts in 1986; and a frequent peer reviewer of grant applications for the National Society Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Institute of Mental Health since 1977.
He was a keynote speaker or lecturer at more than 300 professional association meetings and was a guest design critic or speaker at major universities including Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of California at Berkeley.
Brill was well known for his witty sense of humor, his off-beat, cartoon-like drawings to exemplify concepts, and iconoclastic approach to his work. His dress, even for meetings with corporate executives, was bright-colored suspenders holding up his painter’s pants. He was named class comedian at Brooklyn’s Midwood High School. Alan Konisberg, now known as Woody Allen, came in second.
“My take on architecture is that it is a place within a place,” he said in 1988. “You really get good civic buildings when someone is paying attention to what’s going on around him…. I’m much more interested in the proliferation of the good, not the great.”
“For him, work was a pleasure,” said Mrs. Brill, adding that his constant “quest for information was the most fun in the world for him.”
By Anne Fallucchi, IFMA Fellow
Contributing Editor
