When Alcoa sought to break down the walls that interfered with employee interaction and quick decision-making, it did so literally. In building its new headquarters, the company banished private offices, dark corridors, central elevator banks and other physical obstacles that stood in the way of communications, informal teamwork and spontaneity

In a previous top job, Alcoa chairman Paul O'Neill had such a lavish office that one movie studio paid $500,000 to use it as a backdrop in the Michael J. Fox film, "The Secret of My Success." In another government position, he worked in the shadow of the White House, situated in monumental quarters with paintings on loan from the Smithsonian. Then O'Neill took over the helm of Alcoa and got to design his dream workspace: an open 9x9 foot cubicle, identical to everyone else in the Pittsburgh headquarters.

"My former Washington office was the kind of space that intimidated people, especially outside visitors, when they walked in," O'Neill says. "I had to work hard to let them know they shouldn't be. For certain things, there's something nice about that kind of place. But for an organization trying to create human connections to make things go forward, it almost kills real communication and creates an artificial environment."

That's the last thing O'Neill wanted to do at Alcoa. "The size of my cubicle says to the rest of the organization that they are as important as I am as measured by their workspace," he says. "That's what it ought to be to get the organization to work together. You could never achieve that in an old-fashioned space."

Built in 1953, Alcoa's former 31-story headquarters represented O'Neill's idea of an old-fashioned space. Although larger in size than the new six-story building, it had just 11,000 square feet of usable space per floor, low ceilings, long corridors and small windows. "There were light limitations, height limitations and structural wall limitations that went along with the 1950s idea that space should be associated with position more space for higher level people, the least desirable interior space for assistants," O'Neill explains, adding that the structure itself contributed to inefficiency and rigidity in the way the company functioned.

O'Neill became convinced the inherent limitations of the old office tower could never be overcome, so he took a drastic step. He gave away the aluminum structure long a Pittsburgh landmark to a group of local counties to be used as a center for development agencies in the region.

The move into six floors of uninterrupted space has helped to break down the walls separating top management from the rest of Alcoa's staff. "The new design is really important for connecting Alcoa leadership to everyone else in the place. It's a way for me to see and be seen in a way I never could do before," asserts O'Neill. "In the old building I would drive into the garage, get on the elevator right by the entry door and go upstairs. I'd run into three people on the elevator and that's how many people I saw each day except for those I had scheduled appointments with. Now if I have something to do on the first floor, lunch or whatever, I take the escalator down and I see 50 people or 50 people can see me. It demystifies the notion that CEOs are royalty or something who don't have anything to do with real people. There's a sense of connection."

Lead architect Martin Powell of The Design Alliance says that O'Neill had that connection in mind from the start. "Paul had early ideas for collaborative work using escalators rather than elevators, using coffee areas and cafeterias as magnets for collaboration. He also asked us to design a building without hallways because they separate people and waste space.".

For O'Neill, every element of the build had to be responsive to the work style of the future and the organization's potential. "Going forward into the next century, we'll see more employee interdependence. We want an environment that fosters seamless communications across functional and professional specialties. We're moving to a different stage beyond the industrial revolution and maybe even beyond the information revolution to one where the blending of people, information, knowledge and skills require more free-form grouping and association than what most architecture provides for."

Powell says that was the key reason for placing informal kitchens at the center of Alcoa's architectural plan rather than at the periphery. The kitchens are designed to be integral to the workplace, not an escape from it. Alcoa also chose to recreate the atmosphere of a family kitchen rather than a public café where people are more likely to keep to themselves. "The effect of people flowing in and out of the kitchen and in and out of conference rooms has created a much more collaborative, dynamic atmosphere where things happen a lot faster," says Powell..

O'Neill agrees. "The old space worked against us. It was typical to go into your cave and if you wanted to see somebody else, you had to make an appointment. Now we have more useful engagements by accident than we used to have on purpose."

To further encourage teamwork, private closed-door offices were not only eliminated, workspace configurations were designed so they could be changed in a day. Even the conference rooms have glass walls so people can see what is happening inside. Still, efforts have been made to respect privacy. A white sound system and sound-absorbent ceiling, wall and flooring materials reduce noise levels and eavesdropping. Meeting rooms of different sizes offer varying levels of privacy and accommodate groups as large as 150. "We have enough meeting space so every employee can be in a meeting, out of their regular assigned workspace, at the same time," O'Neill says.

Although it was O'Neill's idea to go to an open plan, he is blunt in his criticism of popular notions about non-hierarchical layouts. "It's not as simple as creating a rabbit warren," he says. "Those arrangements are dehumanizing." Prior to moving forward on architectural plans, Alcoa tested the concept by converting the top floor of the old building into an open furniture landscape and situating its top nine executives and their assistants there. It was a three-year changing work in progress that ultimately proved the positives outweighed the negatives.

However, not all of Alcoa's top managers immediately bought into the open plan. "With some of the high-level executives, it was 'I worked like a dog to get the corner office with the private bathroom and why am I going to have to give all that up?'" says O'Neill. "But that's not about the good of the organization, that's about status gratification. People are discovering you can sit right out in the open and be private. Privacy is not about walls."

In many ways, people have had to change the way they work. Still, the environment is responsive to the natural workflow and sensitive to human needs. Every workstation is situated no more than 45 feet from 111/2-foot high windows. Powell notes that O'Neill, an accomplished watercolorist, has a keen sensitivity to light and believes that natural light just makes people feel better. "We get a lot of gray days in Pittsburgh," O'Neill says. "Yet in this building you have a sense of a really light feeling. You have a sense of being outside a lot of the time. We wanted to make sure we brought in as much natural light as possible."

The building's organization is meant to resemble a series of villages on the banks of the Allegheny River. Pittsburgh's downtown is defined literally and figuratively by the coalition of its three surrounding rivers. The building connects to both the city and the river on one façade and Pittsburgh's old factories on the other. O'Neill's choice of the industrial waterfront site helped to outline the building's aesthetics. "This S-shaped building is organized to face the river," explains Powell. "It's only 50 feet from the water, situated between twin bridges. One bridge is perpendicular to the river where it begins to curve, and the other bridge slants a little away. The river begins to sweep and that's actually the generation of the building's curve." The building's base is cut from the same sandstone supports of its bookend bridges to look as if it grows out of the riverbank. Alcoa also chose to leave its identity off the exterior to ensure that nothing interrupts the lyrical wave-form of aluminum and glass.

The waterfront site was also a way for Alcoa to underscore its civic commitment. Alcoa became a pioneer supporter of revitalizing Pittsburgh's rundown industrial area, and O'Neill went on to head Pittsburgh's Riverfront Commission. (More than $2 billion of development is now under way in that part of the city.)

The Alcoa corporate center has proved to be a trategy for urban renewal as well as corporate growth. It plays into the idea of "connected interdependence" on a civic and corporate level. "[With this new building,] the most important thing is for people to be able to associate with each other in an open way, almost because the space demands it," O'Neill says. "We need to mix functions, not for the sake of mixing them, but to reflect how people's work brings them together."