What Architecture Teaches Us About Innovation Environments: Firmitas, Utilitas, and Venustas

By Mike Rainone

From LEGO Futura (LEGO’s product development department) to the 3M Innovation Center to big tech campuses stocked with slides, gyms, and nap pods—people have long sought the secret to building an innovation environment.

If you want to build a forward-thinking innovation environment, first look backwards, to Vitruvius. Vitruvius was a Roman architect and engineer. For the layperson, he may be best known for providing the inspiration for Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. For architects, he is renowned for De architectura, the earliest treatise we have discovered on architectural theory, written during the 1st century BC. His work greatly influenced Renaissance architecture, and still today you can see his impact in modern buildings.

Vitruvius states that all buildings should have three qualities: firmitas, utilitas, and venustas. Firmness, commodity, delight. Or in some translations, strength, utility, and beauty. A building must be strong enough to stand up. It must work for people. And it must delight them.

This principle is the foundation for good design of not just buildings, but any environment meant to be inhabited by humans. Firmitas, utilitas, and venustas are the keys to creating a successful innovation environment. 

The Interplay of Firmitas, Utilitas, and Venustas

Though this principle of architectural design may seem obvious, it is frequently overlooked, even by some of the most famous and respected architects.

Compare two world’s fairs: one in Paris in 1889 and one in Chicago just a few years later in 1893. Both featured grand, beautiful architecture. The centerpiece of the Paris world’s fair was the Eiffel Tower, 330 meters of wrought iron that still stands today and has become the most iconic representation of France. The Chicago world’s fair saw the construction of the White City,  with 14 “great buildings” and more than 200 buildings total. However, these buildings were never meant to last. Their white facades were made not of stone but of plaster, and they were derided as “decorated sheds.” 

The Eiffel Tower had firmitas—a lasting firmness, or permanence, not only physically but symbolically. The White City did not.

In the seventies, “the Whites” were a group of five ultramodern New York architects whose houses were pure aesthetic, pure form, and to emphasize their purity, always white. One of these widely renowned architects built a house for a client in which the stairs were reflected on the ceiling and the ceiling was really low. The stairs were structurally sound and breathtakingly beautiful, but as the client said, “Yeah, these are really cool—once you learn how to keep from banging your head.” Or consider Frank Lloyd Wright. He was short, so all of his doors tended to be short. He built firm, delightful houses, but if you were tall, you had to stoop through all the doorways. His chairs were also famously uncomfortable, because they were designed to be aesthetic, not practical. 

This is what happens when you have firmness and delight but not commodity. Instead of the environment best serving the users, the users must adapt to the environment (or bonk their heads and tweak their backs).

When I was twenty-seven years old, I was enrolled in the Master of Architecture program at the University of Texas at Austin. I took many architectural design classes, and in one of these, there was a group project to design a combined condo/retail space sited on a lake. I pushed heavily for the prioritization of personal space, territory, and crowd control (security) issues. I missed the delight part. I was so rigid in my thinking that I forgot one of the most important things, and the project (and grade) was greatly diminished by my rigidity. 

Buildings should give you joy, though the art, through the surprise, though the unexpected. We are naturally drawn to and inspired by the things that give us joy. Who would want to spend all their time inside of a concrete box with no windows? (See Russian constructivism for examples of what I consider Gulag architecture.) A building can have firmness and commodity, but without delight, it is not a place people will want to inhabit.

There was an unexpected side effect to this design class failure, though. It was a turning point for me. In recognizing the importance of delight, I realized that I wanted to look at delightful, innovative stuff every single day. For me, what was delightful was innovation because it is unexpected, it is a surprise. Though I ultimately decided to leave architecture, my study of architecture did not go to waste. From my architectural school time I found the love of my life, the bearer of my children and the co-founder of PCDworks, Donna Rainone. She is the designer of all of the buildings on the PCDworks campus, landscape architect, den mother to a herd of children and engineers, and the president of PCDworks. We applied the principles we shared and the dreams that we built together and thoughtfully designed the PCDworks campus to be the ultimate innovation environment.

Applying Firmitas, Utilitas, and Venustas to Innovation Environments

So, how can we apply this principle of firmitas, utilitas, and venustas to innovation environments?

Firmness in an innovation environment is about predictable comfort, with no jarring surprises. When the environment is predictable, there is a sense of safety, stability, and long-lasting permanence. With predictability, you’re not worried about getting yelled at or the WiFi going out or your boss sticking their head in your cubicle. When you’re not wasting brain power on unproductive stress and worrying, you can instead devote your energies to thinking about the problem you want to solve. 

Commodity is a measure of usefulness and convenience. So ask yourself, “What tools, resources, and spaces will make it easier and more convenient to innovate?” Consider both the tangible and the intangible. For example, on the PCDworks campus, we have a state-of-the-art machine shop, several 3D printers, a pick-n-place machine to make circuit boards,  prototyping equipment, testing hardware, and engineering software, so we can move ideas from the page to the real world. That increases the environment’s utility. However, just as, if not more, important is the simple fact that the campus is remote, free from distractions, allowing for uninterrupted deep thinking. That quietude is invaluable to a commodious environment.

Finally, delight. Do not underestimate the value of delight, for delight and creativity often go hand in hand. As the Shining taught us: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." If you try to think outside of the metaphorical box while stuck inside of a physical box, you will go out of your damn mind, being preoccupied with the minutiae of day-to-day nuisance. So find ways to incorporate delight into your environment, like access to nature or non-work socialization. This will help reduce stress, create the space needed for creativity, and keep you from going insane. 

We Are Designed by Our Designing

As Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”.

The environments we design matter, because we are consciously and subconsciously influenced by our environments. The way you would behave in a grungy dive bar is very different from how you would behave in a sterile, brightly lit lab. Our environments have an impact not just on how we act, but how we think. So design your innovation environment wisely, with firmitas, utilitas, and venustas.

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