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IDS Crystal Court & Butler Square: A Comparison ARCH 3711H, Fall 2014 Professor Julia Robinson

Butler Square IDS Building

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Introduction:

In this study, we observed the use of two privately-owned public spaces in downtown Minneapolis, MN: the IDS Crystal Court and Butler Square. Our purpose was to determine the concept of living framed by each space. Our collected evidence, which includes photographs, building plans, beta/gamma space syntax analyses, and traffic counts of seated visitors, suggests these two spaces have very different functions as behavioral settings. IDS Crystal Court is impersonal and encourages transitory use whereas Butler Square is a more communal space and encourages lengthier visits. Location, atmosphere and controlled use of space contribute to these differences and make Butler Square more welcoming to social groups. In this paper, we focus on the observed differences between the social interactions of groups in each space’s seating area, as well as differences in seating area use by male and female visitors in the IDS Crystal Court compared to Butler Square.

In order to collect useful data about the public use of the space, we decided to focus on traffic in the seating areas of Butler Square and IDS Crystal Center during times of peak use. We determined these peak use times in two ways. First, we informally interviewed employees of the spaces, asking when foot traffic in the area was the greatest. The general consensus between security guards at both Butler Square and IDS Crystal Court was a peak use approximation of between 11:00 AM and 1:30 PM during weekdays. To independently verify this estimate, each group member selected a one-hour observation period per site, per week for a minimum of three weeks. Because Butler Square has limited public hours on Saturday and Sunday, we limited observation times to weekday hours of operation. Observation periods were on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays between 11:00 AM and 4:00 PM. During these times, data was collected on gender, location, and grouping status of each seated visitor in the observation area every ten minutes. Observers also recorded other aspects of the environment such as interior elements, floor plan, and furniture types through photography and sketches during these observation periods. After sufficient data was collected, it was compiled and analyzed to form the final graphics presented in this paper. We used the information we gathered about the history, location, and structural and interior elements of each place to come to conclusions about why these two similar spaces may be used in different ways by visitors.

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Block Maps:

Left: Neighborhood map of Butler Square in the Warehouse district. Middle: Relative locations of Butler Square (orange) and IDS (blue) in Minneapolis. Right: Neighborhood map of IDS building in Nicollet Mall.

Butler Square and the IDS Crystal Court are located in the central downtown area of Minneapolis, MN. Butler Square sits at the corner of First Avenue and Sixth Street, across the street from the Target Center and less a block away from the Warehouse District LRT station. Butler Square is largely office space for rent, and contains a single café on the basement level by the seating area. Normally, the building receives little foot traffic by anyone other than the professionals with offices in it. Butler Square’s immediate block doesn’t have many public attractions to draw people to the area, and although the square’s central atrium is open to the public during normal business hours, it doesn’t have much to offer the few passerby. Target Center, across 6th Street, acts as a wall to the surrounding street life, as it is only open during special events like basketball games or concerts. Behind Butler Square is a parking ramp, and across 1st Avenue is a surface parking lot. The neighboring Butler North building contains a restaurant and nightclub. Butler Square is not open on weekends, and closes at the end of the working day, preventing ancillary pedestrian traffic from the surrounding buildings.

The IDS Crystal Court is located along the Nicollet Avenue pedestrian mall and 8th Street. It is located near the Nicollet Mall LRT station as well as city bus stops. The building is surrounded by many public attractions like shops and restaurants and businesses. Today’s Crystal Court is a popular indoor shopping center with both restaurants and retail establishments connected to IDS tower, which houses law offices. It is open well past normal business hours, including weekends. Many visitors come to the court because of its direct connection to the skyway and its placement along Nicollet Mall, a pedestrian-heavy street. Because of this public accessibility, organized activities are also common in the Crystal Court.

Both Butler Square and IDS Crystal Court draw professionals from their own buildings, but the Crystal Court does a better job of pulling in outside pedestrians due to its location on a pedestrian mall, skyway connections, surrounding establishments and internal public attractions. Despite the proximity of the two spaces, the IDS building receives much heavier foot traffic throughout the year.

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Left: Scaled comparison of entire Butler Square building to Butler Square seating area. Middle: Scaled comparison of Butler Square seating area to IDS Crystal Court seating area. Right: Scaled comparison of entire IDS building to observed IDS Crystal Court seating area.

Butler Square was originally built in 1906 as a warehouse for the Butler Brothers Company. The building changed hands in 1979, and architect Arvid Elness designed the central atrium modification in use today. The atrium includes a central seating area that covers a large portion of the basement floor (as shown above), creating an emphasis on community interactions. The seating area on the basement floor is one floor below street level. Since the main entrance to the building is on the first level, a visitor would have to walk in that door, circle around the balcony and take the escalator or elevator down to the basement seating area. This is the only fully public space in the building, with eight stories of office spaces and a few stories above ground. A small deli, a post office, and a day care surround the seating area.

The IDS Crystal Court and IDS Tower opened to the public in 1972. Designed by architect Philip Johnson, the court itself is modeled after an Italian piazza. While the court, like Butler Square, has an open, central atrium, the seating space is much smaller in comparison to the rest of the building, as shown above. The court is surrounded by retail stores and restaurants, as is the second story balcony above it. There are eight stories of open air up to a water fixture in the ceiling above the seating area. The location of the seating on the first floor puts it directly in front of the large main entrance doors and adjacent to three other doorways that pedestrians can access. The difference between each space’s seating area accessibility from the exterior directly shapes their use. The separation of floors along with an escalator distant from exterior doors makes Butler Square’s seating area time-consuming to access. IDS, however, is quickly accessible, with multiple doors at street level opening directly into the seating area. This makes outside pedestrians feel at ease moving into the Crystal Court. It also helps explain why Butler Square caters mostly to internal employees, whereas outsiders frequent IDS. This outcome is particularly interesting because, based on the ratio of areas, Butler Square has a larger seating area compared to the size of the entire building. IDS’s sitting space, shown above, is smaller than that of Butler Square and is smaller in proportion to the entire building. However, IDS’s lack of emphasis on a gathering area doesn’t deter visitors as much as Butler Square’s lack of accessibility to the gathering area.

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Gamma Analysis:

Left: Gamma Analysis of Butler Square Seating Area Right: Gamma Analysis of IDS Crystal Court Seating Area

The IDS Crystal Court is accessible through both exterior doors opening onto the street and retail spaces connected to both the court and the outdoors. The main seating in Butler Square, in contrast, lies one floor down from street level, which forces all pedestrians to travel through the main level and down the escalators or elevators to reach Butler Square’s central seating area.

Both the IDS and Butler Square syntaxes contain a fan shape emanating from a single hub. In the case of IDS, it is the main atrium of the Crystal Court itself. The fan in Butler Square also springs from a titular hub. The fan shape of these syntax indicates a high amount of control resting with the management of the building, present in both spaces as security guards. Because both areas are privately-owned but publicly accessible, this control is to some extent expected. This control is healthy in a retail space as long as the control doesn’t inhibit acceptable use of the area. The control also extends from building management to the individual businesses inside Butler Square and the IDS Crystal Court—without external doors to access many of the spaces, business is effectively “controlled” by the building hours, as dictated by management. Because of the Crystal Court’s higher access to the outdoors, its gamma analysis contains more loops than that of Butler Square. IDS, as a larger building, also has more articulation points, because it contains more individual spaces.

As public spaces, neither Butler Square nor IDS Crystal Court have a full privacy gradient. The most “private” spaces are retail or dining spaces, or any additional articulation within those spaces. Because there are no intermediate steps, pedestrians step from the public court or square into the semi-private business with no intermediate steps. The public bathrooms in Butler Square, considered private spaces based on the highly personal type of use, are also just a door away from the central public space. The overall effects of Butler Square and IDS Crystal Court’s space organization are very distinct. Because of its looping behavior, the Crystal Court is a highly connected and very publ space. Butler Square, meanwhile, comes across as a far more intimate space, as access is restricted to designated movement patterns and foot traffic from surrounding businesses is limited.

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Beta Analysis:

Since both Butler Square and IDS Crystal Court are very open public spaces with few

walls separating the space, they have a large number of routes possible within the courts. Marked above are the pathways through the space with colors indicating number of connections, warm colors being the most. After observations, we found that traffic patterns correlated closely with this analysis where the paths most frequently traveled were the ones with the most connections. Overall, IDS has much more foot traffic through it than Butler Square just because of the larger population within the building at any one time. IDS also has more exits to the exterior--four total. Butler Square has only one and it is not directly linked to the square, people must walk around the balcony and down a level. Since the pathways coming from exits are the most highly traveled in both spaces, this alone creates more common areas of walking at IDS than at Butler.

Both spaces include high traffic and connection areas on their escalators as well, but Butler has one more major pathway that IDS does not. Butler’s Kokapeli Deli seems to be a main destination for visitors to the square whereas the restaurant off of IDS Crystal Court summons many people but is not a focal point. This is probably due to the sheer number of other attractions connecting in IDS, whereas the deli is really the only public connection on that level of Butler Square. Both places have about the same number of connecting spaces off of the main courts, but none of them are considered high traffic areas.

Both spaces similarly promote connections between people and interior elements because of their open layout. The emphasis on one single public attraction in Butler Square creates a streamlined route of major pathways from the entry to the deli and out again without promoting other pathways. IDS, on the other hand has fairly equal emphasis on each connection off the seating area because they are all public attractions. This creates a much more dispersed and even web of major pathways through the building and promotes higher use of the space.

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Seating Dot Map:

Left: Observed use of Butler Square seating areas on an average day. Right: Observed use of IDS Crystal Court seating area on an average day.

These dot maps (not to scale) illustrate where observed groups were most frequently located within each setting. Red indicates the presence of many seated groups, and blue displays few to no seated groups. Butler Square, top, had a consistently high number and spread of groups, while relatively few groups were observed in the Crystal Court, as seen in the lower image. In Butler Square, groups spread throughout the space, especially around the tables, which seat four people comfortably. This communal arrangement allows groups to face one another without facing other individuals or groups. In Butler Square, five of the seven seats marked as “few/no groups” lack tables or places around which groups could gather. Tables nearer to the center of seating areas have more groups than standalone or edge-bordering tables.

In IDS, however, the highest number of groups border the fountain. It is important to note that seating in IDS Crystal Court is limited to benches, which face away from each other, radiating out from around planters. Even though they face benches at different planters, they are spaced too far away for comfortable communication. At the edges of the seating area and around the fountain, the benches are more private and secluded, which many of the groups seem to desire. By sitting facing the fountain, or away from other benches, groups can somewhat ‘hide’ from other seated visitors. These observations suggest that Butler Square’s higher group use is related to the square’s relative privacy, aided both by seating type and seating arrangement.

This comparison best demonstrates the preferred seats for groups in either setting, but it also begins to show the difference in numbers of groups present in each space-- there are no “very high” group concentrations in the IDS Crystal Court, while there are seven “very high” concentrations in Butler Square, despite its far fewer visitors.

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Gender Use:

Based on initial observations, we predicted that there would be a noticeable difference in the ratio of genders within each space. Our main support for this was the fact that IDS Tower, a major concentration of law firms, is connected to the Crystal Court. During limited observations, it appeared that there were a lot of men in suits coming from the IDS Tower into the Crystal Court. Another reason we expected differences in each space was that during Butler Square observations, it became apparent that at least one large business was a design firm. Since interior design is a profession largely populated by women, and because building employees are the main users of the Butler Square seating area, we thought there might be more women than men in the seating area.

However, further observation revealed only a 1% difference in the ratio of males to females in Butler Square and IDS Crystal Center. Despite differences in business occupants, both IDS and Butler had a slightly higher percentage of male users. Some factors contributing to this could be that the businessmen might prefer a place where they could converse with each other over a table instead of the benches available at IDS. Also, the retail stores inside IDS attract largely women consumers who may sit at the benches between shopping. As for Butler Square, the high number of office workers likely offset any effects of the design firm.

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Social Grouping Use:

The nearly 15% difference in number of people observed in groups shows how Butler Square consistently had more people in groups than sitting individually, and illustrates its status as a much friendlier space to groups than IDS. These observations strongly correlate with the position and types of seating available in both spaces. Butler Square provides large tables easily capable of seating four people or more, but IDS provides only three-person benches.

Butler Square’s seating around the tables is inclusive, facing inward, and encourages group conversations, while benches in one sitting area in IDS all face away from each other, radiating from a central planter. This bench seating is perhaps acceptable for a pair, but any larger groups would have a difficult time sitting and interacting comfortably. Benches around other planters are spaced uncomfortably far apart for conversations across walking paths.

Another factor is that the seating in Butler Square is movable whereas IDS benches are fixed. This means users in IDS have less control over sitting arrangement options, as well as the larger environment. The flexibility of Butler Square allows groups to add chairs or combine tables to fit a bigger group, while IDS mostly constricts users to its small size seating.

Butler’s status as a group-welcoming space also stems from other environmental factors. For example, because the space is mostly used by employees who work in the building, most users know one another, and are thus may be more likely to sit in groups. IDS Crystal Court, with high numbers of strangers using the space, has less of an opportunity for familiar people to accidentally meet. Also significant in the design of the space is the interior environment and the controlled use of the space, and how they interact to make Butler Square a space for communities and IDS Crystal Court a less personal space that discourages groups.

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Interior Environment:

Left: Interior view of Butler Square Right: Interior view of IDS Crystal Court

Butler Square and IDS have many common structural and material elements that contribute to fairly natural environments. For example, both buildings use windows to let in natural light and disperse light throughout the space. Both spaces include full-ceiling skylights and window-walls looking into the main courts from surrounding shops and offices, which help create a light and airy atmosphere. The windows also reflect more natural and artificial light into the central atrium space. This effect is amplified by the fact that both spaces are completely open up to a ceiling height of about 100 feet above ground, so the light coming in from the windows disperses throughout the entire space. Both environments also focus on the integration of natural foliage such as trees around seating areas. The offices and balcony overlooking Butler Square also have window boxes with leafy plants. The incorporation of greenery and natural light creates inviting environments for people to rest.

Despite these similar features, the locations have very different overall atmospheres due to other interior elements. Butler Square is a warmer, more intimate space whereas IDS feels much cooler and quite public. This is due largely in part to materials and colors of each space. Butler is structured with large wood timbers and filled with wood furniture. The lighting there casts a yellow tint that, in combination with the dark, natural wood, produces a warm glow. The timbers also contribute to making the space feel more intimate because they block sight lines and add visual barriers to the space without closing it in. In the Crystal Court, the main structural material is glass and metal and the fluorescent lighting bounces off of it in cool waves. The arrangement of the furniture also contributes to the different environments. The small tables in Butler Square allow for face to face communication, whereas the spaced out benches in IDS make it hard to communicate with others. Although both spaces use decorative flora, Butler Square’s homey lighting, furniture and materials make the space warm, personal, and welcoming, which encourages visitors to stay and mingle with others in a community.

Meanwhile, the stark, cold materials and lighting of the IDS Crystal Court creates a cool, impersonal, public space that discourages lingering.

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Controlled Use:

Left: Posted sign in Butler Square listing the cafe’s hours and specials of the day. Right: Posted sign in the IDS Crystal Court prohibiting certain activities and setting a time limit for use of the space.

Also contributing to the atmosphere of the spaces are the expectations and limitations of how long one can stay there. In Butler Square, there are no time restrictions. People are welcome to come at any time and stay as long as they’d like. In the IDS Crystal Court, however, building management has posted signs directing people to limit their seated stay to 30 minutes or less. While both spaces have security guards, the security detail at the Crystal Court actively moves around the area to enforce behavioral rules such as this one.

The security presence is also related to relative building depth, as depicted in the gamma analyses-- the seating area in Butler Square is deeper in the building than the IDS Crystal Court, which connects directly to the outside. The shallowness of the Crystal Court creates more foot traffic and activity, which building management has decided to monitor with a more obvious and larger control over the space and its users.

The signs and security presence are enough to change the atmosphere of IDS, marking it as a location to sit for only brief periods of time. The much smaller security presence at Butler Square, meanwhile, consists of a stationary guard near the main entrance. Without restrictions on duration of stay, and without the presence of hovering guards, Butler Square is a much more open and welcoming environment.

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Conclusion:

The differences in how Butler Square and IDS Crystal Court are used stem from various environmental factors. IDS, located along a major pedestrian path in downtown Minneapolis, has significantly more foot traffic than the cloistered Butler Square. While Butler Square’s visitors are generally the building’s office employees, which may encourage social grouping among colleagues, the Crystal Court attracts many strangers to its retail and dining establishments. The floorplans of both spaces also encourage different behaviors. While both spaces are characterized by central atriums, IDS Crystal Court is connected to retail spaces and the outdoors through a number of looping patterns, which encourages movement into and through the space. Butler Square, meanwhile, has a more rigid fan shape, requiring visitors to move into the seating area and beyond through designated steps. This fan shape also gives Butler Square a sense of privacy the highly public Crystal Court lacks.

Other environmental features also impact the distinct ambiances provided by Butler Square and IDS Crystal Court. While natural lighting and live plants are present in both spaces, it is each space’s use of lighting and materials that help set Butler Square and IDS apart. IDS uses glass, metal accents, white lighting, and benches to create a stark, cool, impersonal environment. Butler Square, meanwhile, utilizes warm wood, tables, and yellow light to construct a cozy seating area. The heavy use of security and regulation also clearly brand the Crystal Court as a public space, in sharp contrast to Butler Square’s lack of stiff conduct codes and/or supervision.

Through observation and analysis we were able to determine the distinct differences in how individuals and groups use these two buildings. While IDS brings in many more people, they tend to leave quickly and socialize very little. Butler Square on the other hand had comparatively few people using the seating area during peak times of the day, but they were more likely to form groups and make the stay last longer. The feeling at Butler Square was one of a community and warmth, while IDS felt more impersonal, like a transit stop in everyones busy day. Although these two open courts have very similar uses, they result in noticeably different visitor interactions that can be contributed to the location, atmosphere and controlled use of each place.

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References: Photos by (interior) and (exterior)

Observational data by , , and . Data tables available upon request.

History and context:

"Butler Square - Gateway to the Warehouse District." Butler Square - Gateway to the

Warehouse District. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2014. <http://www.butlersquare.com/>.

"Crystal Court." IDS Center RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2014.

<http://ids-center.com/?page_id=99>.