The TBWA\Chiat\Day office in Los Angeles was built in 1996-1998.
Photo: Ivan Baan
In the old days, offices grew as the world shrunk. A never-sunset empire and a vast trade network have generated massive amounts of paperwork, resulting in a demand for record keepers, copymakers, storage systems, evolving communications technology, and real estate to accommodate them all. rice field. The office has become a material manifestation of trust. Knowing that a particular document was signed by a man in a dark suit sitting in a large stone building at a reputable address in London, even in New York or Kathmandu, gave weight and credibility to that paper. Given the distance, proximity was also required. Rows of clerks, insurance adjusters, and financial analysts churned out numbers that affect the lives and fortunes of far-flung time zones. During the week he said on the afternoon of the 5th, these white-collar troops dispersed and repopulated the areas and suburbs that sprawled out of the canyons of the office towers. This weekday web, bound together by telephones, checkered tape, elevators, subways and commuter trains, made the modern city meaningful.
A whole series of interconnected physical structures is now a relic, and not just because of the pandemic. A strange and enchanting book, The Office of Good Intentions: Human Jobsby architects Florian Eidenberg and LeAnne Suen chronicles the many attempts to adapt old analog methods for the digital age, with results ranging from whimsical to utopian to ominous. . The collection of essays and case studies does not explicitly argue for or against the office, nor propose architectural solutions (more lounges, more outdoor space, etc.). Instead, the authors develop a brutal analysis across categories of potential clients. They say that whenever technology changes, companies tend to treat their employees like lab rats, hand out treats, monitor their behavior, and create ever more elaborate illusions of freedom. suggests. In this scheme, employees also act as products, fonts of data that can be packaged for use by other companies.
The authors don’t explicitly say this, but employers who talk about breaking the paradigm are telling architects to create a new shape that allows employees to take a deep breath and sunbathe at a constant 68 degrees. It makes us believe that it shapes the comfort of the Casually socialize and nourish your health. They design spaces designed to comfort their bodies, stimulate their brains, and foster collaboration, only to find that they’ve handed their domineering employers an insidious new tool of social control. is. In this biased view, the goal of architecture is to disguise rather than reveal the structure of our time. Long hours of sitting make us healthy, snacks ease our anxiety, and flexibility is just another name for not having time for ourselves.
The basic story of this dark vision is the description of the Chiat\Day advertising company headquarters in Venice, California. It’s a hell of flexibility-enforced flexibility lurking behind a binocular-shaped portal designed by Claes Oldenburg and his Coosje van Bruggen in the early 1990s. Frank Gehry’s plywood and cardboard aesthetic provided the decoration of the environment dictated by royal decree. Grab your laptop and find a seat anywhere, as long as it wasn’t where you worked yesterday. Nomadism was mandatory, and colonizing one’s own corner was forbidden. It didn’t last long, but there were countless versions of the same experiment.
Photo: Courtesy of TASCHEN
The author presents the environment as a precursor to the gig economy. Not only has the gig economy eliminated traditional workplace concepts such as stability, progress, and loyalty, it has fostered a culture of fragmentation and distraction. [apps], giving contradictory orders. Algorithmic steroid tailorism has turned work rhythms into broken schedule havoc, collapsing into too-slow economics. “
this does not apply to me, I said to myself i’m just a writer. Communicate with editors, learn about packages mailed to the office, write and edit text, book business travel, file expenses, transfer and collect large electronic documents, process photos, view videos, listen I counted the number of apps I use for I use about 25 different software more or less all the time, whether it’s for music, scheduling meetings, or exploring archives. They all document my sedentary activity in very specific and therefore marketable pieces.
The book traces the evolution of algorithms that subject employees to the same real-time data collection and performance management systems that govern utility and security. The badges employees use to unlock bathroom doors, summon elevators and pay for lunch have turned humans into components of a system of sensors and tracking devices. The more you know, the more you can control. great movie of 2006 someone else’s life Depicting a life under constant surveillance: A Cold War East German Stasi officer listens to the dissident writer’s home life and falls in love with the family he’s supposed to be victimizing. I notice that. At the time, it seemed like a horror story. It reads like a fairy tale now and makes me miss the days when Big Brother was human.
Idenburg and Suen navigate a dizzying array of situations in prose embodied in dozens of photographs by Iwan Baan. playboy Aesthetics from his circular playhouse bed. Invisible cleaners seeking more humane conditions in LA. A server farm humming in the desert. suburban office parks; the job-networking extravaganza that is Burning Man; Andy Warhol’s factory. A laboratory that attempts to emulate the inspiration-friendly conditions of Archimedes’ bath. Dog friendly cubicle grid. high tech towers; purported ergonomic furniture designed for the non-existent average body.
Employers have been reinventing the office regularly for at least 30 years. This has led to a steady deconstruction of the organized look while camouflaging the pursuit of efficiency in ever more comfortable outfits. This book tells the story of a centralized oversight of a fragmented life. This is not the type of Dr. No sitting in a high-backed executive chair, but rather an impersonal, intangible force powered by massive amounts of electricity. And because it can be everywhere like the Holy Spirit, the worker takes it home or carries it on the move. The work-from-home revolution turns the bedroom into another branch of the data pipeline.
“Awakened by a stern but submissive, automated female voice, we started bowling in bed, hopped into hangouts during shared rides and spun classes, checked biometrics at Soylent bars, and drank kombucha. Seek and join shareable cooking classes that double For lunch, do a two-hour powwow at the work club, dive deeper, and… #selfietime! touchdown product hodgepodge.”
what do you mean weI haven’t done any of the trendy self-improvement tasks on that list.? Has work really changed completely for most people? I suspect that most “digital native” office workers go through their days like their analog-born parents. That means sitting in one place all day doing repetitive tasks that still resist automation. And that doesn’t explain the countless millions of people who spend their working hours packing delivery boxes, making beds in hotel rooms, and cleaning up erroneous bodily fluids.
Still, the book suggests that architects have a more minimal role than ever in how and where people work. Some continue to design fancy high-rise office buildings, or transform old office buildings into places where people can sleep, eat, work, and socialize, but one activity is Never completely separate from other activities. Most of the time, professional designers are waiting for people to assemble their workplace bivouac from pieces of any area they can put together. In a way, this means we’ve become semicircular, halfway through an era when most commutes consisted of a walk downstairs or a few blocks at most. I don’t livewe that is shop.
Laboratory at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, built from 1959 to 1965.
Photo: Ivan Baan
Idenburg and Suen fall short of following their own logic for city size. The realization of this long-term trend of fragmentation and decentralization will radically reshape cities more than ever before. Kombucha Beyond every email session in his bar and his regular Uber meetings, the city needs to understand their purpose once again. Perhaps companies fighting rearguard behavior will rediscover day-to-day densities, measure the value of physical proximity, preserve the intangibles of office culture, and foster a renewed look at each other. In the meantime, metropolitan areas will have to plan for the opposite outcome. A nebula of semi-self-sufficient neighborhoods and fifteen-minute cities combined with transportation, moving fewer people in more and more different directions. Getting there may ultimately lead to better cities and more prosperous lives, but getting there can be as traumatic as changing the typical urban workplace from the traditional one. prize. From the factory floor to the trading floor.
