Our world is now ideas driven and our environment needs to be energetic, inspiring and even provocative. Employers also want people to stay longer at work and making the space awesome certainly helps. — The Daily Telegraph
Many architects are designing home/work boundary-eroding office designs, which purposefully mimic the comforts of home to encourage creative employees to stay later. These designs have been embraced by a who's who of movers and shakers including Google, Facebook, and Disney. But is this shift toward longer hours a great boost to productivity?
In The New Yorker, Tim Wu cites stories of "people [being] scolded for not responding to e-mails after midnight." He argues that You Really Don't Need to Work So Much, making the case that "in white-collar jobs, the amount of work can expand infinitely through the generation of false necessities—that is, reasons for driving people as hard as possible that have nothing to do with real social or economic needs." What agency should architects take in shaping future work environments?
For more on workplace design:
• "Work on Work" exhibition turns public space into office space
• Considering the future of work at the 2015 London Festival of Architecture
1 Comment
Technology and economics endanger life/work balance. Offices are becoming more likes homes at the same time that homes are becoming more like offices. Architecture is only responding to changing needs and functions.
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