beyond the cubicle
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Most talk of work these days revolves around the latest unemployment figures, the difficulties of
getting and/or holding onto a job and/or how we are all working more hours for less money and
less vacation time, or the bleak prospects for newly minted college grads (starkly rendered by
cartoonist Jenna Brager in the new anthology Share or Die: Youth in Recession.)
Jenna Brager at shareable.net/users/jennabee/Cubicle innovation is the least of this job-seekers
worries.
Beyond the Cubicle
The Opinion Pages July 18, 2010 Allison Arieff
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At the end of his life, Robert Propst, creator of the cubicle system, called his invention monolithic
insanity, yet we seem unable to tread down any other path. Longstanding calls for the Redesign
of the Cubicle continue, in recent articles like Designs to Make You Work Harder, a roundup of
new approaches to office design in The Wall Street Journal, and, in Fast
Company, Redesigning: Cubicles, the goal of which was to upgrade the corporate killjoy. The
topics seemed disconcertingly out of touch. Apart from maybe generating a little business for thecontract furniture industry, what was the point? A bigger re-think of the world of work seems to be
in order.
Just about any story on this subject in the last decade has featured pleasant if not wholly original
ideas like bringing more natural light into spaces, playing with organic, softer forms and
incorporating homey elements like Oriental rugs, plants and personal photographs. But every
idea has remained firmly entrenched in existing workspace typologies the cubicle, the corner
office and ignored entirely the growing legions who work in different ways or in different
settings (if theyre able to find work at all).In 2009, the entrepreneur/designer Nathan Shedroff published a book called Design is the
Problem: The Future of Design Must Be Sustainable. His provocative title was meant to inspire
conversation about sustainability, but Ill borrow it here as a means of generating some more
creative thinking about work how and where (and why) we do it.
Adjustable desks, foldout benches and louvered shades have their place but, to paraphrase
Shedroff, furniture is not the problem. Just as with climate change, there is an overwhelming
tendency to tackle serious challenges with consumer goods. But in the same way that bamboo
floors, hybrid SUVs and eco-couture havent done much to curb carbon emissions, designing
(and buying) more stuff for offices, no matter how sleek or sustainable it is, likely wont help reset
the culture of work.
Design itself is the problem because it is being used to solve the wrong ones despite its best
intentions. The designers toolkit, to throw in a term much overused in the industry, has to
expand beyond noodling with the cubicle. Im willing to bet that almost any office worker would
happily swap Webcam lighting that wont make you look, when youre on Skype, like youve
been out partying all night (as Steelcases head of design explained in Fast Company), for
solutions to more pressing work issues like, I dont know, burnout or fear of losing health
coverage.
The Journal had asked a handful of design firms to envision a space that could inspire ideas and
increase productivity. Im not going to argue that good architecture wont make for more
pleasant working environments that can lead to greater employee satisfaction the workplace is
still relevant no matter how many people work remotely (currently over 50 million, at least part of
the time). But its also true that creativity can come from anywhere, and probably least of all from
inside a cubicle, no matter how sunny and technologically mind-blowing it is.
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So, apart from furniture and skylights, how might designers (and the companies who hire them)
think about work differently? There are some truly inventive things happening in the world of
work. Here are just a few examples:
Some companies are more progressive than others, offering liberating options like employee
sabbaticals, flex time and job sharing. I was pleasantly surprised to discover companies that
even offer a Babies at Work program that allows parents to bring newborns in the office part ofthe design here is creating a sound-proof room, the other part has already been designed.
Parenting in the Workplace Institute (PIWI) has developed an agreement to facilitate a co-op
babysitting arrangement among working parents in the respective workplace to cover for one
another throughout the day. But as more and more people strike out on their own by wont or by
necessity, new places of work are emerging to respond to their needs.
Yi Cong LuYi Cong Lus strips the live/work environment down to the essentials.
Yi Cong LuThough Yi Cong Lus work is austere, its really a quiet celebration of sustainable design, as it uses
minimal materials and forces a paring down of ones possessions.
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Explaining in an e-mail that he was frustrated to see that most architects still build for a lifestyle
that most people dont live anymore, Yi Cong Lus goal with his trio of objects Living Tools was
to think beyond architectural spaces with clearly defined layouts and space utilization scenarios
[left over] from previous centuries. Yes, its minimalist, sculptural and not for everyone, featuring
as it does pieces like Fade, an adjustable curtain partition made of plywood and metal
hardware that allows one to subdivide spaces into areas for living or working. But Lu, whohimself lives in a tiny space in Leipzig, Germany, has created something that works well for him
(and could work for others in similarly cramped quarters). You cansee how it works here and get
a sense of how well the project aligns with a shift away from consumerist culture. (You cant have
a lot of possessions in this space.)
Hub Bay AreaYou wont see cubicles or corner offices at San Franciscos collaborative working space The Hub.
If youve got to get out of the house, there are options like the co-working space Hub Bay Area,
designed by Teri Flynn of Flynn, Craig and Grant. In its design phase it paid a lot of attention to
doors and desks, but thought equally about who might be working there and why. The 8,600-
square-foot work and event space (you need to join to use it) attracts people working incomplementary fields (say, solar technology and supply-chain analysis) and was designed to
promote collaboration and offer flexibility (some do their work or take meetings there a few hours
a month; others are there every day). In both the San Francisco and Berkeley locations, there
are not only communal spaces but community-wide events ranging from book launches to film
screenings.
At the stylish but spartan end of the spectrum is The Miner and a Major project, from architects
Serban Ionescu, Jim Dreilein and Justin Smith. With just $4,000 and a willingness to live and
work in rather intimate proximity to one another, the trio designed five container-like sleeping
units within a live/work loft space in Brooklyn. The project was, explains Ionescu, a burst of
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imagination coming out of an economic downward spiral what we wanted to challenge was
our bare minimum need to what a room is: a desk, a bed, a view, and storage, and also what is
the private/public border of the adjacent room. I dont know if this experiment would work outside
of our friends and it has evolved the friendship, its intimate setting can work perfectly for a family
or even a studio like office, working together but allowing the individual to be.
Serban IonescuThe architects admit its not for everyone but the compact spaces that define The Miner and aMajor push through conventional thinking about live/work space.
Two other factors often undervalued (and often ignored) in the workplace? Family and time.
Architect Iris Regn and artist Rebecca Niederlander have been working to bring these into the
conversation by exploring the intersection between creativity and family life in an ongoing
collaborative effort they call Broodwork.
Dont be put off by the awkward name. Broodwork suggests that, far from being the hindrance its
often presented as, incorporating family into work can have overwhelmingly positive effects.
Regn is trained as an architect but is open enough in her thinking to understand that in the
scheme of things, the adjustability of her desk isnt going to have an impact on her creative
process nearly as much as what her daughter might say tonight at the dinner table.
The first impetus [of Broodwork] was to get people to acknowledge interweaving of creative
practice and family life, she told me. Not to have to hide [your family] when you have to go pickup your kid while at a meeting, for example. That raised eyebrow is going away. Yes, youre
juggling. Thats just part of the deal. When you talk to other parents, everyone knows the deal so
why is it that in a professional setting that cant be brought to the table?
Theres something going on with our generation thats allowing for the integration of family life
and practice, Regn continued. Theres the computer, theres flex time, theres the fact that men
are taking a much more equal role in parenting. People are working in smaller increments, are
working collaboratively why? Partly its because of the computer but its also because people
are working more flexibly.
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So-IlThe architects Florian Idenburg and Jin Liu hope to design, develop and build a residential project with friendsand colleagues that supports a more fluid merging of work and family life.
This past spring at Otis College of Art and Designs Ben Maltz Gallery, in Pasadena, Calif., the
pair tackled the topic of time in an exhibition that explored the ways work and life intersected,
whether the result was inspiring or limiting. In either case, they concluded that acknowledging the
tension, the time crunch and the realities of balance led to greater creativity and piece of mind.
We didnt know if this would be a positive experiment or not, says Niederlander. We found we
could respond with look what great stuff is happening.
Works included Common Ground, an ambitious attempt by the architects Florian Idenburg and
Jin Liu (who are married and have two young children) to design a place where private life andprofessional practice merge, where sharing costs and responsibilities can free up the brain space
for more creative pursuits,
Eamon OKaneLike Frederich Froebel, who influenced this work, the artist Eamon OKane recognizes that makingtime for play is key to making good work.
and A History of Play: Froebel Eames Studio, an installation by artist Eamon OKane. This was
inspired by the work of Frederich Froebel, inventor of kindergarten, in part to acknowledge how
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(as OKane explains in his artist statement) becoming a parent opened my eyes up to not only
my parents influence on us as children but also how life and art and striking a balance is a
continual process and should be approached as such. Therefore I have learned to slow down
and enjoy life much more and to let it influence my work as an artist and educator in a much
more fluid and intuitive way.
If you were to see my own workspace, youd understand why I was most drawn to thepresentation in the show of critic and curator Andrew Berardinis mess of a desk, about which he
muses,
Michael BerardiniOffice design should acknowledge the reality that many of our workspaces look just like this andfunction quite well for their respective users.
Is this my ideal work space? This dank, windowless studio, this dirty desk. Yes it is. Perhaps
one day Ill find myself with laptop overlooking the Casbah or the ocean, with a view of the Eiffel
Tower or some other obviously awesome sight, in the most comfortable chair ever built in the
most beautiful space ever designed, but this space, the room I write from now, is here, ready
right now for me to sit down in theratty leather armchair with the broken leg, ready to simply and
happily support my time and weight. As Virginia Woolf once wrote, what every writer most simply
needs, male and female, is a room of their own and the time to work in it. This dark untidy cell
very happily affords me both.
Time. Its no less important than space. Workers are more and more productive, but theyre
becoming so at a harder-to-measure but easy-to-observe cost. We shouldnt be rethinking the
cubicle or corner office but rather rethinking all aspects of work: What careers are viable (and
how should we train people for them?) Might companies and their employees be able to re-
envision what loyalty looks like in an era where the average time spent in a job is hovering in the
range of one to four years? If a post-consumer economy is truly coming, as many from Larry
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eOffice, 20 Broadwick, W1F 8HT, London, UK, tel +44 870 888 8888, [email protected], www.eoffice.net
Summers to the collaborative consumption evangelist Rachel Botsman predict, what might it look
like? And how will it affect our relationship to earning a paycheck? In other words, how can the
workplace evolve to respond to the contemporary realities of work culture?
The Journal is right that good design can inspire creativity and great ideas, but Id argue that the
focus should be less on floor plans and more on ways of working. Whens the last time you had a
creative breakthrough in a Monday morning meeting? Creativity springs from unexpected placesand sources from a walk in the park to the rare block of uninterrupted time so thinking more
broadly about the intrinsic motivations (autonomy, learning, etc.) that facilitate good work is likely
to have a far happier outcome than the latest innovation in cubicles.
2011 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.Allison Arieff. Beyond the Cubicle. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/. July 21, 2011.
http://opensource.com/business/10/5/rethinking-office-design