The office is broken: Can conceptual “atom smashing” repair it?

Some will return to physically co-working with strangers, and some employers trapped in the past will force people to go to offices, but the illusion that the office was about work will be shattered forever, and companies that hold on to that legacy will be replaced by companies who embrace the antifragile nature of distributed organizations.

This sudden interest in workplace experimentation is both welcome and needed, as much about how we work in the knowledge sector today is ossified into tradition and conventions, some of which are arbitrary and some of which are borrowed from different, older types of work. The proposals making waves at the moment, however, feel somehow insufficient

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The traditional office was probably doomed anyway. Then a global shutdown changed everything we thought we knew about work, including where and when it needed to take place.

A flipped office would work the same way, knowledge work (the vast and blurry category most appropriate for remote work) happens from home offices and perhaps hyperlocal coworking spaces, while some meetings, workshops, and lighter work more easily done in a shared space, happens at the office.

weaken the spatial relationship between work and home.

The building was praised for throwing people at random. Because people were getting lost all the time and wandering into places they did not want to go. the building was a low rise and sprawling, which meant that conversations in corridors where a genuine conversation could develop rather than the eternal home of the glib, the elevator. More import... See more