The Office of Good Intentions. Human(s) Work

English edition. Immerse yourself with the architects Florian Idenburg and LeeAnn Suen as they travel through a wide collection of objects, systems, and buildings that have occupied American offices since the advent of the Internet. Through stories and speculations, Idenburg and Suen expose the relationships between space, work, and people and explore the intentions that have guided the development of office design for workers.
In twelve essays, this book examines spatial typologies and global phenomena that have defined the office in the last half century. Topics include the return of work clubs, the rise of corporate festivals, the path of the charismatic guru, the fragmentation of time, and the design of playgrounds for work. We traverse the radical and playful spaces of Frank O. Gehry for digital nomads in the world of advertising, stagger under the weight of piles of punched cards, feel the fit of our bodies on the Aeron chair, answer the phone in Hugh Hefner’s bed, and scroll through Lil Miquela’s feed. Iwan Baan’s photographic essays provide a post-occupation visual account of a series of canonical office projects, such as Marcel Breuer’s IBM campus in Florida and the Ford Foundation urban garden in Manhattan. Four intermediate catalogs offer collections of experimental products for workplaces, auspicious advertisements for building components for offices, components for digital offices, and renderings of speculative workplaces; each catalog connects the reality of the office and the way we imagine its alternatives.