May 20, 2022
Let's talk about the future of how we work.
This week, Google unveiled its first ever self-designed campus. Their stunning walkthrough of the design begins with the notion that we have no idea what work is going to look like--even five years from now. This campus was designed with that in mind.
Last week, Airbnb announced that it is going fully remote, an appropriate reaction given how many folks had to work remotely from Airbnb's during lockdown. While employees can live and travel anywhere, they also have the option of coming into the office and are required to attend certain get-togethers. This begs the question--what will these "office" spaces look like? Images of cubicles and stale conference rooms seem to fade into black and white, while visions of flex gathering spaces start to materialize.
In five years, will we even recognize what we now think of as an office?
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MUST-READS
The conference room is reborn // NYTimes
The cutting-edge tech turning government buildings into lean, green machines // FastCompany
Lavaforming: controlled lava eruptions being used to create buildings // Dezeen
Vitra design history, arranged by color // Surface Magazine
The administration pushes building boom // FastCompany
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IDEA SPOTLIGHT
Google's New Bay View Campus
Google this week is opening its newest campus in Mountain View near its headquarters. The campus is the company’s first top-down design and it will house employees from the company’s advertising division. The entire design done by BIG and Heatherwick Studio revolves around ideas of flexibility and the future of work:
"The one thing we know about the future is we have no idea how we're going to be working in 20 years, 10 years, even 5 years," said Michelle Kaufmann, Google's Director of R+D for the Built Environment. "It's an opportunity to rethink the very idea of what an office building is... You have no preconceptions of how to work that comes from historic ways of working. Instead it's like a canvas of creating new ways of being together."
