The Red Dot Award has historically been called the "Oscar of Industrial Design", and the winning works often have different innovative values than in the past. However, in the list of the best design awards in 2021, there is a work that looks very different, but it is a little familiar.
It is also the work of Microsoft's Office Ideation Team, named Flowspace Pods . Brands that make computers do office space, and Microsoft's Flowspace Pods aren't unique.
Also in 2021, HP and video conferencing services company Zoom joined forces and also partnered with office space company Room to launch a work capsule designed for video conferencing, named Room for Zoom, with a minimum price of $16,995 (equivalent to 107,000 yuan).
Room for Zoom. Image courtesy of Room.com
From the outside, whether it's the Room for Zoom that fits into HP's 27-inch touchscreen all-in-one machine, or the room's previous classic work capsule, it's a bit like a public phone booth in the past — a space enclosed on three sides, with a transparent glass door on one side.
Square box shape designs are also quite common in work cabin circles, such as Zen Work Pod from Zen Space, Soho phone kiosk work pod designed by Meavo and customizable work cabin Verandas from office furniture brand Spacestor.
Zen Work Pod. Image courtesy of Business Insider
These work pods can be parked in public places such as shopping malls and hotels, and can also stand next to each other in a row.
Customizable work cabin Verandas. Image credit: Dezeen
These work cabins seem to provide a lot of convenience to the working crowd, but is "being able to work anytime, anywhere", as convenient as a mobile toilet, really the future trend of the office environment?
Image courtesy of Giphy
And in recent decades, the office space has been moving between open and closed models, and the vision of the future of the office has become more and more active.
On April 1 last year, foreign media Dust launched a science fiction short film called "Workplace". In the futuristic world envisioned in the short film, a 20th-century office is recreated – "compartments, coffee machines, paper, job titles, leadership changes, everything.".
Image courtesy of Dust's sci-fi short film Workplace
These lucky people who were selected arrived at the office with oxygen masks and knocked on apple, Dell and other brand computers that could not be opened from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., spending every day full of "work value". The newly hired male protagonist is assigned a red iMac G3 in the work compartment.
Looking back at the work cabins that seem to be very futuristic, aren't they modern versions of traditional cubicles? The compartment that has been stigmatized for many years was originally intended to give employees sufficient and flexible personal space.
Next, we traced our way from the latest work cabin to the most traditional compartment to explore the workspace we really envisioned.
Known as the "modern version of the compartment", the award-winning work cabin
The advent of Microsoft's Flowspace Pod completely broke the norm of the work capsule, so it was highly praised by the Official of the Red Dot Award - "The Flowspace Pod is the vision of the new normal, a refuge for focused and in-depth work in a highly collaborative hybrid office, and the single working time will become more precious."
The mystery of this was summed up by Chuong Nguyen, editor of the Digitaltrend website, in one sentence: "This work capsule launched by Microsoft is a modern version of the compartment in the hybrid office mode."
Flowspace Pod. Image courtesy of Red Dot website
In the mixed office model, we will have more remote meetings and collaborative discussions, but we also need to get away from the hustle and bustle and immerse ourselves in a state of independent work that is highly engaged and undisturbed.
The shape of the Flowspace Pod is destined to be different—like two opposing question marks, constructing a semi-enclosed private space in the middle.
Flowspace Pod. Image courtesy of The Gadget Flow
The space is equipped with a simple desk and chair and a PC with a screen almost the same width as the interior space, and the screen can be adjusted to adjust the angle as needed.
The cabin shell is covered in grey felt and can also be extended from the sides to avoid more prying eyes and distractions. The interior of the work cabin is illuminated with backlit LED lights, and the changing light colors can provide a better working atmosphere.
On the concept display of the product, the Flowspace Pod is displayed separately in an open office space, with a gray carpet matching the color of the shell underneath and a green potted plant next to it. It is not born to be "seated in a row", and winning with more is never its original intention.
If you consider the utilization per unit area, the Flowspace Pod will presumably be classified as a failure. But this measure is now obsolete, and it is better to squeeze more employees into an office area than to give each employee an immersive space where they can work efficiently, and the innovative concept behind this is what really impresses people with this product.
The "cubicle" that the inventor of the compartment really thought of
The design of the cubicle can be traced back to the medieval monk's writing room, and it can be inferred from the Italian painter Botticelli's 1494 work that the medieval and Renaissance cubicles would be equipped with shelves and even curtains to protect privacy.
Botticelli's painting Saint Augustine in His Study
It wasn't until the 1600s that office culture became widespread in society. According to Witold Rybczynski, author of Home: A Short History of An Idea, lawyers, civil servants and some professionals began working in offices in London, Amsterdam and Paris.
17th century office. Image courtesy of The Conversation
Between 1840 and 1859, Sir Charles Trevelyan had given a roughly consistent description of today's office: "For intellectual work, separate rooms are needed so as not to disturb the people working with the brain; but for more mechanical work, it is reasonable to have multiple employees working together in the same room under proper supervision."
It wasn't until the 1960s and 1970s that the compartment culture emerged.
Earlier, in 1960, inventor Robert Propst was hired by American furniture manufacturer Herman Miller to head the research department, hoping that he would bring innovative designs to the brand.
Robert Propst. Image courtesy of history.com
At the time, open-plan office design dominated —for years, employees worked on rows of desks in large open spaces, and only people of a certain level could have private offices.
The masterpiece of the open office: Johnson Wax headquarters completed in 1939. Image courtesy of Out Of Office
Prowl first drew inspiration from his day-to-day work and commissioned design and efficiency experts to delve deeper, and ultimately came to the conclusion that "flexible and customized workspaces make work happier, healthier and more efficient than relying on open layouts with fixed, heavy desks."
At the same time, Pro also noticed that the top management of the company with such an independent office space has also been well improved in work efficiency due to the lack of interference. Pros signals an explosive upward trend in the number of white-collar workers, and the office environment is in dire need of a change.
Early open plan office next to the leadership private room. Image courtesy of Pinterest
In 1964, Pro, with the help of design director George Nelson, introduced Action Office 1, a custom desk with adjustable height, to the market, but became a slow seller due to its expensive price, difficult assembly, and advanced concept.
Dynamic Office 1 generation. Image: Wired
Dynamic Office 1 generation. Image from: Dwell
After the first version failed, Pro designed a cheaper, easier-to-assemble desk, Action Office 2.
Dynamic Office 2 generation. Image: Dwell
Executives saw another "benefit" from this design – cramming more employees into smaller spaces, coinciding with the government's introduction of incentives for corporate office spending, and the second generation of dynamic offices was very popular after it was launched in 1967.
The initial motion office 2 open angle was designed to be 120 degrees, and later adjusted to 90 degrees, which is more similar to the current compartment shape.
1969 Dynamic Office 2. Image courtesy of Pin-Up Magazine
However, Dynamic Office Generation 2 has full consideration for humanity in terms of spatial flexibility and working angle, customizing the most suitable partition for customers and providing height adjustment functions that can stand.
1979 Dynamic Office 2 generation partitions. Image courtesy of Pin-Up Magazine
In 1976, Alexander Girard, Director of the Soft Furnishing Division, added a bright color scheme to the Dynamic Office 2 and designed the most beautiful "maze" in the Branif International Airlines office.
Dynamic Office 2 generation in 1976. Image: Pin-Up Magazine
Unfortunately, with the popularity of dynamic office 2 generation, it has attracted imitations from competitors Steelcase, Heyworth and other office furniture companies. These latecomers have built a lot of small plaid desks based on the needs of business owners who really pay for money. These crowded "small lattices" also brought office design into the dreaded "cubicle farm" era.
Furniture brand Steelcase launches the Series 9000. Image courtesy of Red Thread
Pro, who had created the cubicle, felt deeply guilty about his invention later in life. But it's no denying that cubicle design has grown into a huge $3 billion industry over the past 50 years.
The demolition and reconstruction of the "wall" of the office
As the antithesis of a closed cubicle office, an open office also has many intolerable drawbacks, with noise and privacy being the most frequently mentioned keywords.
However, the design of the compartment does not really solve the noise problem. Whether the partition between the stations is three feet or six feet high, the sound still swirls at the top.
Image courtesy of The Street
Unable to tolerate the noise of open-plan offices, Brian Chen and Morton Meisner founded the work-pod brand Room.
If you're trying to concentrate at the same time and hear a colleague and his dentist chatting, it's really stressful, so we pieced together a homemade phone booth with plywood and foam and added a door next to it.
—Brian Chen (co-founder of the workholster brand Room)
However, such a workbox was eventually called a "sweatbox". Because staying in such a small space, if the ventilation is insufficient, staying inside for a long time is also a kind of torture.
Framery's work cabin in collaboration with Ultra Framery One. Image courtesy of Beautiful Life
The cubicles in the cubicles were seen as the "walls" of the office, which were torn down by more and more companies in the 1990s, and the open plan returned to the mainstream of the office.
In 2003, google, a five-year-old company, moved to Googleplex, a sprawling campus in the mountains of California, and its open office design once became a benchmark in the technology industry.
Google Office in 2005. Image courtesy of Metropolis
However, in 2021, after the global epidemic, Google decided to launch a one-year or so office renovation plan - the partition walls that were torn down and returned in another way.
On March 3, in the Googleplex office campus, the work module called Team Pods was introduced. The set-up in each work cabin is very simple, with tables, chairs, whiteboards and lockers with wheels that can be set up in a matter of hours.
Team Pods. Image credit: The New York Times
For employees who don't need a fixed desk, Google offers workstations with circular bezels. Just swipe your ID card and it can be automatically adjusted according to the personal preferences of the employee.
Workstations in google offices. Image courtesy of Sanjose Inside
On April 7, the "balloon wall" activated by the robot's inflatable was also activated in Googleplex, which not only acts as a shield, but also reduces noise pollution.
Balloon wall in google offices. Image credit: The Verge
Google has also launched a new conference room called Campfire. Participants in the meeting, as if they had come to a bonfire party, sat in a circular space with a backplane, and the vertical display on the backplane also allowed remote participants to feel as if they were in it.
Brand new meeting rooms in Google's office. Image credit: The New York Times
For the exploration of the future office form, Google's attempts may not be the best answer, but it is undeniable that whether it is closed or open, it can no longer become the mainstream model applicable to the whole society. Instead, a hybrid office space layout that combines the two is on the rise.
Google Meeting Rooms 2021. Image credit: The New York Times
We really want to look at the office in a different way. Before that, "I went to the office because that's why I worked". Now, we want it to be more like, "I'm going to the office today because today is the day I meet people." We're trying to use the day in the office to enhance collaboration, get some face-to-face time, and really rekindle the office culture we missed because of remoteness.
—James O'Flaherty (Director of Business Operations, Adtrak)
Work-life balance isn't about eating three meals a day in your office, going to the gym there, and getting all the errands done there. Ultimately, people want flexibility and autonomy.
—Allison Arieff (New York Times Contributing Writer)
After all, for most people, office space takes up most of the day, so if innovative models are designed to transform today's problematic office space so that we no longer want to escape the office, such a design will have a profound impact.
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