Workscape

2020

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Workscape is the predicament that an office design project finds itself in during the onset of Covid-19. Caught somewhere between the explosion of contemporary co-working spaces and the abandonment of offices due to the pandemic, the project’s initial aspiration as an open, communal work environment for up to thirty employees, is reimagined as a space that can be pared down for eight persons. Six to eight feet distances are snuck in with extra-large desks that can accommodate multiple work-stations, or fold-up to provide a barrier and spatial partition between desks. Smaller desks are intended for more private, individual work with an enclosure of operable, sound-absorbing drapes. Situated within an existing, industrial warehouse, three large garage doors replace a façade of windows to open the office space to coveted natural air-circulation. While cloaking pandemic protocol with design adjustments that allow this office to flexibly expand and contract in occupancy and privacy, the project speculates on the aesthetics of office labor, repetition, and tedium as a backdrop for creativity, invention, and knowledge. The interior work “scape” of floor, walls, and desks are envisioned with uniform materiality (birch plywood), provisional to the everchanging activities of work, as well as the evolving nature of the objects that constitute a work environment.

 

Designer:  Jackilin Hah Bloom

Project Team:  Tamara Birghoffer, Lynn Hahm

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