The office of good intentions: Architecture and the American work space

A new book, via a series of essays, leads you through a collection of objects, systems, and buildings that have occupied the US office space in the last half-century

Saturday 17 September 2022 00:01 BST

Ford Foundation Headquarters, New York. Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo Associates, 1968 (Iwan Baan)

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Through stories and speculations, architects Florian Idenburg and LeeAnn Suen expose the relationships between space, work and people, and explore the intentions that have driven the development of office design for working humans.

In twelve essays, The Office of Good Intentions. Human(s) Work examines the spatial typologies and global phenomena that have defined the office in the last half-century.

Topics include the return of the work club, the rise of the corporate festival and the design of playgrounds for work. Frank Gehry’s radical, playful spaces for digital nomads in the advertising world feature, as well as stacks of punch cards, the Aeron chair and answering the phone in Hugh Hefner’s bed.

Photos by Iwan Baan provide a visual report on a range of office projects, such as Marcel Breuer’s IBM campus in Florida and the Ford Foundation’s urban garden in Manhattan.

This book looks at the spaces and solutions that have been designed for human work, tracing the transformation from work to occupation, from today’s lived experience to tomorrow’s unpredictable, imagined futures.