New Yorkers spend their waking lives in an assortment of boxes: studio apartments, elevators, subway cars, storage units and, of course, the office cubicle.

We rejoice in public, outdoor space – dragging chairs around Bryant Park, riding over inter-borough bridges, sitting on stoops, taking the stairs, paying six bucks for a latte to work from a café – because it allows us bust out of the boxes, untethered, mostly unsupervised, and in these places, reclaim our down time and personal space.

With this in mind, and feeling the need to get up from my desk one day last week, I went along to WorkTech 10, a one-day conference on the future of the workplace, at a swank Manhattan venue. [For more Omnibus coverage of the future of the workplace, click here. -Ed.] (Note the discipline of getting up from my desk and the fanciness of the corporate destination, please, because it’s between these two extremes that the day’s discussion ran.)

Images, L-R: Bill Moggridge; Florence Hudson; M Moser Associates.

The purpose of the day was unabashedly commercial: to bring corporate facilities managers and workplace consultants together. So what drew me? The day’s presenters exposed the audience to the broader questions transforming commercial concerns: How does work shape a city? How do cities become workscapes beyond the traditional office block? If we’re not to be victimized by the future, do we merely need to just manage it better?

The answers are demographic, economic, social and, of course, technological. A new generation of digital natives will redefine what work is and where it will get done; cautious optimism after a crushing downturn is also leading us to see Manhattan as what author David Owen calls ‘our nearest close example’ of sustainability through urban density.

Keynote speakers included Bill Moggridge, the newly appointed Director of the Cooper Hewitt Museum; David Owen, New Yorker journalist and author of Green Metropolis; Andrew Laing of workplace consultancy DEGW; and Florence Hudson of IBM’s Smarter Cities initiative.

A series of case studies followed: a comprehensive green retrofit of the Empire State Building, demonstrating not only a 40% saving in that landmark’s energy costs but also implying large commercial real estate’s significant contribution to increasingly sustainable cities; M Moser Associates’ comprehensive corporate facility for Nokia in China, showcasing a corporate ‘city’ within a city on the outskirts of Beijing; and Kursty Groves’ lighthearted look inside the most creative spaces in business, I Wish I Worked There, about enterprises with space to be inspired, think, share, explore – and a sense of humor.

Peter Miscovich of Jones Lang LaSalle, and conference organizer Philip Ross of the UK’s Cordless Group were most excited by and articulate about new communications technologies and their transformative potential for how we work: Skype and video conferences instead of a congested commute; data stored and secured in the cloud rather than on-site in a frigid, cable-filled basement server room; autonomic systems will light, heat and cool buildings adaptively, by occupancy.

From detailed investigations of productivity, Herman Miller’s Jennifer Magnolfi and Microsoft’s Ian Sands suggested that work environments, like software, must be designed programmatically, to be customizable, secure, safe and seamless. In other words, inhabitable. For that, user engagement is critical, to reveal expectations, habits and tools, all clues to responding to the creative demands of that space.

Of course, how technology supports collaboration is a familiar refrain, and we’ve speculated on its impact on the workplace for years, since mainframes were made obsolete by PCs, in turn overtaken by laptops, only to be outdone by smartphones and tablets. What’s new, as we get to work anywhere, is that we will work in ‘post-sedentary’ workspace, said Andrew Laing.

We are already working, as Philip Ross put it, ‘on the pause’ and in third spaces (neither at home, nor a designated office, but in flexible environments, like libraries or for-fee spaces like Soho House) – the places between A and B, snatching time between scheduled meetings.

We won’t go to the office to access hardware and work files, but for the empty space, social contact and pause it provides: For a desk to put down our bags and to charge up devices so we can go greet clients, or, get this, to think, write or sketch quietly or concentrate on our own, if only to emerge, confer and present later.

In the day’s discussion, consideration of where we go to work alone took second place to collaborative work. In the end, what’s enjoyable about work is both social and individual experience, in both environmental and managerial contexts, as Peter Drucker spells out in “Managing Oneself.” If you’re having a lousy day at the office, does it matter how bright the walls are? If you’re working in a windowless cubicle farm with no AC this summer, answer yes, and call your facilities manager.


Rachel Abrams is Creative Director of collaborative design practice, Turnstone Consulting LLC, in New York. She is on the Faculty of the SVA Interaction Design MFA Program, and has also taught Service Design for Public Space to a class at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. As a Fellow of the Design Trust for Public Space, she co-edited Taxi 07: Roads Forward, and has recently contributed to New York City’s Taxi of Tomorrow program.

As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.