The New Workplace

It is obvious that without the elevator, Manhattan would not have been possible. Until the invention of Elisha Otis in 1854, staircases for office buildings would be acceptable to a maximum of 5 or 6 floors, in contrast to for example the 102 floors of the Empire State Building that are possible now.

Less obviously, but arguably more importantly, Manhattan thanks its existence to the telephone. Thanks to Bell’s invention in 1876, Chrysler could have its headquarters in Manhattan whilst having its production facilities in Detroit. The phone gave rise to a new dense and highly concentrated urban fabric of which Manhattan is the best example.

So what effect will the Internet have on the urban fabric? Sociologist Castells predicted in 1991 that the rise of IT would able people to work from home, which would in turn change our cities from centrally orientated to sprawling and multi-nuclear. And indeed, recent findings of for example the British Office of National Statistics seem to support his theory. They show there are more freelancers working from home today than ever before.

Think of the benefits of working from home. No longer will you spend hours per day in traffic jams, at rainy bus stops or on windy train platforms. Because we will work in smaller buildings, i.e. our homes, we won’t necessarily have to build big energy plants to support large office buildings anymore. Just placing some solar panels on the roof will be enough to get your computer running. It means no more ugly energy transmission lines crossing the landscape, and no more transmission losses as a result of energy transport over great distances (losses that can be up to 10%).

On an urban scale, it may mean the end of suburbia. The monotony of large scale housing projects will change into neighborhoods that are more alive, and on a more human scale. It will probably mean we will have to develop a new type of house, a new architectural typology, that facilitates working from home. In it’s most crude form it would mean just to add a garage, that can be used by commuters to park their car in, but that can also be used as a shop, an office or a workshop. Think for example about Apple, Google and Hewlett Packard, that all claim to have started in garages.

Indeed, the revival of the American car industry as well as the Green Revolution seem to depend on innovative, small scale companies that operate from garages. It may be that in time, all R&D and office based functions will eventually disappear from the cityscape. To a certain extend, it may mean the death of the corporate HQ. The end of buildings like Foster’s Swiss RE or SOM’s Burj Dubai.