If Mies van der Rohe designed cubicles...
Whether you love her or hate her, Ayn Rand nailed it when she said the very essence of civilization is privacy. The caveman had no choice but to live his life en masse. The progression from cave to the longhouse is an arguable improvement in accommodations. Yet the very essence of the tribal life is the pronounced absence of privacy. Privacy only becomes possible with the abundance produced under free market laissez faire capitalism. It is then that sufficient 2 x 4's and plaster allowed the average working class man to buy a home of his own with individual rooms for each member of his family.
And so it is something of shock to consider the fact that while the corporation has been instrumental in producing the wealth which enabled man to transition from the communal to the private society, the corporation itself operates along tribal lines.
While like the tribal potentate, the corporate potentate has his own lavish private quarters usually perched atop the corporate tower, the hired help are not so fortunate. For them its pretty much like life inside the sprawling tribal tent where the whole horde is spread out across the floor with all under observation by all. The corporation - the engine of privacy creating wealth - operates itself under conditions antithetical to privacy.
VRT is seriously distressed by this state of affairs - to the point it has issued itself this design brief: Sketch up an office cubicle as Mies might have given us if he had put his mind to it. Size is not so much essential as shape, a harmonious arrangement of luxurious materials the better the worker is pleased to be working - outfitted with Mies trademark daybed - which unlike the original, is actually pressed into service as a place from which to work in repose. And let me interject here that VRT believes workflow progresses from an initial state of high repose favorable for unleashing creativity to a secondary state, a more formal structured seated state in which the results of the creative process are condensed, more finely resolved, developed and transcribed. Late in the 19th century socalled Taylorism was all the rage in the mass production factory - where the worker was on his feet all day long - much less sitting down. Over a hundred years later there is nevertheless the lingering taint of Taylorism as the typical office boss can scarcely imagine his employees being more productive for certain tasks lying down than sitting up. It is on this point that VRT rejects Taylorism in the strongest possible terms: Let the employee brainstorm on his back then organize and refine his ideas at his desk.
And so we have arrived at the solution to our design brief, a solution best explained not in words but in pictures. The unit shown has a footprint of 55 sq ft, 5 ft wide by 11 ft long. The suspended Mies -
ean couch is 5 ft by
7 ft reached by a winding set of stairs. For the walls the thought was to use a more decorative version of the cloth (carpeting ?) commonly found in the typical office cubicle panel. And speaking of panels VRT envisions construction with SIP panels which can now be fabricated on specialized CNC machines and assembled on the job with special SIP screws. SIP panels are typically made with OSB. The thought was that after CNC fabrication they
can be faced with finished trim, fabric, and if desired even travertine for the baseboard. As well travertine serves as a nice hallway material while the plush carpeting Mies favored for Farnsworth is used for the cubicle floor.
Finally let me be clear that none of this is written with the intention to diminish the importance of collaboration. Quite the contrary. VRT is all for a multitude of synergistic modes of work - discrete, distinct, and distinguishable work sites where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts: The creative work emerging from deep repose, the follow on clarification of such work achieved at the desk, and the further refinement and enhancement of the work realized in its review in the full on collaborative environment. What is needed is a multiplicity of work sites reflective of and serving to intensify the multitude of work modes.
