Sheltering in Place

Les Firestein is a writer who has written for some really good TV shows and some bad ones. Les has also built some great houses and no bad ones. Les writes about architecture and design for the Montecito Journal. Thirty years ago, at The National Lampoon, Les predicted that Donald Trump would conquer North America. You can look it up.

An Obituary for the Office: Late 19th Century till the Coronavirus Pandemic, 2020

“Welcome to the working week/I know it don’t thrill you, I hope it don’t kill you. Welcome to your working week/You’ve gotta do it till you’re through so you’d better get to it.” – Elvis Costello

Just before he got involved in his current pissing war with the President, Jack Dorsey, the CEO and co-founder of Twitter, told most of his employees that they never need to return to the physical workplace ever again. Setting off the decline and ultimate demise of that cryogenic chamber for human souls we all knew as… the office.

Did that place we spent a full third of our lives literally just… disappear into the ether? Personally I find it unsettling when these major tentpoles of Life suddenly just… vanish. What will be next to go? Clothes? Water? Shoes? Brushing our teeth?

Edifice Wrecks

As the domino effect kicked in, leaders of like-minded companies (Microsoft, Facebook, and even Citigroup) have been more than happy to follow Dorsey and divest themselves the expense of your cubicle and the Aeron chair your union and OSHA demanded. In fact, whomever your boss is, he/she/gender unspecified is in fact thrilled to lose the liability of you and your whole messy life, your claims of carpal tunnel, and the hostile workplace lawsuits you both bring and sometimes create. Think where Miramax could be today if Harvey Weinstein conducted his business in a brightened Zoom instead of a darkened room? We’d all be enjoying Amelie 2 and My Right Foot.

As we all know, with your workplace gone, work has gone back to its roots – in your home, a place that was likely overcrowded to begin with. Still it’s interesting to look back at where that whole Kafkaesque, Dilbert-meetsEscher idea of the office that’s not under your roof ever came from. We know why we stopped working at the office. But why did we ever start?

The purpose-built office was always about two things: (1) maximizing worker productivity. (2) The other

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