Future Offices

• Provides in-depth analysis of the shifting spatial economies of the workplace and their implications for architectural design
• Covers a range of issues related to the workplace, labour, and logistics through an architectural lens
• Brings together a diverse group of prominent architectural thinkers and practitioners from across the discipline
• Envisions the future of the office while lending a critical eye towards its past and present, opening up new areas of interest to scholars and designers alike

Future Offices examines the evolving nature of the office as a spatial asset. Rapid changes in culture, technology, and society have upended longstanding notions of offices and the nature of work itself. While companies and capital around the globe have become increasingly consolidated, labour vis-à-vis technology has become increasingly decentralized.

The office, traditionally a key spatial interlocutor between labour and capital, is caught in an awkward position with typological considerations for architecture. What should the future office look like? What is the future role of the headquarters? What does the office’s changing role mean for urbanism? The works collected here provide frameworks for understanding the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary work, manufacturing, and commerce, and they aspire to influence new ways of conceiving architecture at multiple scales. They speculate upon a future where offices acquire new facets as resources of space, knowledge, and production that participate in local and global economic and cultural contexts in new hybridised forms.

At the heart of this is a recognition that the new ways in which companies integrate into in society should be reflected in architecture itself.

About the Editor

Ali Rahim is Professor of Architecture and Director of Advanced Architecture Design (MSD-AAD) at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. He is Co-Director of the New York and Shanghai based architectural firm CAP. Mr. Rahim has served as the Studio Zaha Hadid Visiting Professor at the University of Applied Arts (die Angewandte) in Vienna, as the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor at Yale University, and as a Visiting Architecture Professor at Harvard University. Mr. Rahim's books include Future Airports (2020), Asset Architecture 1, 2 and 3 (2016, 2017, and 2018), all published by ORO; Catalytic Formations: Architecture and Digital Design (2012), published by the China Building Press, Beijing; Catalytic Formations: Architecture and Digital Design (2006), published by Routledge, London; and Turbulence (2011), published by Norten and Company, New York.

Dimensions: 24.13 x 1.91 x 24.77 cm