Suburban office space : an exploration of continuity and difference

Abstract

Anonymous boxes whose primary architectural features are stacked floor plates and horizontal bands of reflective glass predominate the suburban office landscape, These objects, scattered across fields and along freeways, are outdated images of the industrial age when capital was the most important business resource. As architecture, they represent the values of this past age: their homogenous and hermetic character depicts an efficient regimented workplace where the office is isolated from the community and work is separated from the rest of life. In today's information society and global economy, people have replaced capital as the key business resource, and thus the values of the workplace are shifting. Efficiency is being replaced by effectiveness - doing the right things with the right people in the right way - and separation is being countered by corporate participation in the community and by company support of their employees' lives both within and beyond the workplace. The thesis is that suburban office space ought to reflect these new values and proposes the exploration of two relationships: continuity and difference, as the means to this end. Continuity is chosen for it's possibilities in defining relationships of connection and difference is chosen as a way of promoting the varied activities of the new workplace.