Focus on Offices: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Co-working Spaces
Sitting at a desk seems to be typical for workplaces of the digital era: in a group with colleagues, somewhere between buzzing company PCs, a stack of paper and a cup of coffee, right next to the coffee kitchen, towards the end of a windowless corridor. In the meantime markets have shifted towards digital organization. Access to the internet as platform for digital data transfer has become ubiquitous. The conventional image of the office workplace is becoming increasingly obsolete. The office as a work environment is struggling with cliches of anonymity and monotony and confronted with its own schizophrenic program: concentrated, solitary work versus productive and vivid teamwork. However, a desk job doesn't always have to correspond to a typical office workplace. Young architects and designers demonstrate this fact again and again: creating a workplace requires only very little means and it can offer sufficient room for individual expression. The idea of co-working spaces offers the opportunity to create workplaces that go beyond the limits of the typical office, while maintaining their general feeling. This creates an alternative for those who wish to hold on to their beloved routines, including vending machine coffee and copier jams.
