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Eckhart Blog

In a world that is becoming more connected and plugged in by the day, a major part of our lives still takes place either at home or in the office. In office and workplace design, these 2 dominant places are generally called the 1st place (home) and 2nd place (office).

This working universe has recently been expanded with a 3rd place.

Recent dynamics and changes in how we work have led to both elaborate home offices and generic offices that acquire some of the informal qualities of home. This converging of both places has been combined with the emergence of this 3rd place, the local Starbucks/Coffee Company/(fill in name of local coffee vendor here) that combines some of the qualities of both home and office with the added value of being external and temporary.

In this blog post, which is the start of a series on the evolution and characteristics of the workplace of today and tomorrow, we will show a brief overview of successful and beautiful examples of the 3 types of spaces. In upcoming posts, we will look at each "place" in depth to provide a clearer sense and understanding of what, why and how. If you have any remarks, comments or additions to this post, please let us know.

1st place - home (office)

The home was originally the place where you didn't work. Our laptops, iPads and Blackberries have expanded the location for work from the office towards the home, with an increasingly permanent quality. The home office has become more and more formal, expanding from a corner in the living room to a seperate room with an office feel.

Corner for a small desk and "home office" task chair.

Seperate room with table for fixed computer and cabinets for library.

Seperate room with workstations and a more explicit office feel, but with home elements and room for the kids.

Formal "home office" with high quality office furniture and atmosphere, but mixed with informality.

2nd place - office

The office was originally a factory style space with endless rows of typists and clerks. Decades of innovation in office work and office equipment have led to a gradual shift away from this classic mode of working into a more dispersed, diverse and qualitative working environment. Offices now tend to include lounge areas, isolation cubicles for concentrated work, informal spaces for meeting and communication and a host of other spaces and space usages that allow us to interact, work and meet in new ways.

Lounge area for informal meeting and working in the middle of an office floor.

Generous open space for reading, studying and creating space for informal and chance encounters.

Unique pods of different character and quality, that allow for individualized meetings and brainstorms.

Seperate but integrated concentration spaces in an open plan office, allowing for diversity of use.

3rd place - coffee place

The café or coffee bar as a place for meetings, working and interacting has slowly gained ground as companies such as Starbucks and Coffee Company gain ground and settle in the right locations. These spaces function as a gathering place for mobile workers and people that usually work at home due to their combination of being someplace else (fewer/different distractions then the office or home), their informal quality, their (usually) great coffee and their crowd of similar-minded people. This combination creates a powerful and growing incentive to use the coffee bar for networking, generating new business and socializing in general. The proliferation of laptops, iPads and other connective devices combined with the free wifi internet that is generally available creates both an atmosphere and a practical location for working.

While most business models use the coffee as their key aspect, some interesting new developments are popping up that show an increased focus on the additional quality and opportunities in tapping the crowd of freelancers, mobile workers and other professionals that tend to inhabit these spaces.

Lines of laptop computers at a Coffee Company, using the combination of coffee, free wifi and interaction with others as opposed to working at home or in the office.

Meetings, working and drinking coffee at a Starbucks store, used as a short-stay office.

Coffee bar with optimized facilities for office work such as generous availability of sockets, excellent wifi and great coffee.

Summary

This first investigation of the qualities and characteristics of the 3 dominant places for working has been aimed at providing an overview of the themes and developments currently in progress. In future versions, we'll elaborate further with an in-depth focus on each "place" and a look at their interrelations.

We feel that the developments in both office and home spaces have matured in the past few years, while both more research and more practical projects are still needed for a good grip on the 3rd place. We're working on both ends of this curve and will keep you updated on how things progress.

30-08-2010