Endless Workplace concept rethinks a day at the office

Endless Workplace concept rethinks a day at the office
Credit: Clive Wilkinson Architects

Clive Wilkinson Architects are based in California and proving that California Dreaming can be a viable export. They have worked up an idea, the Endless Workplace, hovering over the City of London. It is an answer to a challenge to design something that speaks of an "imaginary collusion of the UK with California."

The team's inspiration "was the plight of an average Londoner who spends roughly two non-productive hours for commuting to offices, on a daily basis." The design was created for the latest issue of Flaunt Magazine, said Inhabitat. "The magazine asked Wilkinson to create a design which would combine the cultures of California and UK, particularly the differences between how people commute in Silicon Valley and London."

What does an Endless Workplace concept over the city of London have to do with California? Clive Wilkinson, the designer, "imagined what it would be like if London, where the average commute is two or more hours a day, embraced Silicon Valley's Slack and Skype-driven, work-from-anywhere mentality," wrote Fast Company's John Brownlee.

It's not easy to sneeze out this idea in a few sentences so hang in there. Clive Wilkinson Architects said "the City is not easy on its dwellers when it comes to finding the workplace and home in vicinity of each other." Arch2o.com said they proposed "a horizontal and endlessly traversing Workplace that would span the top of London."

It would be a layer of single-level workspaces above cities sucking people up from their homes via pneumatic tubes, said Lidija Grozdanic, an architect and journalist, writing in Inhabitat. She described the concept as open plan co-working spaces covering streets in London. She quoted Wilkinson explaining the workspace as blanketing the city yet opening up everywhere there's a tourist attraction or interesting site.

Endless Workplace concept rethinks a day at the office
Credit: Clive Wilkinson Architects

Yes, she said, the proposal may be tongue in cheek "but the architect claims it actually addresses some important issues with commuting in densely-packed cities. It is based on the idea of entrepreneurship and reducing carbon emissions."

There is yet another issue addressed in this concept, and that is the inefficient use of space. According to Inhabitat, Wilkinson said, "There's a statistic that has been reliably used for years, that says that at any given time, that 50 percent of any workspace is just empty desks."

They are thinking of a single layered structure for established businesses and startups. You can walk upstairs to work and down to home. GPS would enable quickly assembled meetings and would track locations of colleagues.

The design involves cut-outs in the workspace layer, like Swiss Cheese holes.

Antara Jha in Arch2o.com said the idea was "food for thought, what would it be like to have a workplace like this, close at hand and beneficial in endless ways."

Endless Workplace concept rethinks a day at the office
Credit: Clive Wilkinson Architects

Beyond food for thought, designboom said the proposition "is not inconceivable."

If you are thinking, wait a minute, what is all this conversation about; why not just save wasted space and personal time by working at home? Do we really need to work our imaginations to the bone with concepts? John Brownlee in Fast Company provides Wilkinson's response. "It gets down to the tribalistic nature of people," Wilkinson said.

Put into practice, the Endless Workplace could be a co-worker hive of activity, in the form of entrepreneurial communities, a "cross-pollination culture," said Brownlee.

Replacing mind-numbing cubicles would be something different. Dezeen said "The elevated workplace would feature an open plan with desks and other office amenities, along with a multitude of small parks."

More information: www.clivewilkinson.com/

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