{"id":9650,"date":"2021-04-24T14:04:33","date_gmt":"2021-04-24T18:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9650"},"modified":"2021-04-24T14:04:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-24T18:04:33","slug":"the-open-office-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9650","title":{"rendered":"The Open Office Is Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Open offices are dead. At least that\u2019s what the sociopaths who foisted them off on protesting office workers\u2014but never their bosses for some reason\u2014say. An article in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\">Fast Company<\/a> says that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/90626329\/these-architects-popularized-the-open-office-now-they-say-the-open-office-is-dead\">architects who have been pushing the open office concept on their customers have changed their minds<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sort of. First of all they ignore the most salient fact about open offices: they are germ exchanges that COVID-19 have rendered no longer feasible. Increased employee illness was always a problem with open offices but it was largely ignored by employers seduced by the cheaper buildout they offered. That\u2019s no longer possible and probably won\u2019t be for some time.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, they haven\u2019t really repudiated their past designs; they\u2019ve just changed them a bit. Take a look at the Fast Company article or <a href=\"https:\/\/clivewilkinson.com\/the-12-building-blocks-of-the-new-workplace\/\">these concept sketches<\/a> from one of the architectural firms. They all look like open offices to me but with cute names like \u201cThe Library,\u201d \u201cThe Plaza,\u201d and \u201cThe Avenue.\u201d The Library, for instance, is claimed to solve the noise and disruption problem by having a \u201cno talking\u201d policy as if no one has ever thought of that before.<\/p>\n<p>It remains to be seen if employees will tolerate this nonsense after experiencing the comfort of distraction free working from home. I get that not everyone likes working from home and that\u2014for some reason\u2014some folks even like open offices. But most people don\u2019t and are apt to object on the grounds that these open spaces are dangerous and inefficient.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll be a lot less cynical about open offices in general and these \u201cnew\u201d designs in particular when I see the bosses using them and taking advantage of all the things they offer their employees. I\u2019m not holding my breath though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Open offices are dead. At least that\u2019s what the sociopaths who foisted them off on protesting office workers\u2014but never their bosses for some reason\u2014say. An article in Fast Company says that the architects who have been pushing the open office &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9650\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[148],"class_list":["post-9650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-open-offices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9651,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9650\/revisions\/9651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}