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| the end of the solitary home worker |
During
the Utrecht Manifest Symposium about the new way of working ‘Het nieuwe werken’
keynote speaker Florian Idenburg from So-iL architects mentioned the phenomenon
of the ‘co-worker clubs’
Clubs
that offer freelancers, entrepreneurs and sometimes-even employees from larger
companies, a flexible use of office facilities as an alternative to working in
cafes, at home or in a mainstream office building. A service orientated
concept, providing lunch, free Wifi, meeting rooms, classrooms,
breakout spaces, a library, top-notch media facility, a kitchen and more. Sometimes additional
activities that fit the profile of the club members are organized such as
workshops and conferences and educational programs.
This
concept creates for individual workers the opportunity to exchange ideas and
expertise. The collaborative, sometimes even trans-disciplinary, nature of this
set up creates a sense of community and shared purpose. Potential members are
interviewed to
make sure that they fit into the club’s mentality.
The
co-working spaces are not typical office environments and often have a more
comfortable and trendy ‘home-from-home’ atmosphere. There seems to be a vast
expansion of these facilities in recent years. A variation on this theme is the
Pop-up co-working space.
Slightly
different but with some similar starting points, aimed at the entrepreneur that
wants to share, to collaborate, is a recent project of Piet Hein Eek with the
development of a new business complex, set for location in Amsterdam's Minerva
harbor called ‘het dak’ (the roof). The framework of the project has been
conceived to give companies the freedom and flexibility to create their own
office space. An informal place where diversity defines the building's image,
which is, composed of a collection of separate structures arranged in such a
way that terraces, squares and alleys flow between, creating a network of
paths.
A
'collective business concept' where the arts, media, entertainment and creative
business services come together and collaborate through urban activity, 'the
roof' derives its strength from the identity that users give to their
individual spaces.
By the end of 2010 a
group composed of leaders of university Innovation Centers, architects and
designers met to discuss the future of the so called Innovation Centers, institutes that
operate outside
traditional academic parameters in an environment radically
different than the typical university undergraduate experience.
In
the article ‘How Innovation Can Thrive on Campus’ published by Herman Miller
again the future IC workspace is described as flexible framework that offers an
inspiring and diverse environment for collaboration and innovation
Some quotes:
“…Creating an innovative environment means more than
providing space for experimentation. One important element of the search for a
new product, process, or idea is the sense of community, making the quest a
shared experience reinforced by interaction and engagement…’
“…Temperature
control, variable lighting, a pleasing colour scheme, access to natural light,
and movable, ergonomic workspaces and furniture all create an environment
conducive for interaction. The space will house many users and stakeholders and
must be able to easily evolve in order to support differing functions as new
projects are introduced and different uses are discovered to expand its
capabilities…”
“…The centers are not classrooms, but highly flexible,
dynamic spaces that must meet a wide variety of demands, often on a 24/7
schedule’
The interesting news is that the added value of these trans-disciplinary collaborations in co-working environments seems to be noticed also by the larger companies.
