On November 6, the partner company WeWork declared bankruptcy. Founded in 2010 by Adamneumann and Miguel McKelvey, WeWork's business model is simple: lease urban buildings and provide modern working facilities on a long-term basis, then rent out desks, offices and meeting rooms to companies and freelancers who need a convenient place to work. Although WeWork's main business is renting office space, Newman described it as a tech company in trendy Silicon Valley language in his presentation and assured clients that their office space would foster social interaction among employees and foster innovation.
Daydreams in the digital age.
Neumann says the workplace itself is a true "platform" for communication and collaboration. He describes WeWork as a "physical social network" that offers "space-as-a-service." With the collapse of WeWork, there has been a discussion about how to compare a physical workspace with a computer space, which has become increasingly popular in recent years. Is the office, where people work, sit at their desks, and gather around a conference table to discuss issues, better seen as a kind of digital infrastructure?When Neumann portrayed the office as a form of information technology, he relied on the popular view of the 2010s that the boundaries between physical space and computers were disappearing.
Cybernetic architecture.
Business leaders and tech journalists have talked about the upcoming "Internet of Things", i.e., objects with data exchange transmitters, "smart cities", i.e., the monitoring and optimization of municipal services through digital, and new public presences in "augmented reality". Although when WeWork began operations, these concepts were swept up in a storm of escalating propaganda. These prophecies have a much longer history. In the 60s of the 20th century, pioneering architects were attracted to the emerging field of computer science. They want their buildings to be as dynamic and responsive as computers. These visions often have elements of counterculture. For example, British architect Cedricprice designed a huge cultural center that adjusts the space in real time through digital algorithms and a built-in crane.
The office as a platform.
Nicolassch Ffer, a Hungarian-French artist, experimented with a city-wide concept called the "city of control," in which he argued that residents could change their surroundings with a simple push of a button. Japanese designer Kenzotange designed the building as a huge communication device, and the corridor as an "information channel". The day-to-day work of design firms is influenced by these avant-garde ideas. At the beginning of the 20th century, offices were primarily seen as industrial structures, such as document factories, where documents were transferred from one office to another, similar to parts on an automobile assembly line.
On the other hand, during World War II, business leaders saw the military use mainframe computers to decipher logistics and codes, so many began to conceptualize offices with large staff as a kind of computing infrastructure. According to Eberhardschnelle, a well-known West German consultant, an office is an "information processing facility", i.e. processing information between man and machine and between people. Schnell argues that the office is like a programmable computer, and its algorithmic intelligence depends primarily on the unique layout of the desk.
In the 60s of the 20th century, in the knowledge-driven economy, CEOs were obsessed with an idea: to be more productive by improving the efficiency of communication. This inspired novel office furniture, such as Hermann Miller's mobile office line, which includes bookshelves, tables, and partitions. Managers want to improve the flow of information in the office by adjusting the layout of modular desks, similar to how programmers update algorithms in mainframe computers. Theoretically, this view could make the office as dynamic and seamless as a computer program, but this view ignores the nature of real estate as a physical nature. Over time, office buildings require constant maintenance, and changing their internal structure becomes more complex. Even if you reorganize the so-called flexible tables and partitions, you may need to deal with many special parts. Ultimately, there's no guarantee that these changes will actually improve people's productivity.
The collapse of WeWork.
During the recession of the '70s, competition between offices and computers gradually diminished, but it didn't disappear entirely, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, where some people who sought alternative ways of socializing found unexpected followers in the digital network. Neumann and McKelvey's WeWork was founded in 2010, when few Silicon Valley investors questioned their likening of the office to a social network. Their companies have capitalized on people's enthusiasm for digital products and are getting a growing number of significant investments from tech venture capitalists. However, looking back, analysts have noted that the business model of tech companies is not entirely aligned with that of WeWork. Real estate companies can't enjoy the same network economics or economies of scale as ** platforms. Eventually, WeWork fell into the red in 2019.
The company's bankruptcy ended the story and raised questions about the belief that increased communication and connection was inherently positive. This belief stems from the idealism of early Silicon Valley, which blurred the lines between physical space and digital platforms, oversimplifying the complexity of social interaction and treating it only as the direct logic of algorithms. Despite its emphasis on the benefits of socializing, WeWork has always centered on self-promoting entrepreneurship and limited interaction between elites.
Envisioning buildings and cities as digital platforms reduces people's sense of belonging to a particular place, preventing them from truly integrating into and connecting with public spaces. The ** for the future of the office is often based on the coming revolution in work, but this fantasy ultimately fails to materialize. The office will continue to exist as an entity rather than a platform, and if we are guided by history, office design and systems will continue to evolve together as unique but complementary working technologies.
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