Office Landscaping

Many people struggle with mental, physical or social illnesses due to their life at work. 'On average workers spend about one-third of their waking hours at work' so making it somewhere that makes people happy and comfortable is a big target for designers. However, in the past, health in the office was largely overlooked and the workplace was regarded as a place of labour, a place of productivity and a place of order. At the end of the 19th century, the workplace’s focus wasn’t on the wellbeing or happiness of its employees – whereas, money and workload was. There was high demand on employees to produce a lot of work in little time limits - with little rest and little socialisation; the design of the office was made to ensure employees didn’t …show more content…
Myerson calls this the 'Social-Democratic office'. Pleasant and appealing work conditions were the incentive for people to work at different companies and unlike before, employers were starting to see members of their staff as humans rather than just employees and ‘cogs in a machine’. (Chittenden, 2017) As a result, the workplace placed an emphasis on social relationships rather than productivity. “There were also some experiments, with the concept of Bürolandschaft (office landscaping) which emerged in Germany in the 1950s: these architects set up an open office which was meant to foster better communication and collaboration by removing spatial hierarchy.” (Triomphe, Flamante, Myerson, 2015) In this sense, people learned from one another and were able to work with people above or below them – encouraging conversations and a sense of being. However, employees found the open plan office a distraction from their work and struggled to find privacy in which to work – illnesses such as cold and flu were also spread more …show more content…
Others believe that this kind of environment stops people from determining the difference between work life and personal life. Jeremy Myerson, a true believer of the ‘Networked Office’ even states that some designers can go too far in their approach – for instance, Myerson told Dezeen that "the Google effect in the workplace is quite detrimental. Trying to treat the whole world as though every organization should be like Google is a bit of a bad idea." Google’s office’s tend to feature slides within their interiors, however this has been criticized by other designers, and employees of Google – suggesting that it affects their performance at work and is distracting. "Everyone hates the slide because it ruins your clothes," said Öst, who visited the campus to give a lecture. "You go once on the first day and then you never go again." Öst added: "If you work close to it you hear people scream constantly because it's tourists and new employees going in it all the time." (Fairs, 2016) So in this case, health, wellbeing and happiness within the workplace as an issue is still a challenge for