How coronavirus could change architecture

[NAB]

[John Galt]

I sure hope this kills the open office. I remember going to a q&a with architects discussing the proposal for much more open office with no walls between any desks and someone asked "what about people being sick? Cube walls generally stop particles" and the architect scoffed and said "just don't come in if you're sick". Like he's never been to an office in America where people come to work constantly when sick

[NAB]

[John Galt]

its weird, at other offices my company leases, but the office i work at has massive amount of space. we could probably all have actual offices. however, the people that make decisions want things to be the same

in other offices with response to corona in that last week between NBA shutting down and company wide mandatory work from home they were talking about having to stop "hot desks". yeah that's right, in some offices it's not even your desk, you work whereever for the day

i enjoy collaboration. but what i enjoy more is 2 hours of collab a day, and 6 hours of leave me the f**k alone so i can do some f**k work. i don't mind cube farms. at least there is some separation. i DO mind managers not having offices since their job is to have meetings the entire day. i sit newar a row of managers they had kicked out of offices about a year ago, and it's so loud

[exploited]

Offices are a waste of time and resources for 80%+ of companies, and 100% of tech companies. The tooling for software and dev has gotten so sophisticated that making and paying for a place to store your code monkeys is a needless and silly expense. My hope was that this pandemic would be the final nail in the coffin, but corps and managers just can't stand not being able to waste their employees time doing stupid team building bullshit.

[Saz]

Offices are mostly a waste and frankly a form of management abuse. Managers need to be at work more often, and have better office perks. That doesn’t apply to most employees though, so making them schlep an hour into the office so you can watch over them is absurd. Thankfully lawyers still usually have their own office but even then I have a better work set up at home anyway.

[Winchester]

I'm kind of interested in what will happen to restaurant architecture. There's an old chinese restaurant in Butte MT (Pekin Noodle Parlor) that's been in operation since 1916 (same place). They have privacy booths with little curtains. I have no idea if the booths came into existence during the flu pandemic but I do know the pandemic hit Butte pretty hard back in the day. Personally I don't know when the next time I will feel like eating at a restaurant again, but when I venture out I might have to go to the noodle parlor as I haven't been there since my youngest went to college in Butte.





Edit to add, Butte actually has some pretty cool old buildings, it was quite the melting pot of cultures around 1900.

Here's one of them built in 1924 in the second French empire style.

https://www.finlen.com/our-story

[Saz]

That’s actually pretty legit. 1916 huh? Didn’t realize we discovered Montana before 1916. Very hipster, very nice.

I personally am starting to think nothing will changed. We are not going to make rational responses we will make emotional ones, and the public moods is clearly enough of this lockdown crap, COVID increases or not. People will risk it I’ve been out to eat a few times in the last few weeks and at first it was all separated etc but by last weekend it was basically back to normal. Bar I was at had an ice block shot luge and everyone was using it lmao I did not but I didn’t because that’s f**k gross not because of COVID.

My office looks like a f**k prison now, plexiglass barriers everyday one way hallways 1984 style posters about hand washing. Mask must be worn at all times (nothing like sitting for 8 hours with a mask on). I’d just rather work at home before I go back to that. I can’t even schmooze or tell who people are half the time when half their face is obscured by a mask.

[Tragic KingdomII]

It's still unclear what the 'new normal' will look like, and whether any of these changes will be permanent.

[ToddStarnes]