Dr Juriaan van Meel is Assistant Professorat the Department of Real Estate & ProjectManagement of the Delft University of Technol-ogy in the Netherlands (www.bmvb.nl). He isalso partner of ICOP workplace consultants(www.icop.nl), where he is involved in the designand implementation of alternative office solu-tions. Juriaan van Meel is (joint) author of anumber of publications on office design, includ-ing ‘The Office, the Whole Office and NothingBut the Office’ (1999) and ‘The European Office’(2000).1

Paul Vos is a consultant at Adviesgroep VoorKantoorinnovatie (Advisory Group for Office In-novation), Tilburg. Further, he is attached tothe Centre for People and Buildings, a newlyformed organisation engaged in research on therelationship between man, work and buildings.Prior to this he worked for several years as aresearcher at the Department of Real Estate &Project Management of the Delft University ofTechnology. He is (joint) author of many publica-tions on office design, including ‘The Office, theWhole Office and Nothing But the Office’.

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses office design in the ‘neweconomy’. Office buildings of dot.com com-panies seem to be dominated by colourful

materials, luxurious facilities such as gyms orlounge areas and gimmicks such as jukeboxesand pool tables. Employees ‘float’ around inthese offices wherever and whenever they want.Such work environments seem very attrac-tive and productive. Still, the meaning andrelevance of such ‘fun offices’ can be questioned.In this paper the authors try to explain wherethis informal and casual office style comes from,relating it to labour market developments andchanges in organisational culture. Secondly,they discuss the merits of ‘fun’ office design.How does it affect people’s creativity, their ideasabout work and the distinction between workand private life?

Keywords: workplace innovation, ‘neweconomy’, trends in office design, flexi-ble working, fun offices, reflection

INTRODUCTIONAt the start of the 1990s it was pre-dicted that virtual workplaces would re-place brick-and-mortar office buildings.Designers and consultants questioned theraison d’etre of office buildings in an era ofcyberspace and virtual reality. Large floorsfilled with rows of grey desks were tobecome a relic of the past. Today it isclear that office buildings still dominate

Funky offices: Reflections on officedesign in the ‘new economy’

Juriaan van Meel and Paul Vos*Received (in revised form): 13th June, 2001Delft University of Technology, Department of Real Estate & Project Management,PO Box 5043, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands; Tel: �31 15 2786846;Fax: �31 15 2783171; e-mail: j.j.vanmeel@bk.tudelft.nl*Centre for People and Buildings, Delft University of Technology, Berlageweg 1,2628CR Delft, The Netherlands; Tel: �31 15 2781114;e-mail: p.g.j.c.vos@bk.tudelft.nl

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Journal of Corporate Real EstateVol. 3 No. 4, 2001, pp. 322–334.�Henry Stewart Publications,1463–001X

future of work, as a solution to transportproblems and environmental problems;and as a form of work which wouldreduce stress in the working population.Within our lifetime urban downtownswould ‘stand empty, reduced to use asghostly warehouses or converted intoliving space’.

When looking at today’s cities it is clearthat Toffler’s predictions were not com-pletely correct. Parking problems andrising rent levels indicate that inner citiesare probably more lively than ever, andthe majority of the working populationstill works in office buildings. On theother hand, it is also clear that teleworkhas become a perfectly viable option.New technologies that facilitate telework,such as mobile phones and the Internet,have been ‘domesticated’ rapidly. Somesay that the importance of such tech-nologies is overrated — given the recentdownfall of the NASDAQ index and themany bankruptcies in the high-techsector. Nevertheless, they are ubiquitous;they influence the way people communi-cate, work and live, and they willcontinue to do so. Both governments andprivate companies are stimulating thedigitalisation of society. In the Nether-lands, for example, the Dutch city ofEindhoven is developing a high-techresidential area, which is referred to as‘e-city’. The ‘e-city’ project encompassesnearly 38,000 households. Each of themis equipped with high-standard ICTinfrastructure such as satellite connectionsand glass-fibre cabling. Basically they areurban variants of Toffler’s electroniccottages.

Despite the increasing digitalisation ofsociety, it is still questionable what itsimpact will be. Does the fact that peoplecan work at home also mean that theywill and want to work at home? Areaverage citizens going to use theirglass-fibre cable to connect with their

our lives and cities. Despite the manyrevolutionary ideas about virtual corpora-tions, most office employees still spendtheir working time in office buildings.And this is not likely to change in thenear future; for better or worse, theoffice is here to stay. This observationdoes not mean that conventional officedesign should not be questioned. Newways of working, new generations ofemployees and new lifestyles will put newdemands on office design. This becomesclear when taking a look at the accom-modation demands of new companies inthe multimedia and high-tech sector.

Young, progressive organisations seemto prefer old warehouses and refurbishedindustrial buildings rather than conven-tional glass-and-steel skyscrapers. Insidethese offices are found ‘fun’ amenitiessuch as pool tables and coffee bars. It allseems very attractive; work is transformedinto play and offices become playgrounds.But how realistic is this? Is it yet anotherhype, driven by fashion and managementfads? Or is there a fundamental change inthe way people think about work and thework environment? This paper tries tofind an answer; it tries to get to the coreof ‘funky’ workplace design. What is thesense and nonsense of a pool table in theoffice?

OFFICES ARE HERE TO STAYAmerican futurologist Alvin Toffler pre-dicted in the early 1980s that informationand communication technologies wouldrevolutionise our lives. In his book ‘TheThird Wave’ he stated that by nowpeople would be working and living inthe countryside, connected by computernetwork.2 He foresaw a post-industrialsociety in which living, working andrecreation would be combined in a singlespace: the electronic cottage. Workingfrom home was (and still is) hailed as the

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employers’ server, or are they primarilygoing to download movies, games andmp3s? For the time being, nothingrevolutionary has happened. Most work isstill done at the office. Telework hasbecome a well-known alternative, but thenumber of teleworkers is still modest —despite the many success stories inthe media. In both Europe and theUSA, the percentage of teleworkers risesonly steadily. Recent figures from theEuropean Foundation (see Figure 1)indicate that about 4.1 per cent of theEuropean working population can beregarded as teleworkers.3

Obviously, such figures are highly de-pendent on the definitions used; thesefigures relate to the number of employees

who telework for at least one-fourthof their working time. Some of theprotagonists of teleworking think that suchdefinitions are too narrow. They argue thatanybody who occasionally works at home,eg checking mail on a Saturday morning,can be regarded as a teleworker. Butwhatever definition is being used, it is clearthat the steady rise of teleworking has notyet had any quantitative impact on thedemand for office space; on the contrary,the office market has been ‘booming’ theselast few years. It is only recently that marketanalysts have warned that the office marketmight be past its peak. These warnings,however, have more to do with a possibleeconomic slowdown than with telework-ing.

Figure 1Teleworkers in the

European Unionand its component

countries (wagespercentages; paidemployment only)

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Source: European Foundation — Merllié & Paoli (2001); data compiled by TNO Arbeid

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 160

1

2

3

4

6

7

8

9

-

-

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

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2

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Country

% T

elew

orke

rs

1 United Kingdom

2 Finland

3 Luxembourg

5 Denmark

6 Sweden

7 Belgium

8 Austria

9 Ireland

10 France

11 Germany

12 Greece

13 Portugal

14 Spain

15 Italy

16 Total

4 The Netherlands

In San Francisco there are evencomplaints that dot.com companies arepropelling rent levels, pushing existingresidents away in the older, nowfashionable neighbourhoods. In Europe,the market shows a similar tendency.Companies in the multimedia andconsulting sector choose ‘characteristic’,over-sized buildings in the historicalcentre of cities such as Amsterdam andLondon — despite the fact that the small,medieval streets are clogged with cars andthat there is a chronic shortage of parkingspace. Dutch architect Kees Christiaansesays: ‘a converted 16th century warehouseis the perfect accommodation for acommunications consultancy. So perfectthat a new building designed inaccordance with a carefully preparedbuilding programme would never haveachieved a comparable character andquality.’7

Organisations that build new of-fice buildings may choose non-officetypologies such as campuses. A classicexample is the Microsoft headquarters inRedmond, which resembles a universitycomplex rather than an office. Thebuildings are elegantly located betweenthe pine trees. The typology derives fromthe fact that the early employees camestraight from university, so it was decidedthat the new office would be designedlike a campus to make employees feel athome. The non-office design matches thecasual dress code (jeans, khakis, open-necked shirts and sneakers prevail) and theinformal interaction between employees.But, despite its interesting buildingtypology, the Microsoft headquarters isnot really innovative in its workplacedesign. Just as in the rest of corporateAmerica, large floor plates are filled withendless rows of cubicles.

To find interesting office interiors, onemust look at smaller and more ‘hip’companies in the high-tech sector. A

NEW OFFICES FOR THE NEWECONOMY?Office buildings are not likely to disappearin the near future, but they certainly willchange in character. Office buildings arethe materialisation of norms and valuesabout issues such as hierarchy, interactionand privacy. They reflect ideas about themeaning of work and opinions about howwork should be performed. As these ideaschange over time, so does the office. Inthat sense the office building is a productof the spirit of the age. Corporations havealways spent a lot of money on real estate,and they will continue to do so. Thedifference is that they will be spending iton other things, depending on what thedecision makers value as important. Todaya company like Microsoft might still builda huge impressive headquarters, but ifit built a headquarters like J. P. Mor-gan’s the result would be regarded as anexample of bad taste, or even an af-front to modern values.4 The J. P. Mor-gans of today are no longer spendingtheir money on stone-faced, opulent of-fice blocks with marble veneer lobbiesand rosewood boardrooms. Instead, theyinvest it in offices with ‘identity’, officesthat are transparent, open and playful.

At the core of today’s changes in officedesign lies the idea that offices should nolonger look like offices. Anonymous orpompous office blocks located in lifelessbusiness parks are losing ground. Young,progressive organisations seem to preferbuildings that were originally designedand constructed for non-office purposes.Old residences and warehouses in down-town areas are increasingly popular. In theUSA, buildings from the 1920s and 1930sthat were passed over in the 1960s arenow considered as prime real estate.5

Web-oriented businesses have tied upnearly all the available loft space inChicago’s Loop and in New York’s‘Silicon Alley’.6

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quick glance at ‘new economy’ magazinessuch as Wired suggests that their offices areequipped with kindergarten-like ‘rompspaces’, coffee bars, gyms, day-care cen-tres, pool tables and dartboards. Playful-ness and pleasure-seeking are everywhere.In contrast to the seriousness of conven-tional space planning, with its emphasison efficiency and flexibility, these interiorsstress irony and amusement.

Such offices have to stimulate, titillateand entertain their users. A good exampleof such ‘funky’ design is the newheadquarters of Electronic Arts in Red-wood, California — a $1.2bn interac-tive entertainment software company.The campus-like headquarters upholdsElectronic Arts’ ‘homing from work’concept. This philosophy allows staff toorder their shopping, pick up provisionsfrom the campus general store, eat in the140-seat restaurant, use the library, exer-cise in the gym, play five-a-side footballand socialise in the sports bar. On Fridayevenings in the summer, the companyplans to host barbecues on the campus asthe sun sets.8 A smaller but even moreradical example of a ‘fun office’ is thebuilding of KesselsKramer, a Dutch adver-tising agency. The company inhabits aformer church in Amsterdam. Within thebuilding one can find, among otherthings, a two-thirds scale replica ofa wooden Russian fort, an oversizedBaywatch lookout tower and an Astroturffloor. Interestingly, the building alsohouses a bust of Lenin — liberating theoffice workers from a dull and greyworking environment.

BACKGROUNDThe observed changes in design are ex-tremely interesting; the problem is thatthey are hard to judge. How far doestheir relevance go? Are they superficialchanges or do they represent a fundamen-

tal shift in ideas and values about workand workplaces? To get a better under-standing it is necessary to find out wherethese changes come from. What changesare taking place in the wider context oforganisations and society? Based on re-search and literature study, the authors canroughly identify four different (interre-lated) explanations: changes in organisa-tional culture and identity; the labourmarket; ideas about the meaning of work;and increasing relevance of face-to-facecommunication in a virtual world. Eachwill be discussed below.

Culture and imageCompared to previous decades, it is quiteobvious that organisational cultures do getmore informal, flexible and free and lesshierarchic. Office buildings reflect thesechanges.

Just like the remains of buildings of pastcivilisations, office buildings are ‘artefacts’.Their layout and architecture tell some-thing about the social structure and socialrelationships of their inhabitants. Dealand Kennedy state in their book ‘Cor-porate Cultures’: ‘a company’s investmentin bricks and mortar inevitably says some-thing about its culture’.9

Since the 1950s, corporate culture hasbeen expressed in glass, steel and concrete.High-rise office blocks with shiny façades,fast elevators and air-conditioning becamethe stereotypical expression of businesslife. From the outside, they were designedto impress clients and passers-by: the soar-ing tower, the marble lobby, the sparklingfountains and so on. From the inside, thebuildings stressed the need for flexibilityand functionality. Such buildings were theproducts of an economic system that putgreat faith in the progress of industry,technology and economic growth. Arch-itectural critic Charles Jencks said in aninterview that for the ‘captains of in-dustry’ the slender glass tower was the

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Frankfurt, designed by Norman Foster. Itis the tallest office building in Europe, andin that sense still a classic symbol ofcorporate fallocracy. But in many ways itis also a progressive building. The build-ing can be referred to as an ecologicalhigh-rise, unique of its kind. The Com-merzbank invested in natural ventilation,sky gardens and a huge atrium to provideall employees with fresh air, openablewindows and an outside view. The build-ing has to show that the bank ‘cares’ forthe environment and the well-being of itsemployees. As a ‘gift’ to the local citizensand politicians, the building also has anaccessible plaza with an indoor cafe —a contrast with the usual high-securityentrances, which can only be entered bythose who have the appropriate companykeycard.

Other companies have departed fromthe high-rise concept and build theiroffices like small ‘villages’. Social contactsand human scale are the lead in thedesign. Large complexes are divided intoseparate houses that are united by streetsand squares. The message is that the largecorporation is not just a moneymakingmachine, but also a community whichcares for its members. The headquarters ofNortel, a Canadian telecoms company,decided to move from its central, high-rise premises in Toronto to a convertedfactory in the suburbs; it won over reluc-tant employees by turning its new baseinto a self-contained town. It has streets,cafes, restaurants, indoor parks, even aZen garden. In such cases the ambition isto create no longer just a workplace, butalso a meeting place and a homeport.Other corporations, like the Dutch con-sultancy group Twynstra and the softwaregiant Oracle, have offices with a kitchen.Young professionals do not go home forsupper, but stay at the office and ‘enjoy’a meal with their colleagues. Furthermore,they no longer play sports at their local

image of efficiency, of ultimate perfection.It was the metaphor of ‘control, con-trol and control’. Modernistic architecturewas a ‘progressive’ style, appealing toa business elite that regards itself as afrontrunner of technological innovationand economic growth.

Today, progressive organisations seem tobe looking for something new. They wantto deviate from the ‘old economy’,‘boring’ gigantic multinationals whichhave dominated the economy for so manydecades. They want to show that theyare different. American journalist DavidBrooks maintains that today ‘the dir-tiest word in the corporate lexicon’ ismainstream. He says: ‘every company inAmerica seems to be an evangelicalenterprise rocking the establishment’. Thekey is to be youthful, daring andavant-garde, to personify change. Today’sbusiness leaders want to show they areplayful free spirits, and office design is oneof the means to do this. Think of theimage of trend-setting entrepreneurs suchas Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or Stelios.Just as their dress-down, casual andrebellious image is becoming more ac-ceptable, almost normal, a more domestic,employee-oriented approach to officedesign is gaining credence.

In 1950s Business Week profiles, ex-ecutives would be sitting in impressivemahogany and brass offices, wanting toshow how much they embodied Ben-jamin Franklin’s virtues: industriousness,thrift, reliability. Now, the predominantvisual prop is the ‘wacky accoutrement’.The popular, successful managers of todaydisplay a snowboard that is hanging fromthe ceiling next to an ominously brokenpiece of bungee cord.

Part of this change in identity is the ideathat corporations (and their managers) arenot focusing only on profits, but also ontheir role in society. A good example isthe headquarters of the Commerzbank in

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soccer club, but instead frequent the cor-porate gym, as they do in the newIBM headquarters. After all, it is in thecompanies’ best interest to have heal-thy employees (and it might save themfrom lawsuits for new workplace-relateddiseases, such as repetitive strain injuryand burnout). Just as important, suchamenities can be used to show that thecorporation is ‘online’ with the needs anddesires of the scarce young professional.

Labour marketThe ‘softening’ (or ‘Disneyfication’) of thework environment is partly driven by thedesire to attract and retain staff. In alabour-short economy, companies seem tobe desperate to please employees, or atleast those that are in short supply, such asIT specialists. Companies want to showthey understand the needs of young highpotentials. A well-designed workplace mayplay an important role in this effort. Foryears, workplace consultants and designershave stated that workplace design can beused to attract the best and the brightest.The problem is that the physical workenvironment is hardly a factor in attract-ing and retaining staff. Research showsthat employees are still more interested ina salary rise or new technological gadgetsthan in workplace design (see Table 1).Design can, however, play an importantsymbolic role. As mentioned before, of-fice buildings convey a certain image topeople and, as is known from psychologi-cal research, first impressions are crucial.

Another labour market issue is that newgenerations of workers may have dif-ferent needs from the previous gen-erations of employees. According toJohn Worthington10 new generations ofemployees are educated, professional,self-managing, independent and increas-ingly mobile, moving upwards from jobto job with little concern for the oldsecurity of the ‘job for life’. If a company

wants to attract such people, it shouldprobably also invest in workplaces thatmatch their lifestyle. This is one of thereasons why, for example, in the Nether-lands the government has decided to giveevery civil servant, in principle, thepossibility of teleworking. In the currentlabour market, employees simply havemore power to get what they want. Thisdoes not mean that they will have detaileddemands about the actual design of theirworkplace, but they will demand greaterfreedom and flexibility in choosing whenand where to work. The division betweenwork and family life is an especiallyimportant issue. Charles Romeo, thedirector of employee benefits at ConAgra,puts it well: ‘When we make ouremployees choose between work andfamily, we lose every time.’ In the modernsociety organisations must be mind-ful of ways to help employees fulfiltheir family obligations. Family-friendly

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Table 1: Importance of organisationcharacteristics — named by workers ofa Dutch Internet company

CharacteristicNamed by%

Job satisfactionSelf-expressionType of workSalaryAutonomyCorporate cultureValuationWork sphereCareer perspectiveParticipationFringe benefitsLocationLayoutImage (office)

20.018.418.317.616.616.314.412.311.910.18.37.31.20.0

Source: Delft University of Technology, Faculty ofArchitecture, Real Estate & Project Management,Froukje Smulders and Saskia Teurlings, 2001

society from the need to work. As amatter of fact, people spend more ratherthan less time on labour. Despite theemergence of new phenomena such assabbaticals and part-time work, peoplework more hours a week than they did 25years ago. They check their e-mail atweekends and take their mobile phoneson holiday (and, deep down inside, aredisappointed when they are not called —say needed — by the company).

Clearly, mobile technology andimproved network connections havefacilitated the blurring of boundariesbetween work and private life. Mobileequipment gives employees the chance towork at places outside the office, and theytend to use that opportunity. According toBritish research, for instance, employeesequipped with laptops work harder andperceive themselves as more productivethan their PC counterparts. Workingovertime is so common that it is nolonger regarded as overtime; it comeswith the job. This development, however,is not only technology-driven. It is alsorelated to changing ideas about the valueand meaning of work. For decades, familyand church were the social heart ofpeople’s lives. Now the corporation seemsto have taken over, at least for thosetwenty-something knowledge workersthat want to make a career. At the start ofthe century most people still worked infactories. Work was a means to earnmoney and little more. Now, youngprofessionals tend to regard work also asa form of self-expression. They want notonly a fancy leased car, a WAP phone andstock options, but also a job that is ‘fun’and interesting. As with so many othertrends, Silicon Valley led the way. It wasthe Californian start-up companies thatcame up with the idea that the workplaceshould be a fun place, especially whenspending 80-plus hours a week in theoffice.

employers make a tremendous contribu-tion in the struggle to make allies of workand family. Family-supportive organisa-tions with flexible working arrangementsand matching innovative office spacecreate greater employee commitment andcareer satisfaction.11

Another issue is that employees havejobs which earlier did not exist (at least ina formal sense). David Brooks12 writes:‘the information age has produced entirelynew job categories, some of which seemlike practical jokes, though you wouldn’tknow it from their salaries: creativityofficer, chief knowledge officer, teamspirit co-ordinator, web page designer,and so on.’ These are new jobs, with newworkstyles and probably new workplacedemands. This seems to be particularlytrue in the Internet sector. Russel13 saysabout Internet companies:

‘They are heavy on graphic desig-ners, interface designers, and animators,people whose education may be artschool, whose lifestyle is urban, whodraw inspiration from arts and culture,and who socialise in downtown night-clubs rather than suburban golf clubs.They tend to prefer urban loft environ-ments to the carpeted, mirror glassconfines of business parks.’

Their idea about the meaning of workseems to be different from that of earliergenerations of office workers.

The meaning of workIn the 1970s and 1980s it was predictedthat the use of information and com-munication technologies (ICT) wouldresult in more leisure and less work. Thisidea did not turn into reality. Some workprocesses, especially routine jobs, haveindeed disappeared: ATMs, for example,are slowly replacing bank clerks. Ingeneral, however, ICT has not freed

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For example, when the Internet caughton in the mid-1990s, Netscape employeeswere said to be playing roller hockey incar park and bringing their dogs to work— evidence of how the company cham-pioned the anarchy and freedom ofexpression of the Web. This is a radicalexample (and probably no longer truesince Netscape was bought by AmericaOnline), but it is symptomatic. Theprotestant work ethic has been replacedby the postmodern idea that work shouldbe an ‘extended hobby’, an expression ofwho one is: I work, so I am.

But not only employees are interestedin ‘labourtainment’. Corporations realisethey need to offer something more thanjust a salary in return for the high-pressureatmosphere and long hours. And, just asimportant, a ‘fun’ work environmentmight stimulate productivity. Accordingto management gurus such as JeremyRifkin and John Kao, ‘fun’ is crucial forcorporate survival. Rifkin states: ‘In thenew era, industrious gives way to creative,and business becomes less defined in termsof work and more in terms of play’.14 Inother words: while the traditional pursuitof new capital, raw materials and moreefficient technologies continues, the com-petitive advantage belongs to businessesthat recognise the value of imagination,inspiration, ingenuity and initiative. Inter-estingly enough, office design is regardedas one of the tools to achieve this. In hisbook ‘The Art and Management ofCreativity’ Kao explicitly mentions officedesign as one of the main instruments tocreate a creative work environment.15

According to Kao, companies shouldrethink their concept of space. Theyshould ‘shake it up, break it down andstretch it out’ and create spaces ‘whosewalls subtly establish an even morepsychic freedom’. One of the centralideas is also to create open spaces, toachieve ‘lightning fast communications’.

Employees should be provided with‘humour rooms’, ‘meditation rooms’ andthe like, to create a ‘playground image’ inwhich work and play are combined.

And apparently such office buildingswork. Chairman Lee Clow of theAmerican advertising agency Chiat/Daysaid to the Wall Street Journal:

‘It’s a rare weekend in this agencywhen you won’t find people at work. . . Sometimes I am asked what I say topeople to get them to work on Satur-day and Sunday. We don’t say anything.But our creative people know what weexpect from them. They know theywill have a chance in this big sandbox.It’s designed to be a stimulating place,a fun place, an interactive place, a socialplace.’

So, it seems that employees spend moretime at the office when they regard theirwork and their workplace as ‘fun’. Itshould seriously be questioned, however,whether it is really healthy to sacrificeone’s personal life for work.

Physical versus virtualAs said before, new technologies such asthe Internet and e-mail do not renderoffice buildings irrelevant. One might beinclined to say that their relevance isprobably going to increase. With thegrowing complexity of business problemsand the use of information technology, arapid growth is to be seen in the use oftemporary, multi-disciplinary teams withglobally distributed memberships. Alreadyone-third of American companies with50 or more employees have one-halfor more of their employees working inself-managed and problem solving teams.Many of these teams have no traditionalboss or supervisor. Instead, team mem-bers take on responsibility for planning,scheduling, directing and controlling their

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According to Franklin Becker, Di-rector of Cornell University’s Interna-tional Workplace Studies Program, therecan be a great deal of social isolation forindividuals who spend significant timeaway from the office.18 Companies haveto put in other support structures, likecreative office design, just to ensureworkers are in the office from time totime to interact with people. At DeloitteConsulting in Pittsburgh, for instance, thecompany created areas for social interac-tion and casual meeting places as part ofits switch to flexible workspaces. Onepopular perk is a ‘cybercafé’, wherehurried consultants can munch on freesnacks while they plug in their laptops ina relaxed environment. The café offers sixkinds of cappuccino, fruit, bagels andcandy bars.19 The company even stoppeddelivering mail to employees’ desks, amove that fosters chance encounters andsocialising. Employees who now have towalk to the mailroom to get their mailoften get a chance to meet and catch upwith co-workers. In the virtual worldface-to-face communication seems to beeven more important. Office design canplay a role in meeting this need.

SENSE OR NONSENSE?The developments described above areattractive. Work is transformed into play,and workplaces are transformed intoplaygrounds. It is clear, however, that thecompanies used as examples in this paperdo not represent the average organisation.Most of them are in the Internet,multimedia or design businesses. For suchorganisations, ‘fun’ offices are almosta natural option: their employees areyoung; they are in creative businesses, andin most cases they are relatively success-ful, meaning that they have sufficientresources to invest in ‘extras’. In thatsense, they have little in common with

work. Perhaps more importantly, theseteams are increasingly linked, via globalnetworks like the Internet, with an instan-taneous and unrestricted flow of informa-tion within and between teams and teammembers.

‘Eighty per cent of life is just showingup’, Woody Allen once said in an inter-view, when he was expressing an every-day reality for the Industrial Age worker.One has to be there to be seen, and onehas to be seen to be trusted. But thatmodel of work is simply no longer ap-propriate. Showing up no longer has to bea part of the equation. Work is what onedoes, not where one goes; doing it is whatcounts.16 In this context of independenceof time and place, it is extremely impor-tant for workers to have a common spacewhere they meet colleagues, have smalltalks with their boss (if they have one) andcatch up with all the new gossip. It is notjust earning a salary. It is about belonging,about having a stake.

For this reason, office buildings, placeswhere employees meet face-to-face andcan actually work together, will beincreasingly important. For example,Sapient Corp., an e-business managementconsulting firm in Cambridge, Mas-sachusetts, gives each project team ofengineers a room where they workclosely for periods as short as 10 or 12weeks or as long as 18 months. That spacebelongs to the group members for theduration of the project, and they can useit as frequently as they want and in theway they want. They even can personaliseit. For them the physical room, with itswalls, door and furniture, is the centralmeeting point in their increasingly virtualworld. Furthermore, it is the place wherethey meet their clients, and in their caseit is therefore almost an obligation tomake the place unconventional, as clientscome to them for offbeat, creativethinking.17

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traditional, large, ‘old economy’ corpora-tions.

So, what is the relevance of extraordi-nary design concepts to the averagecorporation? Probably, it lies in the ideathat ‘fun’ office design will stimulateemployee creativity. It is said that theoccasional pool table and bean bags domore than brighten up the space; they getthe ‘creative juices flowing’. If somebodyis having a ‘mind freeze’, they can get upand walk around. Such features aresupposed to help employees to expresstheir feelings. And, to a certain extent,this is probably true. According tothe ‘behaviour-setting theory’, peoplerespond spontaneously upon recognisingcertain physical cues in the setting(colours, materials, layout . . .). In otherwords: design informs users about howthey should behave. For example, it hasbeen noticed that churches elicit religiousbehaviour even in people who are notreligious. Likewise, moving from theconference table to the easy chairs in theexecutive suite often produces less formalinteraction.20 And in a residential atmos-phere workers may feel more relaxed andcomfortable than in a grey, sterile workenvironment.

Nonetheless, the impact of design onbehaviour should not be overestimated.First, people easily get used to newenvironments. It is questionable for howlong employees will literally ‘see’ thebright colours and awkward shapes. Howlong will they be surprised by the idea ofhaving surfboards on the wall? Secondly,and more important, is the fact that thesuccess of creative design depends on theorganisational context. Ultimately ‘fun’and ‘creativity’ are really about spon-taneity, and spontaneity is tough tomanage. Unlike buildings and interiors, itis not something that can be designed.Therefore, creative office design worksonly when people want it to.

It is the corporate culture — theemployees’ norms and values about work,formality and interaction — which definesthe sense or nonsense of basketball courtsand chill-out zones. In many cases thesenorms and values are still quite rigid andtraditional. In the Netherlands, for ex-ample, corporate culture is deeply rootedin the Protestant work ethic.21 Manyorganisations are wary of investing in ‘fun’elements that are not closely related towork. To employees, a ‘non-stop partyatmosphere’, with its obligatory socialevents, may be almost as tyrannical asold-economy rules about wearing a tieand calling their boss ‘sir’. Research showsthat Dutch employees generally do notengage much in social contacts with theirco-workers.22 In that case, the chances arethat an office pub or lounge will soon endup as archive space. After all, what is themeaning of a corporate watering holewhen only 3.4 per cent of Dutchemployees occasionally drink a beer withcolleagues after working time?

Just like other radical new office con-cepts, the ‘fun’ office is probably a perfectsolution for some corporations — depend-ing on their culture, demographics andwork processes. Still, the examples dis-cussed in this paper hold important les-sons for office design in general. Even ifone does not buy the ‘new economy’management rhetoric, the discussed ex-amples provide food for thought. What setsthem apart from ordinary office buildings isnot their efficiency or their flexibility, buttheir focus on the ‘soft’ side of office design:the desires and needs of employees. Theirdesign may be a bit over the top, but theyare a welcome deviation from tedious,mainstream office design. Most mainstreamoffices still resemble those of a hundredyears earlier.

Colours and materials may havechanged, but the basic idea is still thesame, while organisations and work styles

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the current crisis in the dot.com sector.Even the most ‘hip’ Internet companiesare now ‘rationalising’ their real estateportfolio, focusing on efficiency ratherthan employee desires. Cisco, for ex-ample, has a huge surplus of space at thismoment, which it is trying to lease toother companies. According to Americanreal estate experts, the situation at Ciscois typical. In Silicon Valley, supply exceedsdemand for office space and rents aregoing down. Real estate, an organisation’ssecond largest cost factor, is an attractivearea for cost reduction. For that reason itis questionable whether companies willstill be willing to invest in ‘funky’ design(designer furniture, the latest technologiesand extras such as a gym or an espressobar) when facing a financial crisis. Willlong-term benefits such as employee satis-faction and creativity survive the short-term focus on costs and efficiency?

REFERENCES

(1) Vos, P., van Meel, J. and Dyks, A.(1999) ‘The Office, the Whole Officeand Nothing But the Office’, DelftUniversity of Technology, Delft,; vanMeel, J. (2000) ‘The European Office’,010 Publishers, Rotterdam.

(2) Toffler, A. (1981) ‘The Third Wave’,Pan Books, London.

(3) Kraan, K. and Dhondt, S. (2000)‘Telework in practice: Limits to timeand freedom?’, TNO Arbeid, Delft.

(4) Brooks, D. (2000) ‘Bobos in Paradise:The Upper Class and How They GotThere’, Simon & Schuster, New York.

(5) Zelinksy, M. (1997) ‘New Workplacesfor New Workstyles’, McGraw-Hill,New York.

(6) Russel, J. S. (2000) ‘Form Follows Fad:The Troubled Love Affair ofArchitectural Style and ManagementIdeal’, in Albrecht, D. and Broikos, C.B. (eds), ‘On the Job: Design and theAmerican office’, PrincetonArchitectural Press, Princeton, NJ.

have altered. A great many books haveaddressed the issue of the informationsociety, knowledge economy, networkeconomy or, more recently, the neweconomy. Whatever name is being used,it is clear that life- and work styles areslowly changing because of the emer-gence of new technologies (just as theyhave always done).

The problem is that these changes arehard to materialise into design. Evenmany of the so-called innovative officeconcepts are still stuck in the 20thcentury, ‘old’ economy model. As oftenseen in history, innovations are still basedon the old paradigm: the first aeroplaneslooked like a fast car, and the first cars likea horse carriage. Likewise, most officesstill look like white-collar factories. Even‘modern’ open plans differ little from19th-century typing pools. Interestingly,the examples discussed in this paper try toprovide alternative typologies, such as theoffice as the playground, the village, thecampus, or the medieval warehouse.These metaphors seem a bit naıve, butthey try to deal with the notion that,paradoxically, offices are becoming morerather than less important in our ‘virtual’lives. Earlier the office used to be a placeto work; now the office seems to have amore demanding role, as a place wherepeople practically live, as well as work.

Many of the topics addressed in thispaper are still open to question. One ofthe most basic questions remains whetherthe informal and casual office style of the‘new economy’ will have a lasting impacton the real estate market. Is funky of-fice design just a temporary expressionof fashion? Or does it represent a fun-damental shift in the way people thinkabout work and workplaces? Will large,‘old economy’ businesses (the majority ofthe market) also adopt fun-features intheir work environment? These ques-tions are hard to answer in the light of

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(7) Christiaanse, K. (2000) ‘F*** theprogramme?’, Archis, July,http://www.archis.org/english/archis_art_e_2000/archis_art_0007b_e.html (10-05-01).

(8) Design Week (2000)http://www.mad.co.uk/search/Story/story.asp?ID=200006230063.

(9) Deal, T. E. and Kennedy, A. A. (1986)‘Corporate Cultures: The Rites andRituals of Corporate Life’,Addison-Wesley, Reading, Ma.

(10) Worthington, J. (2000) ‘AccommodatingChange: Emerging Real EstateStrategies’, Journal of Corporate RealEstate, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 81–95.

(11) Stewart, D., Friedman, D. and Jeffrey,H. (2000) ‘Work and Family: Allies orEnemies?’, Oxford University Press,Oxford.

(12) See ref. 4 above.(13) See ref. 6 above.(14) Rifkin, J. (2000) ‘The Age of Access:

The New Culture of HypercapitalismWhere All of Life is a Paid-forExperience’, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam,New York.

(15) Kao, J. (1997) ‘Jamming: The Art andDiscipline of Business Creativity’,HarperBusiness, New York.

(16) Grulke, W. E. (1999) ‘The NewWorkplace: The Changing Nature of

Work, Organisations and Business inthe Information Economy’, AFSMInternational, Fort Mayers, FL.

(17) Hines, T. (2000) ‘Office Intrigues: TheInterior Life of Corporate Culture’, inAlbrecht, D. and Broikos, C. B. (eds),‘On the Job: Design and the AmericanOffice’, Princeton Architectural Press,Princeton, NJ.

(18) Becker, F. and Steele, F. (1994)‘Workplace by Design: Mapping theHigh-performance Workspace’,Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco.

(19) Duffy, D. (2001) ‘Cube Stakes,CIO.com’, http://www.cio.com/archive/enterprise/041599_wksp.html.

(20) Berg, P. O. and Kreiner, K. (1990)‘Corporate Architecture: TurningPhysical Settings into SymbolicResources’, in Gagliardi, P. (ed.),‘Symbols and Artifacts: Views of theCorporate Landscape’, Aldine deGruyter, New York.

(21) Hampden-Turner, C. and Trompenaars,F. (1993) ‘The Seven Cultures ofCapitalism’, Doubleday, New York.

(22) De Ruyter, J. (2000) ‘Co-workerand/or Friend? A Research on theFrequency of Social Contacts withCo-workers’, Faculty of SocialSciences, Erasmus University,Rotterdam.

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