As semi-productive members of society, many of you are reading this post while sitting in a cubicle at work. According to the New York Times, you may be slowly wasting away in that half-box you call a workspace because of the amount of time you spend sitting. Rethinking the traditional office, architects at RAAAF and artist Barbara Visser have designed a work environment that looks more like the set design at a Kanye West concert than a place of business.
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In the Sitting Kills video below by Olivier Campagen of Artefactorylab, a digitally rendered walkthrough of the space shows how employees would interact with the one another and move about the office. There are no traditional desks or seats, so workers stand and lean on the rocky surfaces and walk through tunnels carved into the structure.
"The key is that the sculpture’s affordances stimulate people to take up different working positions during the day and promotes concentration," writes RAAAF. "This is a first step towards a future in which standing at work is the new norm. A lifelong health where we are both physically and mentally active."
We've seen a lot of cool offices designed to have more collaborative spaces and interesting features, but this may be the first time that we've seen a design that moves away from the desks-and-chairs model. The idea is cool, but there is a lot of wasted space shown in these plans. If the flat and slanted surfaces near the top of the rock structure were transformed into more standing/working areas, they could make the most of the office space, instead of filling precious square footage with something that looks cool and serves very little purpose.
For a closer look at this unique design, check out the RAAAF project page.
[via FastCoCreate]
