Back to the Office

A massive visual history of classic offices by Mies, Ponti, Le Corbusier, SOM and more

Now that technology has made it possible to work almost anywhere--and since the COVID-19 pandemic forced so many to work from home--we have a conflicted relationship with the office. Desperate to work again in physically shared spaces, we are also now questioning whether offices--and the demanding, alienating rhythms they may impose--are needed at all. Offices themselves are also subject to intolerable forces: 21st-century building regulations suggest redesigning them every seven to ten years; managerial strategies typically shift every five years; and offices are torn down, stripped out, rethought and renewed with alarming frequency.
With the future of our workspaces so uncertain, Back to the Office looks to both past and future, revisiting the revolutionary offices of the 20th century, and asking what endures from their architecture, their materials and the ideologies of work they embody.
Compiling before-and-after photography, archival documents, contemporary interviews and critical essays, this book engages corporations, architects, workers, building managers, regulators and others, in search of the lessons we need to learn for the future of office life.
Back to the Office looks at the development of iconic office projects by SOM, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Arne Jacobsen, Herman Hertzberger, Oscar Niemeyer, Gio Ponti, Le Corbusier, Kenzo Tange and many others, spread across four continents. Includes contributions by Rem Koolhaas, Herman Hertzberger, Keigo Koyabashi Lab, Manfredo di Robilant and Shaun Fynn, among others.