Most people today spend a third of their lives sleeping, a third of their lives living, and a third of their lives working. Our work environments significantly impact our lives. For centuries, designers, philosophers, and management experts have debated how best to design our workspaces. The recent pandemic has also considerably shaped our ideas about how to work.
In his new book, The Office of Good Intentions: Human(s) Work architect Florian Idenburg examines this history and offers some design thoughts of his own. Idenburg is an internationally recognized Dutch architect and founder, along with Jing Lui, of SO-IL, a firm globally renowned for its art museum designs and innovative approaches to living.
A critic of art, architecture, and design, Aaron Betsky is the author of over 20 books on those subjects, including Fifty Lessons to Learn from Frank Lloyd Wright (2021) and the forthcoming books The Monster Leviathan: Anarchitecture, Re-Imagining Buildings and Re:Assemble. Betsky recently reviewed Idenburg’s book, and the two will continue the conversation in this captivating program at the MFA.
We sometimes take for granted that everything around us, if not part of nature, has been “designed,” from the phone in your hand to the road you drive on to the workspace you may spend a third of your life in. The By Design series will look at the world around us and the impact design has on the way we live.