As long-time nomadic workers, we translated our experiences into a cover story for On Office magazine, where we set out some of the lessons that future public workspaces can learn from the Victorian pub.
In light of converging trends in remote working and new conceptions of productivity, our research foresaw the drawbacks that a home-working lifestyle would bring, namely a lack of human interaction leading to stifled career development and social isolation. As such, we highlighted the urgency of creating a viable ‘third space’ that would offer a public workspace in between the home and the office.
While cafes and hub spaces serve this purpose, they do so imperfectly. Instead, during our residency at the Victoria & Albert Museum, we delved into its archives and found a diagram for a now-demolished Victorian pub called Elephant & Castle that had a variety of different public and private environments catering to the needs of the community, allowing users to seamlessly switch between work, play, and dining. We took this model and applied it to modern-day businesses, including the El Paso bar on Old Street, as well as a pub table design which we debuted at Salone del Mobile.
By channelling lessons from Elephant & Castle, we laid out how designs facilitating an effective workspace for modern nomadic workers could encourage spatial and experiential multiplicity, resulting in a fulfilling future in remote working for all.
A copy of the article can be downloaded Here