The Designer Workplace

Kiwi is the color of the moment. There's no escaping it, not even in the august galleries of the Museum of Modern Art. With its "Workspheres" exhibition, there was little to distinguish the museum gallery from a retail furniture showroom elsewhere in Manhattan--except that it was almost impossible to try out the merchandise.

Curated by the cosmopolitan and well-connected Paola Antonelli, the recent show seemed to suggest that if you're not enchanted by a gelatinous computer keyboard or a desk that looks like a surfboard, you're just not cool enough to triumph in the New Economy. The Workplace of the Future is a place where everyone is empowered, everyone is a road warrior and everyone has a boss--or investors--more than willing to buy desk chairs at $800 a pop.

Offices have captured the imagination at least since Bob Cratchit with his fingerless gloves grasped a ratty quill pen and cowered under Ebenezer Scrooge's demands. Contemporary Western offices are places where (mostly) adults read, write, compute, analyze, market, sell, argue, solve problems and display their know-how, power or impotence--their own and that of the company--generally acting in ways they hope will contribute to the company's bottom line. Offices can be located in landscaped "office park" cul-de-sacs off major highways or leased out within the skin of urban skyscrapers. They can be wedged into multipurpose buildings and malls. Increasingly, they are built into settings that whisper of other traditions, like renovated mills, warehouses and industrial lofts. With work forces that swell and shrink--the business-world term is "churn"--full-time and contract workers make temporary alliances that often mirror a company's rising and falling stock price.

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