A design for an Easy office, whose radical simplification and optimization of the standard office generates a high-quality work environment with a large measure of individual freedom

Give me back my freedom! is a reaction to our interiorized, conditioned, artificial, bland surroundings. This research by design kicks off with a manifesto, how I see the status quo of our immediate surroundings and its effect on us as its users. Are our surroundings, our buildings and the products we use daily as normal as we assume, and are they being designed the right way? The project proposes using Easy architecture to radically simplify these surroundings into an uncomplicated environment based on elementary principles. Drawing on present and potential qualities, its aim is to maximize performance and individual freedom. Enjoy your freedom!

The brief is a first practical application of the manifesto. The chosen programme of an office is typical of the generalization, artificiality and interiorization of our surroundings. It is also symbolic of the capitalist model, where millions of people spend their time daily but which almost invariably produces a sense of dreariness. The project consists of an Easy architecture prototype for an office of a large bank with the market norms required of it.

In the research component I set out to conceptualize what are the real consequences, and more importantly the potentials, of capitalist culture, the objective being to maximize the performance of the work environment. Can an office evolve from a dead box into a more sympathetic and healthy setting?

To bring to light the crises of the standard office, the research deconstructs office typology, namely the sealed interior with its highly disputable quality of work environment, and the tower block as paradigm for the office. This last-named is responsible for the lack of urban quality in every office environment and necessitates sealing the interior. It transpires that there are sufficient grounds for refuting the validity of the office tower as a standard and therefore the need to maintain it as such. With the knowledge accumulated during my research I developed the Easy office. Here the volume is optimized in terms of, amongst other things, orientation to the sun, interior daylighting and interaction with the surroundings. As for the building, it marks a radical simplification and optimization of the standard office. The work quality has been maximized to give a healthy, naturally regulated work environment of a high quality and with plenty of individual freedom. It also lays the foundations for an efficient management with optimum communication and flexibility so as to pick up on unforeseen corporate developments.

The anti-formalist approach gives an assemblage of constituent principles. The building is a rack of neutral floors with a warehouse-like quality - a neutral work-machine with space and openness, a platform for activities. In this capacity the building incites its users to activate it, use it, adapt it, optimize it. Added elements such as 'machines' for climate control, logistics and socializing all have something to contribute to this work-machine. These stand-alone elements of obvious function include light bays, brise-soleil balconies, wind shield, air and lift shafts with wind holes, diagonal stairwells, service towers, business foyer with accelerators, sun-roof with cooking unit, shortcut and monitor.

Place of education: AvB Rotterdam | Specialization: architecture | Tutors: André Kempe commissie/committee: Robert Winkel, Jaap Wiedenhoff, Timo de Rijk