Work from Home seems like a new addition to the 21st-century dictionary, isn’t it? Well, not really. Home-based work is neither an all-new phenomenon nor an invention. But it is a re-discovery post-pandemic, a phenomenon that picked upstream during this period. It existed in the past, specifically in the pre-industrial times, but almost perished during the Industrial Revolution with the birth of the factories, city, and work away from the home and the suburbs. Yet, again home-based work regained its attention at an amplified level becoming a buzzword in various industries raising various concerns and questions, during and post-pandemic.
Origin of Work-Homes
The very idea of home-based work challenges the established architectural principles of separating the home and the workspace and creating different spatial standards for them, which began during the Industrial Revolution. However, history proves that work has indeed dictated home and vice versa, in some way or the other. Dr. Frances Holliss coined the term “Workhome” to recognize spaces or buildings that were earlier unnoticed as a category and nameless, where people both lived and worked. Since it is high time with revolutionary changes like remote work, globalization, and advancements in information technology, it is necessary to identify and analyze the precedents of workhomes and devise a strategic standard for designing and planning them.
Forgotten Stories of Home-based Work
In the pre-industrial era, home-based work was usual, irrespective of the work, as boundaries between work and domestic life were blurred and workers had complete control over their work and life. However, different social and economic groups inhabited different work homes usually with shops and warehouses on the ground floor and dwellings on the upper floors.
With proto-industrialization, the workers lost aristocracy over their work and became mere workers who were paid for their craft work, whilst, it was their master who delivered raw materials, collected finished products, and sold them to earn profit. Again, different types of work homes emerged with class differences. Since shops that required public interaction were not necessary and only workspaces were needed, they were pushed to upper floors, and ground floors were left for dwelling.
A Paradigm Shift: Segregating Homes and Workplaces
But with the Industrial Revolution, a new idea emerged about housing and workspace. Houses were supposed to be in quiet suburbs and men were supposed to leave home, to work in cities which was made possible by trains and other products of the Industrial Revolution. This created a drastic shift in the understanding of home and work. In turn an urban evolution with the introduction of color-coded functional zoning to segregate residential and commercial zones emerged. Though, poor crafts persons were deprived of workhomes, artists, and architects still built and inhabited customized workhomes even in modern times.
Incidental Workhomes: Unanticipated Emergence of Unequipped Workhomes
The stay-at-home period, imposed during the pandemic revealed the weakness and limitations of the existing housing designs which saw home as just a place to live. But home had evolved into somewhere more than just a dwelling during the pandemic, with the introduction of “critical emerging functions” at home including attending remote school classes and university lectures, working from home, indulging in leisure physical or digital activities, and games. Numerous surveys revealed that the lack of availability of spaces and their inapt characteristics is one of the most critical difficulties faced while accumulating new jobs and activities at home. Reaffirming David Schill’s words; “Not everyone who lives in a one or two-room apartment has the possibility to have a workspace as well as a living room and bedroom”, the major issue was the lack of separate spaces to work, dwell and sleep. To meet the emerging functional requirements, some have interchangeably used the living room as a home office for working and studying remotely or as a space for daily life and play. However, it not only accentuated health risks due to overcrowding but also interfered with productivity in remote working and school performances with the lack of desirable working conditions like acoustic privacy and natural lighting. The existing housing designs were rigid, and lacked privacy in many ways, unable to accommodate any new function with clear boundaries between the new (work) and existing (life) functions. This is one of the major issues identified during the stay-at-home period.
Addressing the Conundrum: Work or Home
One of the major concerns while designing workhomes, is to omit the chaos caused by mixing work and home as it happened during the stay-at-home period. There is a need to identify the dominant function in a workhome. But how? Is there a one-size-fits-all model? Not really. Upon temporal investigation of workhomes, certain conclusions were drawn about the spaces. Spatial requirement for home-based work is highly dependent on the nature of the work, whether the work involves dealing with the general public, or if it is limited to family members and employees, if the work requires natural lighting or not, and the needs and desires of the family that inhabits the workhome itself. Workhomes can be categorized into 3 types based on the dominant function; home-dominant, work-dominant, and equal status. For instance, while parents of toddlers involved in a home-based business might choose home-dominated workhomes, craft persons may choose a work-dominated workhome, and developed business owners may choose an equal status workhome. To an extent, the degree of separation between work and home decides which type of work home is apt. Workhomes can further be classified into many types, depending on the degree of separation between work and home. However, the degree of separation desired is again an implication of the nature of the work and family that inhabits.
Upgrading the Architectural Fabric to Facilitate Remote Work
Architects foresee the addition of a few new components to the existing model of housing, enhancing flexibility, achieving safety, and addressing the unanticipated functions as a solution to equip the homes to become workhomes. One large hall with no divisions is also rigid and thus such open plans must be reconsidered and re-equipped into “broken plans” with sliding doors or other technology dividing the hall into private spaces. Since most people desire a private dedicated office with ample amount of natural light and privacy in their homes, post-pandemic, it is worth devoting a specific space for remote work at home. Also, since humans are inherently attached to nature and nature plays a vital role in maintaining good mental health, semi-open areas like balconies are a recommended addition to the existing model of homes.
Moreover, architects convey an urge to address the issue at an Urban Scale. Proposing an increase in the mixed-use developments and introducing public activities in the ground floor interface of the solely residential buildings, which now have uninviting frontages can be an ideal solution to tackle the challenges of accommodating remote work at home in addition to addressing the social isolation caused by remote work. The public activities in the frontage could serve as additional amenities and shared spaces like co-working spaces, libraries, and other gathering spaces that benefit all the neighbors. These proposals will initiate a change in the way cities are viewed and pave the way to innovative concepts like the “15-minute city”. Once again, similar to the pre-industrial era, people will work from their homes or nearby, and the current city center more often than not considered a commercial hub will gradually fade away giving rise to the much-needed people-centered, new typology of Urban fabric.
What Future Awaits Workhomes
Today, in this global era, digitalization has made certain scope of work possible from any corner of the world. The work-from-home strategy used by many companies during the pandemic serves as testimony to this fact. In fact, some reports prove work from home existed even before the outbreak of the pandemic. Workhomes are still continued to be built upon request with customization. However, customized workhomes only fit certain owners pursuing specific careers for a shorter period. With rising environmental concerns over the construction and demolition of buildings, it is important to design workhomes such that they last for an eternity.
To Last for An Eternity
To sustain work-homes beyond time and owners, work-homes need to be flexible and adaptable. This creates a need to look for alternative building technologies like X-Frame which allows recyclable flexible construction, quick upsizing or downsizing, and adaptability to different owners or types of works, constructing short-span low-cost work-homes like the Japanese Machiyas and repurposing large office towers which are abandoned into work homes. In cases of tight apartments or small houses, where the only option is demolition, alternatives like co-working spaces, multi-use libraries, and incubators located near homes can be used as workspaces. The urban design is to be redesigned to accommodate collaborative workspaces to compensate for social isolation and lack of space for work in present-day homes. The urban design should integrate various types, classes, and ages of work-homes together in short blocks creating a pedestrian-friendly environment for improving social sustainability and creating an attachment within the neighborhood. The main focus should be on executing the idea of work-homes with social, temporal, and environmental sustainability as the core concern.
Reference
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