Megadebacleopolis: Living in the future office

Luc Peters

The Future is Now’ (Hudsucker Proxy, Coen Brothers, 1994)



This paper is about the evolution of our cities and the role they have in our work- and leisure-life. Thinking about organization and ways to improve it normally does not consider the built environment as an actor, but as an inevitable object. We can ask ourselves if this is a correct assumption? In this paper I will state that the architecture in which we live is a relevant subject, it is an actor in organization. That should imply that the neglecting of architecture is a false one. But it goes further, when looking at architects and the ideas they developed concerning organization we can notice that they are often way ahead of the ideas developed from an organization-science point of view. I will take Frank Lloyd Wright as an example who constructed several ideas concerning organization in 1906 with his Larkin Building, ideas which took physical form from a management perspective only in the seventies. This and similar phenomenon should open our eyes to the world of architecture. Architecture implies building and according to Heidegger (1954), building equals living and living is being as such. So we cannot overlook architecture and have to ask ourselves what can we learn from the thoughts and ideas of architects?

But there is more. It is not just that architects might have ideas which are way beyond, but it is also about the impact architecture has on our lives. Architecture is everywhere and always present. It has a serious emotional impact which should not be neglected. Buildings can become a true part of our self. While architects think about the future of our cities and the offices within them, we neglect these thoughts, but still try to understand what happens in these offices without taking the physical surroundings into consideration. The impact of architecture is however unavoidable and I should like to focus the question of us being able to live in our modern offices. In order to form an opinion I will look at projects like New Babylon, Broadacre City, Un-Conscious-City and the work of Lebbeus Woods and Rem Koolhaas and the thoughts of Peter Sloterdijk. Furthermore I will use the interaction between film and architecture and the philosophical relevance as it is described by Gilles Deleuze. I will look at some cinematic representations of our coming cities and whether or not there is a serious possibility of living in them. The future is now so it should be within our grasp especially considering that everything has already been done and we’re on repeat.