Workspheres: Design and Contemporary Work Styles - Hardcover

Paola Antonelli is curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Based on an exhibition of the same name currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, this book examines the role of design in the imagined workplace of the future and features work by an international selection of design teams. Five brief essays precede more than 100 pages of enticements for acquisitive workers, from Prada sport jackets to collapsible keyboards. The editor occasionally indulges in frivolity, as with Laurence Sarrazin's puzzlingly impractical banana-shaped zip-up tool cases. The essays focus on the effects of electronic technology and the promise of telecommuting, but also included here are Larry Keely's able review of workplace predictions since the 17th century and Christopher Budd's look at the office from 1950 to the present, an excellent exploration of how the ethos of a particular workplace is expressed in its design. The volume's chief asset is its numerous color illustrations, which serve as a catalog of the best of contemporary office furnishings and products. Though Workspheres lacks the freshness and spirited idealism of the museum's earlier and more compelling Italy: The New Domestic Landscape (1972 o.p.), it is still recommended for all design collections. Paul Glassman, New York Sch. of Interior Design
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