The contemporary workplace has derived from successive compression/decompression. First there was the hierarchical Taylorist office. Then came the rational well-lit well-organized office with individual cubicles which allocated each employee the exact amount of air they needed to breathe. Later there was a return to the open landscape office, with free layouts, shrouded in vegetation, which was the forerunner of the de-materialization of the workplace.

Today we are in a far more fluid state which envisages the specialization of space and brand expression. Diversity and identity. The workplace should encompass, not only the two basic tasks already known - individual and group work - but also tasks involving learning and socializing.

A Better Place to Work is the first volume of the WORKFORCE series, dedicated to the design of workspaces.