AT when the new school year begins, the boss’s office will be empty. Covid-19 and teleworking may have ended up removing it. In the world before, we rose in the hierarchy at the same time as in the floors. The boss’s office was at the top, with a panoramic view. We climbed into the elevator, shuddering with hope or anguish. When we come back, maybe the whole floor will have been transformed into meeting rooms. There will be no one. Employees may not even know where management is.
“The office of president with four doors and cerberus to reach him is disappearing. »Jean-Michel Wilmotte, architect
Before the crisis due to Covid-19, we already felt that it was not done too much, the good old office of the boss. Already a bit out of fashion. Trying to impress your interlocutor with the most imposing furniture possible, it was a bit like posing for a photo in front of your car on a dating site: a lack of taste.
Cubed (Doubleday, 2014, untranslated), a marvelous work by the American Nikil Saval devoted to the history of the office, tells very well how this place where everyone finds natural to spend their days has become a distributor of social status since the beginning of the XIXe century: the more white-collar jobs and organizational charts grew, the more it was necessary to find outward signs of identification of hierarchical levels for employees dressed roughly the same and therefore physically interchangeable. In France, companies such as la Française des jeux still recently had grids listing the number of square meters, windows and office sizes of the company’s employees.
Minimalism is essential
At Sotheby’s, Florent Jeanniard, vice-president France, director of the design department of XXe century, evokes the three-meter-long office made available to the prefect of Val-d’Oise, in Cergy, and designed by Joseph-André Motte in the early 1960s. “No one would create furniture of this size anymore! “ Just as minimalism imposed itself in decoration as soon as everyone was able to fill their apartment with furniture made in China, the hot desking (flex office, in French) is fast becoming the latest management chic.
“Twenty years ago, we started to hear: ‘Don’t put me on the top floor’”, remembers Vincent Dubois, general manager of the Archimage agency. It seemed a bit incongruous. The great leaders set an example and now do without an office: it is the best way to preach the gospel of the liberated company, of agile management.
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