評論
打印
Business
商業
Bartleby -- The office of the future
巴托比專欄——未來的辦公室
Cubicles are out. Bars, neighbourhoods and sensors are in.
不再是格子間。吧臺、社區和傳感器統統加入。
The office used to be a place people went because they had to.
辦公室曾經是人們必須去的地方。
Meetings happened in conference rooms and in person.
會議在會議室面對面進行。
Desks took up the bulk of the space.
桌子占據大部分空間。
The kingdom of Dilbert and of David Brent is now under threat.
呆伯特和大衛·布倫特的王國現在正面臨威脅。
The pandemic has exposed the office to competition from remote working, and brought up a host of questions about how it should be designed in the future.
疫情使辦公室面臨來自遠程工作的競爭，并引發了一系列關于未來辦公室該如何設計的問題。
Start with what the office is for.
先從辦公室的用途說起。
In the past it was a place for employees to get their work done, whatever form that took.
過去，它是員工完成工作的地方，不管是什么形式。
Now other conceptions of its role jostle for attention.
如今，關于其作用的其他構想也在引起人們的關注。
Some think of the office as the new offsite.
有些人認為辦公室是新的“團建地”。
Its purpose is to get people together in person so they can do the things that remote working makes harder: forging deeper relationships or collaborating in real time on specific projects.
它的作用是讓人們面對面地聚在一起，這樣他們就可以完成遠程辦公時較難完成的事情：建立更深層次的關系，或者實時協作完成特定項目。
Others talk of the office as a destination, a place that has to make the idea of getting out of bed earlier, in order to mingle with people who may have COVID-19, seem attractive.
還一些人把辦公室當成一個讓早起的想法變得值得的目的地或地方，這樣他們就能混入人群中，雖然可能有人攜帶著新冠病毒。
In other words, a layout that is largely devoted to people working at serried desks alongside the same colleagues each day all feels very 2019.
換句話說，這種設計很大程度上是為了讓人們每天坐在密集的辦公桌前和同樣的同事一起工作，這一切都給人一種2019年的感覺。
With fewer people coming in and more emphasis on collaboration, fewer desks will be assigned to individuals.
隨著來辦公室的人越來越少，對協作的重視程度越來越高，分配給個人的辦公桌也會越來越少。
Instead, there will be more shared areas, or “neighbourhoods”, where people in a team can work together flexibly.
取而代之的是更多的共享區域，或“社區”，團隊中的人們可以在這里靈活地合作辦公。
(More hot-desking will also necessitate storage space for personal possessions: lockers may soon be back in your life.)
（更多的“輪用辦公桌”也會占用個人物品的存儲空間：儲物柜可能很快就會回到你的生活中。）
To bridge gaps between teams, one tactic is to set aside more of the office to showcase the work of each department, so that people who never encounter each other on Zoom can see examples of what their colleagues do.
為了在團隊之間實現同步，一種策略是在辦公室留出更多的空間來展示各部門的工作成果，這樣那些從未在Zoom上見過面的人就可以看到他們同事所做的工作是怎樣的。
Another option is to ply everyone with drink.
另一個選擇是不停地給大家送酒。
Expect more space to be set aside for socialising and events.
預計會有更多的空間留給社交和活動。
Bars in offices are apparently going to be a thing.
在辦公室設吧臺顯然將成為一種趨勢。
Robin Klehr Avia of Gensler, an architecture firm, says she is seeing lots of requests for places, like large auditoriums, where a company’s clients can have “experiences”.
建筑公司Gensler的Robin Klehr Avia說，她看到很多人要求提供大型禮堂那樣的場所，這樣公司的客戶就可以在那里“體驗”一番。
Designs for the post-covid office must also allow for hybrid work.
疫情后辦公室的設計也必須考慮到混合工作。
Meetings have to work for virtual participants as well as for in-person contributors: cameras, screens and microphones will proliferate.
會議既要服務于虛擬參會者，也要服務于現場參會者：攝像機、屏幕和麥克風的數量將會激增。
Gensler’s New York offices feature mini-meeting rooms that have a monitor and a half-table jutting out from the wall below it, with seating for four or five people arranged to face the screen, not each other.
Gensler在紐約的辦公室設有迷你會議室，里面有一臺顯示器，一個從下方的墻面伸出來的半桌，還設有四五個座位，這些座位是面向屏幕的，而不是彼此相對。
Variety will be another theme.
多樣性將會是另一個主題。
People may plan to work in groups in the morning, but need to concentrate on something in the afternoon.
大家可能計劃在早上進行小組協作，但在下午需要自己專注做一些事情。
Ryan Anderson of Herman Miller, a furniture firm, likens the difference between the pre- and post-pandemic office to that between a hotel and a home.
家具公司Herman Miller的Ryan Anderson把疫情前和疫情后辦公室的區別比作酒店和家的區別。
Hotels are largely given over to rooms for individuals.
酒店基本上是為個人提供房間。
“Home is thought of as a place for a family over years, hosting lots of different activities.”
而“家多年來都被認為是一家人居住的地方，舉辦許多不同的活動。”
All of which implies the need for flexibility.
所有這些都意味著需要靈活性。
Laptop docking stations are simple additions, but other bits of office furniture are harder to overhaul.
筆記本電腦擴展塢是比較簡單的附件，但要對其他辦公家具進行改造會更加困難。
Desks themselves tend to be tethered to the floor through knotted bundles of cables and plugs.
辦公桌本身往往被一捆捆打結的電纜和插頭拴在地板上。
The office of the future may well feature desks with wheels, which ought to go well with all that extra alcohol.
未來的辦公室里很可能會有帶輪子的辦公桌，這應該會和加上的那些酒很搭。
Meeting rooms are likely to be more flexible, too, with walls that lift and slide.
會議室也可能變得更加靈活，配有可以升降和滑動的墻壁。
If socialising and flexibility are two of the themes of the post-pandemic office, a third is data.
如果說社交和靈活性是疫情后辦公室的兩個主題，那么第三個主題就是數據。
Property and HR managers alike will want more data in order to understand how facilities are being used, and on which days and times people are bunching in the office.
公司資產管理者和人力資源經理都想獲得更多的數據，以便了解人們是如何使用設備的，以及人們在哪些日子和時間聚集在辦公室。
Workers will demand more data on health risks: the quality of ventilation within meeting rooms, say, or proper contact-tracing if a colleague tests positive for the latest COVID-19 variant.
員工們將要求提供更多有關健康風險的數據：比如會議室內的通風質量，或者說，如果同事感染了最新的新冠病毒變種，就能提供的正規的接觸者追蹤信息。
And data will flow more copiously in response: from sensors in desks and lighting but also from desk-booking tools and visitor-management apps.
相應地，數據將更加豐富：來自辦公桌和照明設備的傳感器，也來自辦公桌預訂工具和訪客管理應用程序。
The question of who owns data on office occupants and what consent mechanisms are needed to gather this information is about to become more pressing.
誰擁有辦公室使用者的數據，以及需要什么樣的同意機制來收集這些信息，這個問題即將變得更加緊迫。
Put this all together and what do you get?
把所有這些放在一起，你會得到一個怎樣的辦公室？
If you are an optimist, the office of the future will be a spacious, collaborative environment that makes the commute worth it.
如果你是一個樂觀主義者，那么未來的辦公室將是一個寬敞、協作的環境，讓通勤變得值得。
If you are a pessimist, it will be a building full of heavily surveilled drunkards.
如果你是悲觀主義者，那它將是一座充滿受嚴密監視的酒鬼的大樓。
In reality, pragmatic considerations—how much time is left on the lease, the physical constraints of a building’s layout, uncertainty about the path of the pandemic—will determine the pace of change.
在現實中，務實的考慮因素——租約還剩多長時間，建筑布局的物理限制，流行病傳播路徑的不確定性——將決定改變發生的速度。
Whatever happens, the office won't be what it was.
無論發生什么，辦公室都不會再是以前的樣子了。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
