UCLA Students Travel to Japan

As a part of the WORKHOUSE Research Studio Sequence, students traveled to Japan to research ongoing shifts in work culture. Assisted by Okamura Corporation, students had the opportunity to visit a series of creative office and co-working spaces that are at the forefront of this shift.

The office is an architectural type that is as politically, economically, and culturally charged, as it is technical and tectonic. With technological advancements and changes in labor practices, the workplace was liberated from the domestic realm, causing a spatial, programmatic, and ideological schism. This strict delineation of office and house became a key concept of modernization that motivated architecture and urban design practices for much of the 20th Century. Currently, there is a paradigm shift that reunites these two environments, creating a gray zone between domestic and work, conceivably triggering a  re-organization of our discipline.

Current workspaces demonstrate an evolution of the workstyle that no longer ties the program of work to the building type of office. Today’s creative offices expand the definition of the workplace from a site of management and production to a place fostering communication, community, and creativity. Meanwhile, emerging co-working spaces are restructuring the model of leasable office space and adapting those spaces to meet current workstyle demands. As a catalyst, co-working stimulates new programmatic relationships, while opening the possibilities for new building types. This studio seeks to understand and unlock the potential of co-working to produce new forms of value in contemporary society.