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Draadloze technologie bevrijdt ons uit de kantoor gevangenis. Economieën verschuiven naar een post-industriëel tijdperk, waardoor onze kantooromgeving moet veranderen. Met de smartphone past tegenwoordig het kantoor in je broekzak. De wens om te werken in een "in-between-ruimte", een ruimte dicht bij huis maar niet thuis, neemt met dag toe. De time laps brengt een analyse van de huidige werkruimtes in Amsterdam West in kaart.

The need to work in an "in-between-space" increases

We can access the whole world from our laptops. This process enables us to interact with everybody from everywhere. Fading the separating between our public and private lives. The need to work in an "in-between-space" increases, a space close to home but not at home. We can work where we want whenever we want. It's possible to end our daily routines and start living a new working live. We can enter the streets and experience the world and our cities while we are working. We can explore new possibilities without losing connection. Where are these places of work, these out-of-office office spaces? With this workshop I wanted to explore the possibilities of these public office spaces, the coffee shops and public benches, terraces and street furniture. What are the overall qualities of these spaces?

I used a technique called a dérive used by Guy de Bord and the International Situationists in the '60s. For the Situationists a dérive gives the opportunity to explore freed from the daily routines. In order to find these new public office spaces I needed to free myself from my own preconditions, but I still needed guidelines to value a newfound space. I needed criteria: They need to have free and accessible Wifi, a good bench where I could type and quite enough so I wouldn't be interrupted or needed to move.

Movie: Time-laps production

To document these spaces I needed a fixed point, a point to value the differences between the different sites. For every work environments the laptop is the unit of production and the facilitator to work in different environments. I used it as the centre of the composition of the scene and made sure that every within every image the laptop was always in central perspective. Further more I needed to examine a longer period of time from each site and not just an instance. I used a technique called time-laps photography to document these sites.

Scene: West of Amsterdam

The day of the dérive started and I set out on my journey to find these site. I set a general route towards the west of Amsterdam from my home in east Amsterdam. I found ten sites on my journey, from benches in Vondelpark to terraces and coffee shops. The interesting find was that most public spaces aren't facilitating outdoor office work. ¬Public furniture in general does not facilitate the possibility to work. The angle of the benches and the lack of tables make it difficult to type or do any work on these benches. The most usable spaces now are the terraces and public cafes and coffee shops.

Each site has it's own characters

At the end each site has it's own characters. In order to investigate the similarities between these newfound outdoor office spaces I edited the time-laps movies and overlapped them showing multiple sites at ones with the laptop still as a fixed point. A similarity between all the sites is that the movement is always in the background, a moving wall paper changing every ones in a while. There is no difference between busy and quite sites both site are only present in the background.

Wifi facilitates new possibilities

Our cities are not facilitating the possibilities that wifi can offer. Our street furniture and public spaces are not designed as workspaces. Only coffe shops and terraces facilitated good public office spaces. Yet the possibility to work outside can be more than just an coffee shop needed around the corner. Wifi enables us to work everywhere if it is facilitated. Redesign of public benches and other street furniture can facilitate this environment better. But now it still is a wifi dream.

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