The Situated Workplace and Public Life

The modern workplace has undergone fundamental change and continues to evolve. The context of work in many industries is today being shaped substantially by changing workforce demographics, the pervasiveness of mobile and embedded information technologies, hyper-connected work models on a global scale, evolving notions of health and well being, etc. Our public realm is changing too. People are moving to cities in greater numbers than ever before posing both challenges and opportunities related to new levels of density, sustainable resource management, resilient infrastructures, as well as new forms of civic engagement at neighborhood levels, to name but a few. These changes at an urban scale impact how and where public life happens and how it interacts with new modalities at work.This course will combine research, conceptual explorations, studio design work, seminars and guest lectures to explore the impact of the changing workplace on the morphology of the city by examining these bi-coastal seats of innovation. As the creative workplace continues to evolve, how will it engage the public realm within both well-established urban frameworks such as San Francisco and Boston, and emerging suburban contexts, such as Silicon Valley?The course will join graduate students from the Northeastern University School of Architecture with students from the Stanford University Architectural Design program. Students will reside primarily at their prospective universities and will travel selectively for site research, team charettes and project reviews. Project sites on both coasts will be utilized for research and studio work. This is an opportunity for students from two top universities, both situated in the epicenters of workplace change, to explore and conduct valuable research on an issue that is changing their urban environments.