Public Office is both a physical environment and annual program. The program takes many forms – from talks, workshops and readings, to meals, artistic commissions and self-care rituals. Collectively, this research explores the culture of creative work today.
Event
Saturday 25 May and Sunday 26 May 2024 Various times
Long Prawn and food history expert Jan O'Connell host a cultural 'passeggiata' through Collingwood as part of Melbourne Design Week – a walking meal allowing for a variance in pace, taste, texture, context and historic tales, from the defiance of the dim sim to the once widely popular chop picnic.
Recipe
This recipe is an adaptation of a quick lunch my dad would prepare for us in Mauritius before ducking off to work for Saturday night shift. He would go fishing on the beach at Pointe aux Sables in the morning and put together a fried fish salad with fresh tomatoes and chilli, as well as lentil soup and rice. If you can't make it out for a spot of fishing before work, a tin of sardines works really well in lieu of fresh fish. This punchy, bright lunch is bound to leave you invigorated for an afternoon at your desk.
Event
Office Wear 28 February 2024, 6.30PM MPavilion, St Kilda Road, Melbourne
The way we dress is central to how we express our identity. Perhaps more than other settings, the workplace has been a site of radical cultural shifts, played out through changing dress codes. Part of the Paypal Melbourne Fashion Festival’s Independent Programme, Office Wear is a panel discussion that explores the impact, interpretation and subversion of workplace fashion standards, from power dressing, to the sartorial pragmatism of Silicon Valley and the loose bounds of post-pandemic workwear.
Robert Propst, Action Office II
Research
In 1968, American furniture manufacturer Herman Miller launched Action Office II, a pioneering system of office furniture that laid the blueprint for the modern cubicle. Eight years earlier, its designer, Robert Propst, assumed leadership of the company's research arm. Studying the contemporary workplace, he concluded that "today's office is a wasteland. It saps vitality, blocks talent, frustrates accomplishment". Propst’s goal for Action Office II was a flexible modular system to encourage fortuitous encounters and employee autonomy. Though designed with humanistic intentions, it had the unforeseen effect of encouraging high density, standardised office environments.
Panel height tests for Action Office 2, 1979. Image courtesy of Herman Miller Archives.
Photo Series
The shared fridge is a microcosm of workplace dynamics. Home to orphaned tupperware and accidental fermentation, a recent study found that 22 percent of office fridges are cleaned only once or twice a year – the office bathroom is probably a cleaner place to store your food than the fridge. Behavioural economist Ralph-Christopher Bayer has described the inevitability of disorder in the office kitchen as a social dilemma. For this visual essay, Sarah Pannell documented the reality of communal fridges across twelve creative workspaces in Collingwood and Fitzroy. Participants included Today, Patricia Piccinini, Office MI-JI, NHO, Collingwood Yards, Artbank, Fieldwork, Alpha60, Foolscap Studio, Relative Projects, Jacky Winter Group, TCYK and the Office of Adam Bandt MP.
Sarah Pannell is a documentary photographer based in Melbourne.
Research
More performance piece than prototype, the Mobiles Büro (Mobile Office) was architect Hans Hollein's response to the changing relationship between technology, labour and leisure in the post-war era. Produced for a 1969 Austrian television segment, the Mobiles Büro was comprised of everyday objects – PVC plastic, a vacuum cleaner, a typewriter, a telephone and a drawing board. Once inflated, its portable, immersive environment suggested the potential for work to happen anywhere, anytime. Long before technology enabled remote work at scale, the Mobiles Büro presented a vision of creative work decoupled from a traditional office setting.
Production still from an episode of the television series The Austrian Portrait, 1969. Image courtesy of Hans Hollein.