未来办公室
The office of the future
刘立军 供稿
TRANSCRIPT
Business
Bartleby - The office of the future
Cubicles are out. Bars, neighbourhoods and sensors are in.
The office used to be a place people went to because they had to. Meetings happened in conference rooms and in person. Desks took up the bulk of the space. The kingdom of Dilbert and of David Brent is now under threat. 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.
Start with what the office is for. In the past it was a place for employees to get their work done, whatever form that took. Now other conceptions of its role jostle for attention. Some think of the office as the new offsite. 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. 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. 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. With fewer people coming in and more emphasis on collaboration, fewer desks will be assigned to individuals. Instead, there will be more shared areas, or “neighbourhoods”, where people in a team can work together flexibly. More hot-desking will also necessitate storage space for personal possessions: lockers may soon be back in your life. 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.
Another option is to ply everyone with drink. Expect more space to be set aside for socialising and events. Bars in offices are apparently going to be a thing. 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”. Designs for the post-covid office must also allow for hybrid work. Meetings have to work for virtual participants as well as for in-person contributors: cameras, screens and microphones will proliferate. 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.
Variety will be another theme. People may plan to work in groups in the morning, but need to concentrate on something in the afternoon. 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. Hotels are largely given over to rooms for individuals. “Home is thought of as a place for a family over years, hosting lots of different activities.”
All of which implies the need for flexibility. Laptop docking stations are simple additions, but other bits of office furniture are harder to overhaul. Desks themselves tend to be tethered to the floor through knotted bundles of cables and plugs. The office of the future may well feature desks with wheels, which ought to go well with all that extra alcohol. Meeting rooms are likely to be more flexible, too, with walls that lift and slide.
If socialising and flexibility are two of the themes of the post-pandemic office, a third is data. 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. 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. And data will flow more copiously in response: from sensors in desks and lighting but also from desk-booking tools and visitor-management apps. 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.
Put this all together and what do you get? If you are an optimist, the office of the future will be a spacious, collaborative environment that makes the commute worth it. If you are a pessimist, it will be a building full of heavily surveilled drunkards. 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.
Whatever happens, the office won't be what it was.
VOCABULARY
1. cubicle n. a small room that is made by separating off part of a larger room （大房间分隔出的）小房间，隔间。例如：(especially North American English) an office cubicle 办公室的隔间
2. the bulk of sth. : the main part of sth.; most of sth. 主体；大部分。例如：The bulk of the population lives in cities. 大多数人口居住在城市里。
3. jostle for sth.: to compete strongly and with force with other people for sth. 争夺；争抢。例如：People in the crowd were jostling for the best positions. 这群人在竞相抢占最好的位置。
4. offsite adj. 厂区外的，现场外的
5. forge v. to put a lot of effort into making sth. successful or strong so that it will last 艰苦干成；努力加强。例如：She forged a new career in the music business. 她在乐坛上另创一番新事业。
6. layout n. the way in which the parts of sth. such as the page of a book, a garden or a building are arranged 布局；布置；设计；安排。例如：the layout of streets 街道的布局
7. serried adj. (literary) standing or arranged closely together in rows or lines （行列）密排的，密集的，靠拢的。例如：serried ranks of soldiers 密集排列的士兵
8. tactic n. the particular method you use to achieve sth. 策略。例如：The manager discussed tactics with his team. 经理和他手下的一班人讨论了策略问题。
9. ply v. 不断供给 If you ply someone with food or drink, you keep giving them more of it.
10. proliferate v. to increase rapidly in number or amount 迅速繁殖（或增殖）；猛增。例如：Books and articles on the subject have proliferated over the last year. 过去一年以来，论及这一问题的书和文章大量涌现。
11. jut v. to stick out further than the surrounding surface, objects, etc.; to make sth. stick out （使）突出，伸出。例如：A row of small windows jutted out from the roof. 有一排小窗户从房顶上突出来。
12. liken sth./sb. to sth./sb.: (formal) to compare one thing or person to another and say they are similar 把……比作……。例如：Life is often likened to a journey. 人们常把人生比作旅程。
13. overhaul v. to examine every part of a machine, system, etc. and make any necessary changes or repairs 彻底检修。例如：The engine has been completely overhauled. 发动机已彻底检修过了。
14. tether sth. (to sth): to tie an animal to a post so that it cannot move very far 拴（牲畜）
15. bunch v. to become tight or to form tight folds; to make sth. do this （使）变紧；（使）成皱褶。例如：His muscles bunched under his shirt. 他衬衫下面的肌肉紧绷绷的。
16. ventilate v. to allow fresh air to enter and move around a room, building, etc. 使（房间、建筑物等）通风；使通气。例如：a well-ventilated room 通风良好的房间
17. copious adj. in large amounts 大量的；充裕的；丰富的
18. optimist n. a person who always expects good things to happen or things to be successful 乐观的人；乐天派
19. pessimist n. a person who always expects bad things to happen 悲观主义者；悲观论者。例如：You don't have to be a pessimist to realize that we're in trouble. 不是悲观论者也能意识到我们有了麻烦。
20. surveil v. 使受监视（或监督）
21. drunkard n. (old-fashioned) a person who gets drunk very often 酒鬼；醉鬼
22. pragmatic adj. solving problems in a practical and sensible way rather than by having fixed ideas or theories 实用的；讲求实效的；务实的。例如：a pragmatic approach to management problems 对管理问题采取的务实做法
QUESTIONS
Read the passage. Then listen to the news and fill in the blanks with the information (words, phrases or sentences) you hear.
Business
Bartleby - The office of the future
Cubicles are out. Bars, neighbourhoods and sensors are in.
The office used to be a place people went to because they had to. Meetings happened in (Q1) __________ and in person. Desks took up the bulk of the space. The kingdom of Dilbert and of David Brent is now under threat. The pandemic has exposed the office to competition from (Q2) _______________, and brought up a host of questions about how it should be designed in the future.
Start with what the (Q3) ___________ is for. In the past it was a place for (Q4) ______________ to get their work done, whatever form that took. Now other conceptions of its role jostle for attention. Some think of the office as the new (Q5) ___________. 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. Others talk of the office as a (Q6) __________, 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. 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. With fewer people coming in and more emphasis on (Q7) _______________, fewer desks will be assigned to individuals. Instead, there will be more shared areas, or “neighbourhoods”, where people in a team can work together flexibly. More hot-desking will also necessitate storage space for personal possessions: lockers may soon be back in your life. To bridge gaps between teams, one tactic is to set aside more of the office to (Q8) ___________ the work of each department, so that people who never encounter each other on Zoom can see examples of what their colleagues do.
Another option is to ply everyone with (Q9) ___________. Expect more space to be set aside for socialising and events. (Q10) ____________ in offices are apparently going to be a thing. 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”. Designs for the post-covid office must also allow for hybrid work. Meetings have to work for virtual participants as well as for in-person contributors: cameras, screens and microphones will proliferate. 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.
(Q11) _____________ will be another theme. People may plan to work in groups in the morning, but need to concentrate on something in the afternoon. Ryan Anderson of Herman Miller, a furniture firm, likens the difference between the pre- and post-pandemic office to that between (Q12) _____________. Hotels are largely given over to rooms for (Q13) ______________. “Home is thought of as a place for a family over years, hosting lots of different activities.”
All of which implies the need for (Q14) ________________. Laptop docking stations are simple additions, but other bits of office furniture are harder to overhaul. Desks themselves tend to be tethered to the floor through knotted bundles of cables and plugs. The office of the future may well feature desks with wheels, which ought to go well with all that extra alcohol. Meeting rooms are likely to be more flexible, too, with walls that lift and slide.
If socialising and flexibility are two of the themes of the post-pandemic office, a third is (Q15) ____________. 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. Workers will demand more data on health risks: the quality of (Q16) ______________ within meeting rooms, say, or proper contact-tracing if a colleague tests positive for the latest COVID-19 variant. And data will flow more copiously in response: from sensors in desks and lighting but also from desk-booking tools and visitor-management apps. 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.
Put this all together and what do you get? If you are an (Q17) ________________, the office of the future will be a spacious, collaborative environment that makes the commute worth it. If you are a (Q18) _______________, it will be a building full of heavily surveilled drunkards. In reality, (Q19) __________________ considerations - how much time is left on the lease, the physical constraints of a building’s layout, (Q20) _______________ about the path of the pandemic - will determine the pace of change.
Whatever happens, the office won't be what it was.
KEY
Read the passage. Then listen to the news and fill in the blanks with the information (words, phrases or sentences) you hear.
Business
Bartleby - The office of the future
Cubicles are out. Bars, neighbourhoods and sensors are in.
The office used to be a place people went to because they had to. Meetings happened in (Q1) conference rooms and in person. Desks took up the bulk of the space. The kingdom of Dilbert and of David Brent is now under threat. The pandemic has exposed the office to competition from (Q2) remote working, and brought up a host of questions about how it should be designed in the future.
Start with what the (Q3) office is for. In the past it was a place for (Q4) employees to get their work done, whatever form that took. Now other conceptions of its role jostle for attention. Some think of the office as the new (Q5) offsite. 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. Others talk of the office as a (Q6) 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. 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. With fewer people coming in and more emphasis on (Q7) collaboration, fewer desks will be assigned to individuals. Instead, there will be more shared areas, or “neighbourhoods”, where people in a team can work together flexibly. More hot-desking will also necessitate storage space for personal possessions: lockers may soon be back in your life. To bridge gaps between teams, one tactic is to set aside more of the office to (Q8) showcase the work of each department, so that people who never encounter each other on Zoom can see examples of what their colleagues do.
Another option is to ply everyone with (Q9) drink. Expect more space to be set aside for socialising and events. (Q10) Bars in offices are apparently going to be a thing. 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”. Designs for the post-covid office must also allow for hybrid work. Meetings have to work for virtual participants as well as for in-person contributors: cameras, screens and microphones will proliferate. 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.
(Q11) Variety will be another theme. People may plan to work in groups in the morning, but need to concentrate on something in the afternoon. Ryan Anderson of Herman Miller, a furniture firm, likens the difference between the pre- and post-pandemic office to that between (Q12) a hotel and a home. Hotels are largely given over to rooms for (Q13) individuals. “Home is thought of as a place for a family over years, hosting lots of different activities.”
All of which implies the need for (Q14) flexibility. Laptop docking stations are simple additions, but other bits of office furniture are harder to overhaul. Desks themselves tend to be tethered to the floor through knotted bundles of cables and plugs. The office of the future may well feature desks with wheels, which ought to go well with all that extra alcohol. Meeting rooms are likely to be more flexible, too, with walls that lift and slide.
If socialising and flexibility are two of the themes of the post-pandemic office, a third is (Q15) data. 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. Workers will demand more data on health risks: the quality of (Q16) ventilation within meeting rooms, say, or proper contact-tracing if a colleague tests positive for the latest COVID-19 variant. And data will flow more copiously in response: from sensors in desks and lighting but also from desk-booking tools and visitor-management apps. 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.
Put this all together and what do you get? If you are an (Q17) optimist, the office of the future will be a spacious, collaborative environment that makes the commute worth it. If you are a (Q18) pessimist, it will be a building full of heavily surveilled drunkards. In reality, (Q19) pragmatic considerations - how much time is left on the lease, the physical constraints of a building’s layout, (Q20) uncertainty about the path of the pandemic - will determine the pace of change.
Whatever happens, the office won't be what it was.
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