In my role I have the privilege of visiting many industrial estates.
Neat, self-contained, fit-for-purpose, they are perhaps an analogy for a certain way of doing business. There’s no waste; they do what they need to do; their efficiency is bellowed from their mini-roundabouts and their unconvincing names (‘Royal Avenue’, ‘Poplar Court’).
Their relevance or even reference to people is a little more difficult to discern. Many of them don’t even have a café if you arrive too early for your meeting; many of them seem to discourage walking.
It will be telling how history judges industrial estates, and the kind of offices they produce. I imagine one or two will be turned into theme parks, so baffled school-children can stare at workstations and water coolers and boggle at how their ancestors were put to work:
‘Everyone had their own desks, they had to arrive at a certain time and leave at a certain time, do whatever the “boss” said and all wear the same thing.’‘So it was like school, then?’‘Yep. Apart from the learning.’
Of course, if the office is about to crumble and fade, certain wholesale changes have to happen in the workplace, which I’ll be wondering about in an entirely contradictory blog next week. Meanwhile, the sun is beginning to set on the straight lines, neatly-trimmed borders and faceless facades of our industrial estates.
You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps.
Almost poetic, although "no waste" and "efficiency" are surely debatable. I suspect that in terms of carbon footprint and energy they are wasteful and not particularly efficient.
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