The Future of Office Work

Year: 2012–2015

In a three-year collaborative effort between cityLAB and Gensler Los Angeles, the Future of Work instigates a new conversation about the future of office work, office buildings, and their impacts on downtown Los Angeles. Building upon historical research into the evolution of work activity in relation to the evolution of office buildings in Los Angeles, this project seeks to reveal sites and opportunities for critical urban and architectural design and to offer provocative projections about the future of work in the city of Los Angeles. 

This investigation takes place during an era of urban resurgence and increased mobility in contemporary life. Office work in Los Angeles has been sheltered by multiple versions of the mono-functional office building, both high and low-rise, situated within many different settings: the office parks and low-rise industrial buildings of the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys, the landscape of logistics that is the Port of Los Angeles, the autotopia of Century City, the creative office spaces of the Westside, and work-live spaces in a reimagined downtown. The variety of Los Angeles’s office landscape is the result of decades of architectural experimentation, and, according to some, has contributed to its resilience to broad economic change.