微处理 (Microprocessing)

Four months into New York City’s lockdown, I’m finally committing to outfitting my own home office.

˚F我们的月进入纽约市的锁定，我终于承诺舾装我自己的家庭办公室。

Prior to the onset of the pandemic, I worked at my husband’s desk, which has multiple large monitors, a very nice desk chair, and even one of those green-glass banker’s lamps. Now that he’s working from home, I need to design my own little work nook, which will cost a little bit of cash I’m loath to part with in these precarious times.

在大流行开始之前，我在丈夫的办公桌前工作，那里有多个大显示器，一个非常漂亮的办公桌椅，甚至是那些绿色玻璃银行家的灯。 现在他已经在家里工作了，我需要设计自己的小角落，在这个不稳定的时期，我不愿花这笔钱花一些钱。

The investment of energy, creative thinking, and money into creating a home workspace is intimidating, but it’s never been more essential that I — and many other office workers — bite the bullet and build a home office that won’t leave us prone to distractions or with debilitating back pain.

投入精力，创造性思维和金钱来创建家庭工作空间是令人生畏的，但是，我和其他许多上班族咬紧牙关，建立起不会让我们分心的家庭办公室，这一点从未如此重要。或使人腰酸背痛。

More people are purchasing desks, office chairs, and other home office accessories than ever before. British furniture brand John Lewis reports that a recent week saw a 91% sales increase of office chairs and a 44% increase in desks compared to the year before. According to Wirecutter, interest in home office equipment like computer monitors, standing desks, and office chairs have all skyrocketed. There was such a rush on computer monitors, in fact, that one Office Depot salesperson in San Francisco told Bloomberg that “it’s just like toilet paper and hand sanitizer.”

购买书桌，办公椅和其他家庭办公配件的人数比以往任何时候都多。 英国家具品牌约翰·刘易斯(John Lewis) 报告说，与前一年相比，最近一周的办公椅销售额增长了91％，办公桌增长了44％。 根据Wirecutter的说法 ，对家庭办公设备(如计算机显示器，站立式办公桌和办公椅)的兴趣急剧上升。 实际上， 计算机监视器如此抢手，以至于旧金山的一位Office Depot销售人员告诉彭博社 那就像卫生纸和洗手液一样。

This investment in home offices could encourage people to stay and work from home even after the pandemic is “over”—or at least whenever it is deemed safe enough for us to commute to the office. Interior design and architecture are often thought of as being reactive: People build homes and design spaces to address needs people already have. Less often do we consider how those spaces will then shape us. But throughout history, people have invented new home technologies, created trends, and introduced architectural or design norms that have gone on to affect culture and life generally — take the home bathroom, for example, which only became normal in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

对家庭办公室的这种投资可能会鼓励人们即使在流行病“结束”之后，或者至少在认为我们可以安全地上下班的任何时候，也可以在家中办公。 人们通常认为室内设计和建筑是被动的：人们建造房屋和设计空间以满足人们已有的需求。 我们很少考虑这些空间将如何塑造我们。 但是在整个历史过程中，人们发明了新的家用技术，创造了趋势，并引入了持续影响文化和生活的建筑或设计规范-以家用浴室为例，这种浴室仅在19世纪和20世纪初才开始普及。

The second monitor of today is the personal toilet of the 19th century.

今天的第二个监视器是19世纪的私人厕所。

Spending significant energy and money — both of which are in insufficient supply for most of us — on our home offices, creating a workspace as we want it rather than how a boss wants it, could very likely make working from home more common and desirable even after we’re told to shuffle back to the office. In other words: The second monitor of today is the personal toilet of the 19th century.

在我们的家庭办公室上花费大量的精力和金钱(这对我们大多数人来说都供不应求)，创建我们想要的工作空间而不是老板想要的工作空间，很可能使在家工作更加普遍和理想被告知要洗牌回到办公室后。 换句话说：今天的第二个监视器是19世纪的私人厕所。

By essentially building a (perhaps cramped) personalized workspace in our homes, the downsides of the office — of which, in my opinion, there are too many to count — will become more obvious. Suddenly, the need to go into the office, where there’s a desk and a decent-sized monitor for an employee to do their work, is less vital when we more or less have the same setup at home. Though there are factors that will make professional office space appealing in many ways (when you want to see a co-worker face-to-face, for example), it won’t be essential every day when a home contains most of the amenities once relegated to the professional office. Nor will we want to let the possibly expensive home office area we’ve built go to waste once we finally are allowed back into communal work spaces.

通过本质上在我们的房屋中建立一个(也许局促的) 个性化工作空间 ，办公室的弊端-我认为其中有太多东西值得指望-将会变得更加明显。 突然之间，当我们或多或少在家里设置相同的设备时，进入办公室的需求就变得不那么重要了，那里有一张桌子和一台像样的显示器供员工进行工作。 尽管有一些因素会使专业办公空间在许多方面都具有吸引力(例如，当您想与同事面对面交流时)，但并不是每天都有房屋提供大多数便利设施时，这并不是必不可少的曾经降级到专业办公室。 一旦我们最终被允许回到公共工作空间，我们也不希望浪费我们建造的可能昂贵的家庭办公室区域。

When we consider how architecture and interior design has affected culture, we need to think about technology, says Yu Nong Khew, assistant professor of interior design at Parsons School of Design. “The first obvious example [of impactful architecture] is definitely the lift or the elevator,” she says. “The ability to move vertically was influenced by the implementation of the elevator.”

帕森斯设计学院室内设计助理教授Yu Nong Khew说，当我们考虑建筑和室内设计如何影响文化时，我们需要考虑技术。 她说：“(具有影响力的建筑)的第一个明显例子肯定是升降机。” “垂直移动的能力受到电梯实施的影响。”

Before its introduction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, buildings were generally only a few stories high; much taller and people simply wouldn’t be able to get to the top floors without exhausting themselves. But as the elevator evolved, becoming faster (they were incredibly slow at first) and safer (early elevators either didn’t have doors or only had manual, rather than automatic, doors), elevators changed the very landscape of cities — and made higher floors trendy. The invention of the elevator made the top floor of a building, once little more than a place for storage and debris, fashionable and expensive. Now, some of the most coveted real estate in the world is at the top of very tall buildings.

在19世纪末20世纪初引入之前，建筑物通常只有几层楼高。 高得多，人们根本无法精疲力竭地到达顶楼。 但是随着电梯的发展，变得越来越快(起初它们非常慢)和更安全(早期的电梯要么没有门，要么只有手动门而不是自动门)，电梯改变了城市的面貌，并且变得更高。地板时尚。 电梯的发明使建筑物的顶楼变得既昂贵又昂贵，仅是一个用于存放和存放杂物的地方。 现在，世界上一些最令人垂涎​​的房地产就位于非常高的建筑物的顶部。

And as mentioned, the adoption of indoor plumbing in the 19th and early 20th centuries is another technological, architectural innovation that had massive effects on people’s lives. People were healthier and cleaner, of course. But it also spurred the necessity for another room in the house — the washroom or bathroom — that before the invention of indoor plumbing, no one needed at all. Ordinary people relied on outhouses and chamber pots to do their business, and portable washtubs and public baths were how people got clean. With private toilets and baths being fitted into people’s homes and added to new architectural blueprints, the formerly communal activity of bathing became a private one.

如前所述，在19世纪和20世纪初采用室内水暖管道是另一项技术，建筑创新，对人们的生活产生了巨大影响。 当然，人们更健康，更清洁。 但这也激发了房子中另一个房间的必要性，即洗手间或浴室，在发明室内管道之前根本不需要任何房间。 普通人依靠厕所和便盆来做生意，而便携式洗衣盆和公共浴室是人们清洁的方式。 随着私人厕所和浴室被安装到人们的家中并添加到新的建筑蓝图中，以前的公共沐浴活动变成了私人活动。

While bathing became a more private activity in the 19th and early 20th century, architectural trends and technological innovations transformed cooking, eating, and “living” into communal activities. “The development of the modern 20th-century kitchen with all of its automated appliances had a profound effect on kitchen design and daily life,” says Molly Heintz, program chair of design research at the School of Visual Arts in New York. “The kitchen became a place to show off the latest designs, and this in part led to the open-kitchen concept in residential planning. The kitchen became a locus of family life, a gathering place, visibly connected with other living areas.” It also led to more multitasking: When homes were separated into separate living spaces, women were often cloistered in the kitchen while cooking while the rest of the family spent time in the rest of the home. But with an open concept, a mother could cook, clean, watch television, and supervise the kids all at the same time.

在19世纪和20世纪初，沐浴成为一种更加私人的活动，建筑趋势和技术创新将烹饪，饮食和“生活”转变为公共活动。 “现代20世纪厨房及其所有自动化设备的开发对厨房设计和日常生活产生了深远的影响，”纽约视觉艺术学院设计研究计划主任莫莉·海因茨说。 “厨房成为了展示最新设计的地方，这在一定程度上导致了开放式厨房概念在住宅规划中的应用。 厨房成为家庭生活的场所，是聚居的地方，与其他生活区明显相连。” 这也导致了更多的任务 ：将房屋分隔成单独的起居室时，妇女经常在做饭的时候被关在厨房里，而其他家庭则在其他地方度过。 但是，有了开放的观念，母亲可以同时做饭，打扫卫生，看电视并监督孩子。

Now that families helmed by office-worker parents are working from home, taking Zoom calls at the same time, and generally crawling all over each other in their open-concept homes (or, conversely, setting up a desk in the same vicinity as the bed), it’s clear that walls, actually, are a good thing.

现在，由上班族父母控制的家庭正在家里工作，同时接听Zoom呼叫，并且通常在开放概念的房屋中互相爬行(或者相反，在与房屋相同的地方设置桌子)。床)，显然，墙壁实际上是一件好事 。

“The home office is here to stay,” says Stephanie Travis, associate professor of interior architecture at George Washington University in D.C. “These office spaces will be more intentional — more than a converted bedroom.”

华盛顿特区的乔治华盛顿大学室内建筑副教授斯蒂芬妮·特拉维斯(Stephanie Travis)说：“家庭办公室将留在这里，这些办公室空间将更有意向-不仅仅是经过改建的卧室。”

A separate room for an office or, at the very least, space for a desk for each working adult in a family is practically a luxury when for decades we’ve been commuting to work and knocking down walls both at home and at the office. Already, many architects suspect that houses and apartments will be designed with the home office in mind. In an interview with Bloomberg, architect David Hart says that before the onset of the pandemic, only 10–15% of the apartments his firm designed had dedicated office space. He thinks that will rise as high as 75% in the near future. In Dwell, architect Dan Weber says that “this experiment, especially if it lasts a long time, is going to completely redefine our ability to work from home. … This health crisis could possibly have a long-term effect on how important a home office — or at least a working nook — is in residential design.”

几十年来，我们上下班通勤，在家中或办公室拆墙时，为办公室中的每个上班的成年人提供单独的办公室空间，或者至少为每个成年人提供书桌的空间实际上是一种奢侈。 许多建筑师已经怀疑房屋和公寓的设计会考虑家庭办公室。 在接受彭博社采访时，建筑师大卫·哈特(David Hart)说，在大流行开始之前，他的公司设计的公寓中只有10％至15％具有专用的办公空间。 他认为在不久的将来这一数字将上升至75％。 建筑师丹·韦伯(Dan Weber)在Dwell说：“这项实验，特别是如果持续很长时间，将完全重新定义我们在家工作的能力。 ……这种健康危机可能会长期影响家庭办公室(或至少是工作角)在住宅设计中的重要性。”

While the wealthiest city dwellers are fleeing to the suburbs — a move that, according to Reuters, economists predict may be permanent — office workers who aren’t swimming in cash are investing disproportionate sums of money into making their home offices comfortable and productive. Many companies, including Shopify and Basecamp, allow employees to expense some of their home office purchases, a trend that, according to CNBC, will only become more commonplace.

据路透社报道 ，据路透社报道 ，虽然最富裕的城市居民正逃往郊区，但这一举动可能是永久性的。没有现金的上班族正在不成比例地投入大量金钱，以使自己的家庭办公舒适而高效。 CNBC认为，包括Shopify和Basecamp在内的许多公司都允许员工自费购买一些家庭办公室用品，这种趋势只会变得越来越普遍。

The time and money people spend on making these spaces workable and pleasant could make it even more likely that remote work will remain a permanent fixture in our lives, at least part of the time. Khew thinks that people will still crave time spent at the office but that home workspaces will remain an important fixture in people’s work lives. “The home office will become an extension of the workplace. I think it’s here to stay — there’s no doubt about it,” she says. “If you’re going to the office, it’s because you want to socialize, because you want to exchange ideas with your colleagues.”

人们花时间和金钱使这些空间变得可行和令人愉悦，这至少有一部分可能使远程工作成为我们生活中的永久性工具。 Khew认为人们仍然会渴望在办公室里度过时光，但是家庭工作区将仍然是人们工作生活中的重要组成部分。 “家庭办公室将成为工作场所的延伸。 我认为这是可以保留的，这是毫无疑问的，”她说。 “如果你要去办公室，那是因为你想社交，因为你想与同事交流想法。”

Pandemics have had distinct effects on architecture and culture before; there’s no reason to believe this one will be any different, especially regarding the thing we spend most of our time and energy on: work. As it becomes clear that a full communal office space, especially those with an open office plan, is a health and economic liability, and employees spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on home office infrastructure that’s to their preference, not their boss’s, we’ll likely take advantage of our personalized desk space and lack of a commute for as long as we can.

大流行以前曾对建筑和文化产生过明显的影响。 没有理由相信这会有所不同，尤其是在我们花费大量时间和精力在工作上的事情上。 很明显，一个完整的公共办公空间，尤其是那些拥有开放式办公计划的公共办公空间，对健康和经济负有责任 ，员工在家庭办公基础设施上花费数百甚至数千美元，而不是老板的偏好，这是他们的偏好。我们可能会尽可能利用我们个性化的办公桌空间，并减少通勤时间。