Office 2021 Design
Challenge

9² is a community-led coworking space situated along the former Munich S-Bahn, originally- constructed for the 1972 Olympics. Members of this proposed community receive access to the coworking space, while a partnered farmers market along a pedestrian bridge above serves as a revenue source for vendors. The jury writes, “The concept is sleek, attractive, and contemporary. It is quite likely to actually attract office workers back to the office. This proposal positively repurposes an Olympic village transit station for co-working and building community and, like the Olympics, seeks to bring people together by encouraging community engagement. This demonstrates how we can reimagine traditional notions of places to design something more dynamic and less rigidly defined.”

Moss Tree aims to develop a form of architecture that contributes positively to the city and its inhabitants via flexible modular design that can be adapted to various brownfield sites. Hexagonal tree-shaped forms act as ‘green offices’, using moss to filter the urban air and creating small forests for social interaction.  The jury commented, “This proposal effectively takes the idea of an open green space that is typically provided as a public park or gathering place, and transforms it into a co-working environment on brownfield sites.  With this proposal, the concept of public green parks can become the environment for reimagined work communities.”

'Trampo - Hybrid Offices in the Favelas' focuses on the 1 billion people around the world living in informal developments. It chooses a site in Rocinha, Latin America’s largest settlement. The term ‘trampo’ refers to people without fixed income that seek new work each day, claiming that half of the residents in Brazil’s informal developments lost their jobs as a result of the ongoing pandemic. The jury writes, “The proposal's specific design ideas are admirable, but it's greatest contribution is in showing that the "home vs. work" dichotomy is less impactful than the gap between "city-centre vs. periphery". The proposal discusses how the latter split drives larger socio-economic trends, income and opportunity inequality, and imagines the transformative possibility of creating work zones closer to residential zones. If the future of work is going to be truly different, then the biggest change we can make is to move it closer to home. The project is socially relevant and links the insular, controlled office realm with the volatile, ever-changing world of the favela.”