Employees work at JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s. new technology hub has all the trappings of a startup: foosball tables, a game room, industrial decor and fridges stocked with sodas and snacks. (Chris Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Even without being told, you probably would have guessed the office above was located in Silicon Valley—or had to do with some digital startup—because of its recognizable style.
You’ve probably also seen offices with very similar setups elsewhere, or even at your non-tech-related company. Indeed, you might even be shocked when you go to an offsite meeting, and it doesn’t take place in a space like this. It begs the question: How did an aesthetic this sterile go global?
Employees attend a meeting at the Garena Interactive Holding Ltd. headquarters in Singapore, on Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. (Nicky Loh/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Employees of startup companies that got financial backing from Mistletoe Inc. work in front of computer screens at the Mistletoe Base Camp Tokyo office, in Tokyo, Japan, on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2016. When he launched Mistletoe three years ago, Taizo Son, chief executive officer, sought to emulate Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz’s ability to draw on the knowledge of a network of experts, as well as Google’s backing of long-term projects. (Akio Kon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Kyle Chayka attempts to answer that question in a lengthy article for The Verge. Of course, the uniformity goes beyond office spaces, as he notes that the homogenization of design/architecture has spread to other types of businesses altogether. Indeed, “whether in Odessa, Beijing, Los Angeles, or Seoul,” if you go for coffee, you can expect to find “the same raw wood tables, exposed brick, and hanging Edison bulbs.”
Employees of Shopify Inc. play ping-pong at their company’s office space in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on March 13, 2015. Rents for brick-and-beam real estate in the city’s east end rose 26 percent to C$20.62 ($16.13) a square foot from 2007 and were up 49 percent in the west end, according to data compiled by CBRE Group Inc. (Kevin Van Paassen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Chayka writes of a “strange geography created by technology” called AirSpace:
“AirSpace is now less theory than reality. The interchangeability, ceaseless movement, and symbolic blankness that was once the hallmark of hotels and airports, qualities that led the French anthropologist Marc Augé to define them in 1992 as ‘non-places,’ has leaked into the rest of life.”
This isn’t to attack the aesthetic too harshly: After all, there is an appealing clarity and lack of clutter to the look. But it shouldn’t be the only look one encounters.
A Tiny Owl employee lies working on a laptop computer at the company’s head office in Mumbai, India, on Monday, March. 9, 2015. Tiny Owl is a smartphone application that helps hungry city-dwellers scour nearby eateries for deliveries. (Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Bloomberg via Getty Images
An employee uses a smartphone while sitting on a swing as others work at PT Tokopedia’s offices in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Friday, Feb. 19, 2016. (Dimas Ardian/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Bloomberg via Getty Images
So what can we do to ensure more diversity? Chayka asserts that each of us can do our part to defend individuality by making the “… simple personal choice to become more invested in the local than the mobile—to opt for the flawed community bed and breakfast rather than the temporary, immaculate apartment,” he says. “Seeking out difference is important, particularly when technology makes it so easy to avoid doing so.”
To read the full article and realize just how uniform our world has become, click here.
An employee uses an Apple Inc. laptop in a workspace cubbyhole inside the headquarters of startup company Blendle BV in Utrecht, Netherlands, on Wednesday, March 30, 2016. (Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Bloomberg via Getty Images
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