Semester/year: Spring 2010 Supervisor: Birger Sevaldsson
Outdoor office, “the cube”, is a hybrid space between social and work. It is a landscape element to bring work outdoors and consists of drawers for users to pull out to create the necessary surfaces and to access necessary services. It is a meeting point that unifies people but it also has space divider qualities between its 4 sides.
There are 3 versions of the cube with 3 different heights. Different heights create a gradient between unifying and dividing qualities. As the cube gets higher, it excludes people from each other and as it gets lower it loses its dividing property and creates an environment where people cannot avoid being aware of their surroundings if not interacting with others.
The cube is surrounded by 8 environmental modifiers. These are U-shaped metal parts holding a semi-transparent, sturdy yet flexible textile which can be moved up and down inside the metal parts. Using these environmental modifiers, users can create the environmental conditions they want in their outdoor workspace.
They can control the sun conditions and protect themselves from wind to an extent. The users can also control their privacy using these modifiers.