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What is the Point of These Architect-Designed, Anti-COVID Sealed Cubicles?

By Rain Noe - June 9, 2020

in Furniture Design

These architect-designed anti-COVID sealed cubicles won a 2020 DNA Paris Design Award and are making the rounds. Call me crazy, but I don't see the point.

"Qworkntine is an air tight pod system, that can provide safety and protection within the physical work place, while maintaining the same number of employees per square meter as a traditional office system. The Qwork-pod has a Hexagonal hive like shape, which offers flexibly to suit any office layout. It features an automatic handle-less airtight acrylic door, controlled by facial recognition, and ventilation fans with built-in air purifiers. The pod is envisioned as made of hygiene friendly non-porous materials that can be easily cleaned and disinfected to avoid contamination."

If you're working in a cubicle, that's "knowledge work," which can be done remotely. By now all of us have videoconferencing down. In what situation would we need to report to an office, to be sealed off? Would the cost of these justify itself to anyone who doesn't work in commercial real estate? And perhaps more importantly, what sane person wants to work inside of a small, sealed chamber?

It's worth noting that the last time I crapped all over an anti-COVID design were those plastic dining pendulums. The next day they went into production. (And I still think they're not a good design.)

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Fraser Pyke

4 years ago

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Did anyone else not realise the scale of these pods until they saw the 4th image with the chair inside? With all those images of them opening at the top, I thought they were some sort of bar fridge sized locker for keeping your stuff in and safe from sniffling strangers?
I also don't get it. Rain is correct that if you can work in these you can work from home. And if your corporate overlord doesn't trust you enough and needs you in the bull pen, I can't think of any existing office space I've been in that A. has a high enough ceiling to accommodate these pods or B. a door wide enough to wheel them in.

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Sam Ley

4 years ago

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Yeah, designs like this are ridiculous. Fun to render, but agreed, pointless in execution. Who would build an office with floor to ceiling windows looking out on lush vegetation, just to climb into a portapotty to get their work done? It has all the worst elements of an open-plan office and a closed-plan office, with the added surveillance nuisance of facial recognition (added just to make it seem high tech, and not like a portapotty office). It seems like a lot of design right now is running backwards - a pretty rendering in search of a problem, rather than a problem receiving a creative solution.

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Frederick Fasola

4 years ago

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Good luck social distancing inside the "management module"...
Seems like someone is just nostalgic for 70s office design !
I find it quite discouraging to see that so far, all the (publicised) responses to covid from architects and designers have been utter rubbish... Nice renders of over-worked and impractical design, or concepts that are just basically floored, all in the name of getting something instagramable... Are we really that vain and incapable of actually being creative when it is needed most?
Seriously, I have seen plenty of really good responses from all sorts of industries, but the creative industry that should be best placed to help doesn't seem to be helping!
Please Rain, show me I'm wrong... let's see some really useful responses...

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Dave Cannon

4 years ago

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I have to work in an office and I'd love to work in my own space. I sell construction supplies and have to sit in a show room. If we could live without the walk-in sales, which aren't many, I'd still have to come in. There's nothing like walking into a warehouse to make sure that the bundle of expansion joint is the 500' a bundle or not.

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