Office aesthetics: narratives around contemporary labor through representations of office spaces

Abstract

In today’s office, work is equally carried out and narrated through aesthetics. The visual and textual representations of contemporary workspaces popularized by design and architecture firms, social media, and pop culture have a major influence in how we conceive work, how we value it, and how we perform it. This article presents the study of office aesthetics—a concept that designates the visual homogeneity of the architecture, interior design, and supplies found in offices throughout the world—and its relation to the narratives around work within the current neoliberal system, which perpetuate excessive, meaningless, and precarious labor, which is often gendered and racialized.