The Momentous, Uneventful Day:
a requiem for the office
Overview
Has COVID-19 ushered in the end of the office? Or is it the office’s final triumph?
For decades, futurologists have prophesied a boundaryless working world, freed from the cramped confines of the office. During the COVID-19 crisis, employees around the globe got a taste of it. Confined by lockdown to their homes, they met, mingled, collaborated, and created electronically. At length, they returned to something approaching normality. Or had they glimpsed the normal to come?
In The Momentous, Uneventful Day, Gideon Haigh reflects on our ambivalent relationship to office work and office life, how we ended up with the offices we have, how they have reflected our best and worst instincts, and how these might be affected by a world in a time of contagion. Like the factory in the nineteenth century, the office was the characteristic building form of the twentieth, reshaping our cities, redirecting our lives. We all have a stake in how it will change in the twenty-first.
Enlivened by copious citations from literature, film, memoir, and corporate history, and interspersed with relevant images, The Momentous, Uneventful Day is the ideal companion for a lively current debate about the role offices will play in the future.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Paperback
- 210mm x 135mm
- 144 pages
- 9781913348700
- GBP£12.99
- 10 December 2020
Praise
‘In his new book, Gideon Haigh goes beyond the banal exterior of the office and examines how they’ve shaped our cities, culture and collective history … In this deeply researched and engaging analysis, Haigh ponders if this is just a glimpse of things to come.’
‘Haigh recounts the evolution of the office with imagination and fairness, and he can turn a fine phrase when he wants to. The Momentous, Uneventful Day reads like a good story – and it is, for better or worse, the story of our lives.’
About the Author
Gideon Haigh has been a journalist for forty years, contributed to more than a hundred newspapers and magazines, and published fifty books, including thirty-one about cricket. He is half of the podcast Cricket Et Cetera/Et Al (with Peter Lalor).
