Recently, I have been thinking about what would happen if you just removed the physical presence of the office from the profession of architecture. A firm would simply be a network of people scattered all over the place who came together as needed. This is what I call the cloud office.
Given the technology and the economy, there are many start-ups who can’t afford the overhead of a real office. Many of the ones I have heard of operate out of apartments, coffee houses—wherever they can get free wifi. They may not realize it but their economic limitations have placed them on the cutting edge of business culture. In fact, larger, more established firms could learn a lot from recent grads with laptops and smart-phones.
More after the break.
