noever design / Office work in bed (Büroarbeit im Bett)

Project “Office work in bed” (Büroarbeit im Bett), Vienna, 1974

“Office work in bed” (Büroarbeit im Bett), Vienna, 1974 – Photographer: Peter Strobl – on cover of “architecture intérieure cree”, Paris, 1977

Noever’s ideas mainly aimed at drawing attention to the partially alienating working conditions of the time and at creating a new experience through strategic adaptation to more natural needs. Noever’s demonstration picture “Live in the office?” shows this most aptly. He comments it with the following: “We not only live at home. Our home is also the office – or that of our financial advisor, or our doctor’s waiting room. Do we really feel at home where we spend eight hours working? Are we not living in a grey and miserable production line atmosphere? Why is it not possible to design our offices according to our own taste and character?” asks Peter Noever.

Noever’s style is unmistakable here, as in many of his other published texts: his questions are like arrows trained directly at certain social blemishes.

They are questions that aim to trigger awareness, and questions committed to that one and only attitude once called social humanism. It is a position that links Noever intellectually with the Frankfurt School. Although he always saw something more than ergonomic calculations in design, Noever took the pragmatic path of concrete change; it was the “overruling category for changing the environment”. Design for him was also an instrument for political intervention.

<p>American office service „strip-a-gram“, New York, 1981</p>

<p>Office workspace in the 11th century</p>

<p>Amenhotep, the architect of king Amenophis III in the distinctive writing posture with a roll of papyrus between his knees</p>

<p>Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in Razliv, 1917</p>

<p>Raymond Loewy - Desk with bed - Skylab</p>

<p>Austrian Emperor Franz Josef at his office desk in Schönbrunn, Vienna</p>

<p>Frank Lloyd Wright - Johnson Wax Building, 1936</p>

<p>Frank Lloyd Wright - Office Armchair 1904-1906</p>

<p>Mies van der Rohe, Bauhaus exhibition, 1931</p>

<p>NASA control room in Houston, 1969</p>

<p>Office work from a telephone booth, Teheran</p>

<p>Otto Wagner - Vice governeur’s office at Postsparkassenamt in Vienna, 1904-1906</p>

<p>President Lincoln in Antietam, 1862</p>

<p>Work space in prison cell, Quebec, 1975</p>

<p>Walter Gropius - Office space of the director at the Bauhaus in Weimar, 1923</p>

<p>Work space of prison guard in Werl, 1979</p>

<p>Work space at Viennese telephone switchboard, 1914</p>

<p>Workstation in space ship (Stanley Kubrick - 2001 A Space Oddyssey, 1986)</p>

<p>Peter Noever, Telephone Booth 53rd Avenue, April 8th 1970, 11am – Photo: Steve Allen</p>

<p>„Deskless office“ by peter noever, md - moebel interior design 4 / 1971 (design magazine - Stuttgart - Germany) - archive peter noever</p>