- Christopher Alexander’s architectural philosophy, pre-dating the pandemic, emphasized the need for work and living spaces to be integrated, reducing the separation between professional and personal life.
- Alexander’s vision resonates today with the hybrid work model, advocating for proximity to workplaces from homes, flexibility in work arrangements, and neighborhoods free from industrial disruption.
- Embracing Alexander’s insights could lead to more humane workplace practices, such as leading with empathy, supporting work-life balance with flexible and local work options, and valuing family by prioritizing child and elder care.
In his famous books, The Timeless Way of Building and A Pattern Language, architect-philosopher Christopher Alexander anticipated many of the conversations currently underway regarding remote and hybrid working, long before the concept of hybrid work was introduced post-pandemic. Alexander offered up what can only be considered timeless wisdom.
According to Alexander, the built environment can either align with or counter the natural and organic ways that humans interact and move through space. This applies both to homes and workplaces. The concept of the pattern language has been popularly applied to software development and user-centered design, but rarely are his words of wisdom drawn out to help navigate the future of hybrid work.
On Family, Balance, and Wholeness
In a section of A Pattern Language (published in 1977) called “scattered work,” where he questions why most cities are separated into zones for living and zones for working, he ponders what it means to individuals and families to spend so much time apart during the workweek. While he is not referring specifically to remote or hybrid work, per se, his core message is extremely relevant today.
The artificial separation of houses and work creates intolerable rifts in people’s inner lives. (A Pattern Language, p. 52)
“Throughout, this separation reinforces the idea that work is a toil, while only family life is ‘living’ — a schizophrenic view which creates tremendous problems for all members of a family.” Alexander continues, saying that “In order to overcome this schism and re-establish the connection between love and work, central to a sane society, there needs to be a redistribution of all workplaces throughout the areas where people live.” (p.53)
From here, he goes on to enumerate five specific pieces of advice that are perhaps more relevant today than they were when he wrote A Pattern Language in 1977.
- Every home is within 20-30 minutes of many hundreds of workplaces.
- Many workplaces are within walking distance of children and families.
- Workers can go home casually for lunch, run errands, work half-time, and spend half the day at home.
- Some workplaces are in homes; there are many opportunities for people to work from their homes or to take work home.
- Neighborhoods are protected from the traffic and noise generated by “noxious” workplaces. (p. 53)
The Promise of a New Year
Many of the discussions surrounding remote and hybrid work over the past two years have been “as if” these are new discussions. Alexander was questioning the sanity, or humanity, of the conventional industrial office model over 45 years ago. In a certain sense, the world of work has been so out of whack that these conversations have barely been had by those responsible for designing and managing knowledge work.
Alexander’s wisdom reminds us why so many people embraced working from home through the pandemic. What popular magazines came to call The Great Resignation, where nearly 50 million people quit their jobs in both 2021 and 2022, might more appropriately be called The Great Domestication. That is, being at home among family members for longer periods of time closed the separation that most workers had normalized for generations.
Inspired by Alexander’s architect-philosophy, there are five things that leaders should be mindful of in order to create more humane ways of working for their employees.
- Lead with empathy
Employees now expect leaders to care. Don’t let your people down, or they might quietly quit or leave altogether.
- Practice what you preach
Unless leaders also spend time at home with their own families, others in the organization will likely not do so either.
- Anytime/anywhere work
It is finally time to allow employees to work when and where they want. Employee energy and productivity are directly related to choice.
- Prioritize child care and elder care
Even in organizations that insist on RTO mandates, at least allow employees to be fully available to help with their children’s and parent’s needs.
- Utilize coworking spaces
To enable employees to work closer to where they live, embrace coworking spaces as viable locations of work that are closer to where workers live.
Different Versions of Timeless
Every organization, of course, is different. There is thus no one single timeless way of working. However, there are some very basic things that companies can do that enable employees to lead balanced, whole lives. I have enumerated a few of these above, but there are many others as well.
What we can do in 2024 is embrace the disruptions that were brought on by the pandemic. As the fear and anxiety of peak-pandemic fade, perhaps we now have the opportunity to consolidate lessons learned.
The simple wisdom of Christopher Alexander, about work and life, has been out there for decades. Perhaps it is time to take that wisdom seriously and fold it into the future of work.
