The History of Office Buildings

At the two-day workshop Perspectives on Uses and Users in the History of Office Buildings, which will take place at the Belval campus of the University of Luxembourg (Esch-sur-Alzette) on 30 November and 1 December 2023, we aim to deconstruct the managerial and architectural determinants of the 20th-century office building. The analytical focus lies on the dialectic relationship between planning and usage. Concretely, we seek to investigate how clients, architects, and interior designers interacted with users of office buildings, and how they subsequently modified their conceptions (or failed to do so). Conversely, we are interested in the bottom-up perspective: how did office workers voice their opinion on the buildings in which they were housed?