摘要：“His weariness is that of the gladiator after the combat; his work was the whitewashing of a corner in a state official's office”. Franz Kafka.The idea of the office seems to be engraved in our consciousness: the dreadfulness, the numbness of the office floats through Franz Kafka’s stories like the smell of mould in the old offices his characters are trapped in. The office of today appears not to be able to get rid of its rather unpleasant reputation. Thus today, a large number of the office workers, given the opportunity, jump on the chance to work from home. But the division between working in an office or at home starts to blur. As an increasing number of people work in what I would like to call: “a post-telework condition”. Technology makes it possible to work anywhere, anytime, and thus many people spread their working hours in client’s offices, in planes, trains, at home as well as in “the office”. Somehow we still have and need offices, but what is their role today? In this paper I will investigate the changing role of the workplace amid the other confetti of transitional spaces people use as their working environment. In order for companies to attract and retain high quality staff they need to take a renewed importance of the workplace into consideration. The role of the office today is to act as a catalyst in company culture creation as well as team building, collaborating, learning, and knowledge sharing. The paper will show that both the perception and the idea of the office are going through tremendous changes. The clear division that existed between telework and office work is blurring as we are witnessing the emergence of a post-telework condition in which the corporate workplace will regain a renewed importance. Finally a case study will be presented that takes all these issues into consideration.
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