A-Typical Plan

Many of us spend forty hours a week in offices, all too often we forget that these buildings are not simply where we go to stare at computer screens, but works that have been carefully laid out and designed. In A-Typical Plan, Jeannette Kuo offers a multifaceted look at the architecture and typology of the office building from the 1880s up through today. Featuring the works of architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Kenzo Tange, Giuseppe Terragni, Le Corbusier, SANAA, Herzog & de Meuron, Toyo Ito, and Christian Kerez, among others, A-Typical Plan elucidates the evolution of office space over time through twenty in-depth case studies of the most influential office buildings, all complete with floor plans and photographs. Essays are contributed byrenowned authors including Inaki Abalos, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Andrea Bassi, Isabel Concheiro, Florian Idenburg, Jeannette Kuo, Jimenez Lai, Enric Massip-Bosch, Freek Persyn, Antoine Picon, and Dries Rodet. An interview and a comic strip round out the volume and shed light on the history of the office building. Succinct and beautifully illustrated, A-Typical Plan is a reminder that even buildings created for quotidian uses can be works of art in themselves.