Beyond Live/Work

Book excerpt: Beyond Live/Work: the architecture of home-based work explores the old but neglected building type that combines dwelling and workplace, the ‘workhome’. It traces a previously untold architectural history illustrated by images of largely forgotten buildings. Despite having existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in every country across the globe this dual-use building type has long gone unnoticed. This book analyses the lives and premises of 90 contemporary UK and US home-based workers from across the social spectrum and in diverse occupations. It generates a series of typologies and design considerations for the workhome that will be useful for design professionals, students, policy-makers and home-based workers themselves. In the context of a globalising economy, more women in work than ever before and enabling new technologies, the home-based workforce is growing rapidly. Demonstrating how this can be a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable working practice, this book presents the workhome as the house of the future.