OFFICE DEXTEROUS
TEAM: Leon Lai – Canadian – Sivisoko Inc. + University of Toronto, The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design
Re-imagining Urban Manufacturing
Office Dexterous is a speculative factory prototype in the near future that challenges the fundamentals of contemporary manufacturing culture in the city. It envisions an urban micro-manufacturing environment where spatial and tectonic relationships can be actively optimized by its users.
Less than 15m wide, the factory prototype is designed to embrace narrow lots in the city with a vertically integrated bicycle design and production facility as its main tenant. Designed as malleable framework, Office Dexterous collapses HVAC and other paraphernalia into the structural frame of the factory, allowing the plan to change dynamically. The instantaneous “hacking” of the building would be operated at the meso level of the tectonic spectrum, such as relocating and bridging floors, adjusting ventilation and mechanical services and re-wiring conduits for machine operations. Ultimately, the user can optimize their work environment to their task at hand.
The thickened plenum space around the building dissolves the strict separation between poché and functional interior of modern office buildings, prioritizing the liberated section over the traditional open plan of a bygone time. Workers and machines of production converge at Office Dexterous to form a posthumanist era of urban manufacturing in the city that is clean, flexible, buzzing and luminous.