Apparently balanced on the spire of St Botolph’s church, Aldgate, sits the Desktopolis, suspended like a monumental executive toy.  Inside a mile long spiralling landscape supports neighbourhoods of seemingly ordinary office desks which mark the entrances to dwellings concealed in the ceiling voids above.  Homes for freelancing almost-at-home workers from the financial service industries, who rather than choosing a particular company to work for, have chosen a building to work in.

 

In opposition to positivist principles of transparency and progress, the violent, wasteful and destructive desires conventionally excluded from the workplace are embraced within the Desktopolis.  Circulation routes pass through neighbouring territories, each slightly different from the last, designed to intensify the tangible rivalries and intrigues saturate the atmosphere within this animated workplace community.  

 

 

By contaminating the conventional single programmatic use of the tower, to incorporate life from outside the workspace, some of the boredom of both home and work might be alleviated.  Fluorescent lamps illuminating a new pattern of social organisation, realised underneath a sky of acoustic ceiling tiles.