#officetour Milestones – Mobile Office by Hans Hollein

In December 1969 the Austrian TV station ORF broadcast a half-hour portrait of the architect Hans Hollein, including a presentation of Hollein’s Mobile Office project: essentially an inflatable plastic bubble in which one person could sit and work.

“Klingt vielleicht etwas verrückt”, mused the presenter, “sounds perhaps a bit crazy”.

And in 1969 a device, a construct, that allowed for the creation of a private domain in the midst of a public space, unquestionably did sound “etwas verrückt”.

And in 2022…….

Hans Hollein at work in his Mobile Office under the watchful eye of ORF

Born in Vienna on March 30th 1934 Hans Hollein studied architecture at Vienna’s Akademie der bildenden Künste before in 1958 beginning a two year sojourn in the USA; a sojourn which saw him study and research at first the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago, and subsequently the University of California, Berkeley, where in 1960 he completed his Master of Architecture with the dissertation Space in Space in Space, whose written thesis, and as its title Plastic Space neatly implies, was largely reflections on the relationships between humans and the spaces they occupy and employ in context of architecture, was, if one so will, a questioning of what is architecture and what could architecture be in context of humans and the spaces they occupy and employ.

Reflections and questioning which, augmented and refined by further reflections and questioning throughout the 1960s, that most radical of decades in European architecture, became embodied in Mobile Office, a space that is literally, physically, a plastic space, and also conceptually, poetically, a plastic space.

A plastic space that on the one hand was very much of its time: the 1960s being unquestionably one in which designers, artists and architects of varying hues embraced not only plastics but inflatable plastics, and while, for example, in New York an Andy Warhol was filling gallery spaces with free-floating Silver Clouds, or in Milan a Lomazzi, D’Urbino, and De Pas were developing inflatable armchairs, in Austria, and for all in Vienna, the likes of, for example, Haus-Rucker-Co or Coop Himmelb(l)au were experimenting with inflatable architecture.

And a plastic space that on the other hand is very much of our time: and, no, not on account of the Covid pandemic, if the effortless social distancing it enables is very much that which was needed over these past two years. Rather, of our time because of the reflections and questioning of work and offices it effortlessly enables.
 

“There is no difference between outside and inside space. There is only space”¹

As presented in 1969 Hans Hollein’s Mobile Office, unquestionably, has a lot of problems, for all it is highly impractical, or at least is if your not a sprightly mid-30s architect, or an urbane start-upper, or a yogi, happy to crawl into it through the base and then sit on the floor cross-legged working with a minimum of tools. And most of us, for better or worse, aren’t.

And also hasn’t aged so well in context of the mobility of the project’s title: as Hollein sits on the outfield at Aspern airport the primary function the bubble serves is to protect him from the weather, which on that day didn’t appear to be his biggest problem: he could have sat on the ground without his bubble and worked just as efficiently. Perhaps more so, “it’s fu**ing hot in there”, he’s heard to mutter (in English) off camera, an allusion to the eternal conflict of plastic bubbles and the sun.² But were it to rain, would it be a pleasant place to sit and work? Or would it be preferable to go to a cafe? And while cafes may not have been so numerous, even in Vienna, in 1969, they are an unavoidable component of our contemporary society: the ubiquitous coffee shop having, one can argue, proven itself to be the better location for mobile working, the better location to site a mobile office, than an inflatable plastic bubble carried around in a suitcase. Which probably shouldn’t surprise us.

However, such considerations, such deficiencies, only apply if you only understand Hollein’s Mobile Office to be a literal, physical, plastic space. And don’t apply if you also understand Hollein’s Mobile Office to be a conceptual, poetic, plastic space, as a proposition as much as a proposal: for all that in the ORF portrait Hans Hollein is very much sitting inside a box, he is very much thinking outside the box, is challenging prevailing conventions and understandings of not only the role of the architect, the function of architecture, or the priorities of architecture, but is also challenging prevailing conventions and understandings of what is an office, what is an office space, what is a working environment, what is required to advance and promote productive office work.

And also posing questions on mobile communication, which, we’ll argue, wasn’t a popular thing in 1969; while the first humans may have stood on the moon in 1969, 1969 was still very much a daily life anchored via physical connectors. But not for a Hans Hollein, a man who understood architecture as “a medium of communication”³ and was deeply interested in how communication in all its manifestations could be enhanced for the benefit of all through the addition of mobility: the telephone, for example, which he uses inside his bubble simply couldn’t have worked in 1969. But he pretended it did to propose a new, possible, future, and in doing so predicted our, actual, future.⁴

As does his inflatable space. Or it could.

And that not least on account of its temporality, which, again, was very much a concept of its time amongst the avant-garde architects and designers of the 1960s, if without the acute relevance it has today: then temporality was much more a conceptual, almost abstract, position, today in our increasingly crowded world, where space is very much at a real premium, the efficient and optimal use of space demands variability, demands responsiveness, demands the ability to create instant, temporary, spaces. Such as a readily, repeatedly, inflatable and deflatable bubble. That whereas in 1969 it may have been a Mobile Office, in 2022 it is, or could be, a (static) Temporary Office. A temporary office within an office. Or a temporary office within a home(-office).

For who can deny the beauty of being able to instantly take your desk from a permanent public space to a temporary private space where you can, for example, undertake some concentrated work or participate in a virtual reality meeting or partake in a telephone call/video conference without any ambient background noise nor having to share the contents of your discussions with those around you. And that without having to move (your) desk. Or the beauty of being able to turn a section of the permanent public office space into a temporary private meeting space without having to undertake a reorganisation of the space. And temporary spaces from which you can return, and which can be returned to the public domain, once the specific moment has passed.

The question is, how does one achieve that?
 

“Architects must stop thinking only in terms of buildings”⁵

Hans Hollein’s proposition can’t be the answer, but, we’d argue, remains highly informative and instructive, has lost none of its challenge nor impudence, be that as a physical space, a conceptual space, or a structuring space, and thus, we’d argue further, reflections on and a questioning of Hollein’s Mobile Office can assist us in the forming of that answer, those answers: can help us as a simple, accessible, embodiment of Hans Hollein’s positions and understandings at that time, a time when he, and so many others in Vienna, were busying themselves with fundamental and theoretical questions of architecture, questions that went beyond architecture as brick on brick and understood architecture as relationships, interactions, extensions, architecture as tangible and intangible; if questions which often couldn’t be answered in their day, but can be more practically approached in ours.

Can help us as a theoretical position arrived at in context of critical, speculative, uninhibited reflections on and questionings of space, humans and architecture which demanded new understandings of the relationships between space, humans and architecture; new understandings that new technology and new social systems very much demand we develop today.

And can help us as one of the earliest considerations on the question of what is work, what is an office, in an age of mass telecommunication; considerations undertaken without the accumulated conventions, prejudices, baggage, or the incessant demands of monetisation, of our age. And which can often hinder our progress.

Or put another way, that which fills, defines, enlivens, the void of Hollein’s bubble can serve us not only in considerations on the contemporary office as not only mobile but as temporary and as transformable and as responsive, but can also serve us in the development of new interior architecture systems, new desk/workstation concepts, new chair concepts, new sofa concepts, which allow for the instantaneous provision of a space within a space. In an age where every office building, hotel lobby, coffee shop, home has electricity, telephone and internet provision⁶, why can’t they also have compressed air provision? Or leave the inflatable behind, understand the inflatable as a 1960s conceptual, rhetorical, tool, and explore, for example, how, if, new synthetic materials can allow for rapidly retractable, or rapidly foldable, solutions. Or how, if, developing virtual and augmented reality technology can create viable virtual bubbles. Virtual plastic spaces. Or…..wherever your uninhibited, speculative, reasoned, thoughts take you.

Thus although, or perhaps exactly because, the Mobile Office was never an actual thing beyond the 1969 ORF portrait, in context of the considerations it enables on space, humans and architecture and also on account of the considerations it enabled in 1969 on what is an office and the considerations it enables in 2022 on what is an office, Hans Hollein’s Mobile Office is unquestionably a genuine milestone in the (hi)story of office design.

And the sort of “verrückt” idea we could do with a few more of today……

The complete ORF Hans Hollein portrait can be viewed, thanks to architekturtheorie.eu/Fakultät für Architektur der Universität Innsbruck, at https://vimeo.com/543071261 (German only) (The section on the Mobile Office begins at ca. 08:47)

The section about Mobile Office with english subtitles, and further reflections on Hans Hollein/Mobile Office by Andreas Rumpfhuber, can be found, thanks to the Instead postgraduate programme at the University of Thessaly, Greece, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKSWEW7vYak

1. Hans Hollein Plastic Space, MA Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, July 1960 Available via http://www.hollein.com/index.php/ger/Schriften/Texte/Plastic-Space (accessed 23.03.2022)

2. The expletive can be clearly heard on www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKSWEW7vYak (ca 03:10) but not on https://vimeo.com/543071261 (should be at about 10:10) and so it may or may not be a Hollein expletive. But whether it is or isn’t doesn’t detract from the classic “plastic bubble + sun = airless heat” equation.

3. Hans Hollein, Alles ist Architektur, Bau. Schrift für Architektur und Städtebau, Vol, 23, Nr. 1/2, Wien 1968 Available via http://www.hollein.com/index.php/ger/Schriften/Texte/Alles-ist-Architektur (accessed 23.03.2022)

4. Communication, contemporary communications, were a major theme for Hans Hollein and, for example, in 1966 he proposed as an extension of Vienna University: a television set. And thus joyously predicts online distance learning some 20 years before the internet. While questioning architecture.

5. Hans Hollein, Alles ist Architektur, Bau. Schrift für Architektur und Städtebau, Vol, 23, Nr. 1/2, Wien 1968 Available via http://www.hollein.com/index.php/ger/Schriften/Texte/Alles-ist-Architektur (accessed 23.02.2022)

6. We’re clearly generalising and simplifying greatly here, and that as a rhetoric tool, not “all” homes have such, our world is, still, and despite what all logic tells us is possible, a cruelly unfair place…….