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.

About the Author

Frances Holliss is a Reader in Architecture at London Metropolitan University and Director of the Workhome Project. Her research concerns the emerging field of design for home-based work.

Reviews

'In Beyond Live/Work, Frances Holliss has combined documentary, historical research with ethnographic/architectural investigations of people who occupy workhome spaces. The book reveals not only a phenomenon of the past and present, but also a probable future in which people will increasingly want to reintegrate their working and domestic lives. This timely and beautifully illustrated book has important lessons for clients, architects and policy-makers, and powerful implications for the nature of the emerging city.' - Howard Davis, Professor of Architecture, University of Oregon and co-director of the Collaborative for Inclusive Urbanism

'Beyond Live/Work is a highly accessible and copiously illustrated book. It is a testament to the individual's, and sometimes the collective's, ingenuity in shaping personal space to suit their specific life and work needs, and the multi-layered, complex cities that result. She argues compellingly that the workhome is transforming our cities, offering not only a vital economic driver, but a truly sustainable model for the future.' - Sarah Wigglesworth RDI MBE, Director, Sarah Wigglesworth Architects and Professor of Architecture, University of Sheffield, UK

'Holliss rightly concludes that cities designed to accommodate more flexible patterns of working and living - especially for women, who in some British cities now make up more than half the workforce - would look and feel very different to those we currently inhabit. Politicians, planners and architects have yet to acknowledge this, let alone do anything about it. Reading this book would certainly open their eyes.' - Ken Worpole, Architecture Today

'Beyond Live/Work provides a useful corrective to the typical binary representation of suburb and city that I have critiqued elsewhere. It shows that the workhome can exist both in a suburban setting as well as in the inner city. It is the way in which it corresponds to its street setting that will differ in each spatial context.' - LSE Review of Books, Laura Vaughan, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

"Beyond Live/Work has dozens of case study examples and illustrations of the wide range of workhome styles and the occupations of the people who live in them. It's a thought-provoking treasure trove of information and ideas, which is also supplemented by a website full of resources including a 'pattern book' of work-home design. I recommend it highly." - Andy Lake, flexibility.co.uk

"There are plenty of attractive books about sheds, garden offices and colourful introductions to working at home, but at last there is a book which is not only well illustrated but also tackles the subject intelligently and comprehensively while still being readable." - Alex Johnson, Shedworking

"The bane of the planning world, the live/work unit, is the subject of Holliss' quite riveting book; and you have to say that the case she builds up is quite compelling... An in depth and well illustrated study for clients, architects and policy makers of this most aspirational of urban living types." - Jan-Carlos Kucharek, RIBA Journal

Book Information
ISBN 9780415585491
Author Frances Holliss
Format Paperback
Page Count 232
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 200g