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Phone booths for private work are popping up all over the globe. Are these a great idea, or are we trying to find the silver lining to a bigger problem in cramped pods?
供个人使用的工作亭风靡全球。它们能弥补开放式设计办公室的缺点吗？还是根本于事无补？
If you’ve worked in an open-plan office in the past couple of years, you’ve probably seen them: free-standing one-person pods, often with a stool and a ledge-cum-desk. Most have glass doors but are soundproof, so workers can see outside but speak with privacy. They are glorified phone booths – but indoors, and sans phone. And, in just the past few years, they have exploded – in Mumbai co-working spaces, Japanese train stations and private offices all over North America and the UK.
如果过去几年你在开放式设计办公室待过，可能见过这些小亭子：单人独立小间，里面常配有凳子和壁式书桌。它们大多装有隔音玻璃门，这样使用者既可以看到外面，也能拥有独立的谈话空间。它们是升级版电话亭，只是位于室内，里面也没有电话。过去几年，不管是在孟买的共享工作空间、日本的火车站，还是在北美和英国的个人办公室里，随处都可见它们的身影。
Back in 2015 only one office ‘phone booth’ company, Finland’s Framery, exhibited at the annual commercial design exposition NeoCon, according to Byron Morton, vice-president of leasing at NeoCon. This year, about a dozen companies with similar phone booth concepts showcased there, many of which have started only in the last few years.
不过，据NeoCon的租赁业务副总监Byron Morton所言，2015年时只有芬兰Framery这一家公司在NeoCon年度商业设计展览会上展示了工作亭。到了今年，则有12家，它们拥有相似的设计理念，其中多家公司过去几年刚刚起步。
Last year Framery – whose ‘Framery O’ promises “an echo-free and comfortable working environment” – produced almost 10,000 phone booths; this year, they expect to produce 15,000. And Canada’s Onetwosix, founded as a general design company, has transitioned to focus primarily on designing and manufacturing their Loop phone booths. “It’s a huge portion of our business now,” says Onetwosix co-founder Nick Kazakoff. The company still does design consulting work, but the reason they’ve been able to grow so rapidly, he says, is Loop. He estimates the booths now make up 60 to 70% of Onetwosix’s product sales. “We have seen on average a 500% increase in the number of daily inquiries received from people looking to buy our Loop Phone Booths when compared to this time last year,” he says – many of which have converted into sales.
去年，Framery公司生产了近10,000个工作亭，承诺其产品“Framery O”可做到“零回声，高舒适”；今年，该公司预期生产15,000个。加拿大公司Onetwosix，成立之初是一家设计公司，现已将业务主要集中于设计生产Loop工作亭。其联合创始人Nick Kazakoff说，“现在它是我们的主营业务”，公司仍提供设计咨询，可它能快速成长全靠Loop。他预计如今工作亭的销量占公司总产品销量的60-70%。他说，“相较去年这时候日常接到的Loop工作亭购买咨询，今年的次数平均增长了500%”——其中很多人最后都买了。
The pods themselves are certainly tight, sometimes stuffy or lit abrasively and not exactly made to replace a cubicle for a full day of private work. But for some workers, phone booths are the only respite they have from crowded, loud and exposed open offices.
当然，工作亭本身空间有限，有时还有点挤，抑或是照明光线不柔和，并非用于替代常规的个人办公室，不适于进行全天工作。可对有些员工而言，这些小亭子是他们唯一的休憩之所，可以暂时避开拥挤嘈杂的开放式工作场所。
‘Oh, what’s this thing?’
“哇，这是什么？”
Harry’s, the popular shaving company, moved into its current offices in New York City in January 2018. The new space – which incorporates a mix of conference rooms of various sizes as well as a larger, multipurpose area – includes 10 custom two-person booths. But Rich Chen, director of operations at Harry’s Labs, who is 31, says the New York office has grown so quickly over the past year and a half – from around 200 employees in 2018 to 300 employees in 2019 – that the conference rooms have become hard to book, plus employees found they needed areas that were fully soundproof. So in February, Harry’s bought two phone booths. "It’s hard to do construction in an office where people are already working,” says Chen. The booths, though, were installed in a single weekend. “Folks showed up to the office and were like, ‘Oh, what’s this thing?’” The response since then has been “quite positive”. “I sit around the finance and legal team pods. I see folks from those teams using the Room booths every day,” he says. Harry’s facilities manager is even considering ordering one or two more. Folks showed up to the office and were like,
2018年1月，广受欢迎的的剃须用品公司Harry’s搬迁到现址纽约。新工作地点配备了10个定制的双人工作亭，还设有众多大小不一的会议室和一个大型多用途区域。Rich Chen是Harry’s Labs的运营总监，31岁，他说过去一年半以来，纽约的这个公司飞速成长，2018年约有200名员工，而2019年则达到了300名，很难找到足够大的会议室，况且还要满足员工对隔音场地的需求。因此，公司二月时购入了两个工作亭。他说，“办公室里有员工在工作，不便进行施工”，而这些小亭子一个周末便能安装完成。“大家来到办公室，非常惊喜地问‘哇，这是什么？’”，之后的反馈也“相当好”， 他还说，“我观察财务和法律小组使用工作亭的情况，发现他们每天都用。”由此，Harry’s公司的设备经理甚至考虑再定一两个。
office phone booth
开放式设计的办公区域空间宽敞明亮，布局灵活，里面不设置个人专用办公室，使有限的空间能够容纳更多的人员，大大提高了空间利用率，降低了建筑和场地费用。不过，与此同时，这类办公区域也有自身的缺点，比如缺乏可单独工作的场所、隔音差和易受外界干扰等。工作亭在一定程度上弥补了这些不足，它设计精简，安装便捷，在有限的空间内通常配有桌椅、照明和会议所需设备等，并装有隔音玻璃门。另外，亦可根据需要选择不同规格的工作亭，选项包括单人、双人和可容纳多人的会议工作亭。
芬兰的一家公司Framery共推出了两款室内电话亭，一个是方便个人使用的私人电话亭(Soundproof Phone Booths)。
Framery Soundproof Phone Booths
另一个则是可容纳1至4人的室内会议电话亭(Framery Q meeting pod)。
Framery Q meeting pod
每款皆能依喜好选择自己喜欢的色彩，在北欧极简风格的设计之下，缤纷的色彩也为办公注入额外的缤纷活力。除了提供多功能的工作用途之外，内部还有可放置笔记型电脑的木制桌椅，能够随心组装需要的家具。有了这座可爱的室内私人电话亭，从此也不用担心在开放式空间中的吵杂声了！
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