Whether it is a personal choice or, as it sadly is the case these days, a health guideline to follow in order to protect our community, homeworking is becoming more and more popular among many kinds of workers. The dimension of the home is clearly an important factor: organizing an efficient office corner, sheltered from all the distractions caused by objects or other people, proves to be fundamental to guarantee a reasonable balance between the opportunities offered by the home office and the multiple levels of coexistence and proximity that the home inevitably holds within itself.
By meeting the need to make objects, times and spaces dedicated to work coexist peacefully within the home, the home reacts by becoming elastic and regulating the boundary between digital life and domestic activities with flexible solutions. Though less orthodox than we would have thought ten years ago, these new offices inside the home demonstrate first and foremost that they can adapt to the needs of individuals, transforming themselves into informal workstations, allowing the worker to plan the organization of his or her work, and to use of bright colors and materials that make the home office a space open to improvisation.
We have selected fifteen projects that address the potential of domestic smart working with originality and new pragmatism. Many are the design aspects invested in this research: from the efficiency of square meters thanks to the flexibility of pieces of furniture that appear and disappear, to the newfound ergonomics that tries to preserve us from a life of immobility in front of the screen, to container furniture to which we can entrust our most valuable belongings and, why not, thoughts that it is increasingly necessary to be able to protect.