Dear Office, your services are terminated

Six weeks ago, 16 days into the lockdown, we speculated on the deep design of a post-corona world. The analysis had layers, from “layer 1”, the physical spaces that we habit, to the psychological “layer 3”: the arguable, hard-to-spot, broad themes and sentiments and anxieties. 

These moods govern societies and, it appears, governance itself. The Prime Minister’s speech on May 12 underlined supply chains and self reliance. The previous ones, not only in tonality, talked of a great civilisation addressing the modern world. These were not speechwriters’ platitudes. 

The gradual lifting of the lockdown — because it was a success, a failure, or unaffordable — is the right time to examine a “layer 1” topic: the office, a space we