12 workplace designs from the movies and TV series

Inside a monolithic building reminiscent of an Inca temple set in the suburbs of Los Angeles, the office of Dr. Eldon Tyrell - head of the corporation that produces replicants with human bodies and thoughts - is a solemn and grandiose space bathed in the golden light of sunset that spreads across the walls and polished floors, and dotted with brass statues of birds and bronze busts, marble pedestals and obelisks. A dark environment with an almost deathly essentiality reminiscent of a mausoleum, perhaps sealing the rise of android life in place of human life. 

Spaces as impeccable as they are leaden (this is Gotham City, after all) are the boardroom and Applied Sciences Division of Wayne Enterprises, a multinational corporation owned by tycoon Bruce Wayne when he's not playing Batman. The meeting room is an icy environment with glass surfaces through which light hardly seems to filter, and where a disarming sense of emptiness creeps in from the tightly packed set of chairs around the presidential table and the cold neon lights. The Applied Sciences Division is an equally bleak and almost outsized space where the human dimension seems to be annihilated in a ruthless and hostile world. The real environments that lent themselves to the scene are located in Chicago: the meeting room is in the IBM Building at 330 North Wabash Avenue and the Applied Sciences Division in the Convention Hall of the West Building at McCormick Place.

The office of Albus Dumbledore (a.k.a. Albus Dumbledore), Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and the most powerful wizard of all time in the fantasy world of Harry Potter, is a cavernous, enveloping space that suggests the image of a horror vacui “cathedral of knowledge”, with thousands of dusty books piled high on wooden shelves, an altar-like desk and pointed stone arches in the best of floral Gothic. Magical objects and talking pictures add a plus that no design element could provide.

A cult science fiction film, Metropolis depicts a not-so-far-fetched scenario because, as Ray Bradbury said, “science fiction pretends to look into the future but actually looks at the reflection of the truth that is right in front of us”. In a dystopian future, a metropolis with expressionist geometries is the scene of exacerbated class struggles between the privileged few who live in luxurious skyscrapers and the multitude of proletarians “devoured” by the machines of dehumanising production in the city's underground. The workplaces are forges puffing out vapours, fumes and exhaust oils in which individual identity disappears into the gears of the economy of profit (of the few). A little less than a hundred years have passed since the first projection but the foreshadowing of the future of that time is not so different from the current reality.

Despite the show’s rampant misogyny and the fact that working there is hell for a woman, the offices of the Sterling Cooper advertising agency on Madison Avenue in New York are an emblem of impeccable style. From the colour palettes, to the modernist furniture, artwork, spherical lights and upholstery, the rooms echo the elegant yet accessible retro feel of Joseph Eichler's homes and the architectural language of Mid-Century Modern.

The office of “M”, the code name given by Ian Fleming to the director of the Secret Intelligence Service, exudes composed authority. The solid wood desk is the physical and decisional epicentre of the room, which is entirely lined with wood panelling and shelving in deep, warm tones. Leather armchairs, paintings, antiques and vintage furniture complete an environment with an intellectual aura and a retro flavour, but perhaps it is not advisable to relax too much.

The office of Mr Burns, billionaire owner of the Springfield nuclear plant and despotic boss of Homer Simpson, is an icy, repelling place on a superhuman scale, covered in velvets, portraits and blazons that emphasise a desire for magniloquence and prestige. A stuffed bear placed in a corner – so as not to steal the spotlight from the space’s only real protagonist, the presidential table – seems to be silently shouting its disappointment. Outside this darkly coloured space, dominated by reds, greens and purples, the blue sky opens up (but with toxic fumes from the chimneys).

The ramshackle criminal lawyer with dubious morals Saul Goodman stands out for his characterisation among the secondary characters of the series “Breaking Bad” and as the absolute protagonist of the spin-off “Better call Saul”. His office is a trashy manifesto: a rubbery, unstable Statue of Liberty, which sways with the air currents on the roof of an anonymous building in an anonymous car park, welcomes the hilarious lawyer’s postmodern office. Columns, oculi, decorations and stylised Ionic capitals in faux marble lend a supposedly stately aura to the space. Wall writings taken from the constitution exalt the skills of the lawyer, while a prefabricated false ceiling and electric blue carpeting from a third-rate motel denounce the “cheap” nature of the place.

Working inside the Starship Enterprise would definitely be a cool experience: talented colleagues (even aliens), non-stop action, breathtaking views of space “where no man has gone before”, comfortable and cosy surroundings. The meeting room in particular is somewhere between Mid-Century Modern – in keeping with the original series’ 1960s release period – and futuristic, with round tables with wooden tops, tulip chairs and a colour palette of acid hues giving the room a retro and somewhat psychedelic aura.

The headquarters of the company in charge of interstellar affairs is a place where, amidst alien worms sipping a cappuccino and staff busy with matters of planetary interest, there is a pulsating and dynamic operational buzz. The spaces housing the activities are visibly in line with aerospace scenarios, with full-volume environments where suspended “cells” housing individual offices and overhead walkways float. High-tech materials (steel for structures and finishes and glass) dialogue with soft, organic furnishings in light tones that accentuate the diffuse luminosity of the rooms.

In the series of films and stories centred on the figure of the accountant Ugo Fantozzi, we can read all the tragicomic complexity of an anti-hero inert in the face of adverse destiny. Inexorably overwhelmed by events, Fantozzi clumsily moves in a working context that exasperates the split between the submissive (like him), the successful zealots and the "divinities" - like the director - who sit at the top of the company and embody almost otherworldly entities fed by the servility of the subordinates. The office of the galactic megadirector, which Fantozzi enters by crawling and with the prospect of acting as a decorative fish in the "human aquarium" on the wall, is an ascetic environment reminiscent of the architecture of Dom Hans Van Der Laan. Characterised by a disorienting emptiness and chromatic absence, the few furnishing elements such as the benches, the wooden desk and the chairs in human skin (in memory of the company's employees overwhelmed by the hierarchical mechanism) do not contribute to restoring even the idea of an "almost" human space.

If going to the office means breathing the air of the Ocean and being warmed by the sun of the beaches of Southern California, it is well worth facing daily stories of rescue and socio-existential problems even in a not so high-profile series like Baywatch. The watchtowers of the Baywatchers, located depending on the episode in California, Florida or Hawaii, are small cabins on wooden stilts that have the lightness and informality of a life lived in a swimming costume, where much more is not needed to be at peace with oneself and the world.