The deal between Condé Nast and the Port Authority for the publisher to take over 1 million square feet at One World Trade Center is only a few days old, but the freaking out about moving there has already begun—even though the first staffers won't be able to move in until 2014. According to the Post, "So far, the design plans are not being shared with the staff. And for good reason. 'I think it will be horribly received in many parts of the building,'" because the office space design might include... cubicles.
The plans reportedly include open office space and not many offices with windows, which some view as a step down from 4 Times Square, where top editors have huge offices, sometimes with bathrooms with showers, (if you have Netflix Instant, you can watch The September Issue for a glimpse inside Vogue's offices). One "Condé Nasty" tells the Post's Keith Kelly, "Newsrooms are all about speed and accuracy. The kind of writing we do is much more involved with style. You need quiet," and then Kelly outlines a fascinating hierarchy of office space:
In the Condé Nast headquarters, there are five levels of office space, ranked from A, for top-level editors and publishers, which are corner offices with windows, to E level, where assistants and junior staffers are sitting in the open. But even the D level office space in the current headquarters have walls and doors -- although that level would be relegated to interior windowless space.
Who knows, maybe Condé Nast will cut a few more magazines and put the cubicle cowards out of their misery.
