Nick Foley was formerly the Chief Product Officer for Jump, responsible for the design and engineering of the beautiful red electric bikes. Now he has started Denizen, a company marketing the Archetype: "a prefabricated office designed with everything you need for the perfect day of work, anywhere in the world." It is available by subscription to employers "as a way of reducing central office costs, while also providing employees with a better place to work."

This is a concept and business model that we have followed on Treehugger for over a decade, starting with the British OfficePOD, pitched as a "full-service system for employers to lease home offices for their employees to reduce costs, attract and retain staff, reduce carbon dioxide emissions, increase productivity and adapt to change." That was long before the pandemic, and when working from home did not get a whole lot of support from employers. It made sense for the U.K., where people live in much smaller homes, but it never caught on.

But the world has changed with the pandemic, and many companies are now supportive of their employees working from home—and the Denizen Architype could fill that niche. According to the press release:

I always get a bit nervous when people compare buildings to smartphones; Katerra did that and look what happened to them. However, I have suggested that we should build our homes the way we build cars. The Denizen pod is an interesting design: "Beautifully crafted from premium materials like sustainably harvested timber, 3D printed biopolymers, and durable metal cladding, the Archetype comes equipped with seamlessly integrated tech that is there when you need it and disappears when you don’t."

But the main difference between a phone or car and a little home office is the volume, the scale. How big is the market for something like this? Will companies be willing to pay for it?

Foley certainly has a grand vision that aligns with Treehugger's passion for the 15-minute city and flexible working conditions:

Given the grand vision, we reached out to Alex Johnson, who wrote the book "Shedworking: The Alternative Workplace Revolution" and runs the website Shedworking. He tells Treehugger:

Like Treehugger, he also admires the vision for the future of work.

There are a few minor quibbles about the design. The desk is sitting in an "immersive" glass arch that is apparently switchable privacy glass, which is very expensive and I have never seen curved, because it is made of two layers with liquid crystals in between. They talk a lot about sustainability, noting that "our most important impact comes from making emitters and polluters responsible for their own messes," and then they 3D print it out of plastic and call it "recyclable" when there is nothing in the shape or form of the structure that lends itself to 3D printing.

It has "audiophile-grade speakers" in the description but shows what look like Joey Roth's Ceramic Speakers sitting on the desk in the rendering. They are lovely but are very fragile, and you don't want them so close to the edge of a moving, working desk. They call for a 40 Amp electrical service for a 100-square-foot building, which sounds like they are running a bitcoin farm rather than a home office.

But these are details, they are still at the conceptual stage. The most interesting part of this is the business model. Will companies be willing to pay for this, especially when many are trying to claw back wages from employees who live in less expensive cities? Are people going to be willing to leave all that technology in a very noticeable backyard building? Is there an unmet need for garden offices in a nation with 44 million empty bedrooms? Stay tuned.

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