Parks of Sprawl: The Corporate Landscape

The Spread of the Office Park

A Brief History
After the initial postwar surge of residential development in the United States, the corporate headquarters followed suit into the rapidly expanding suburbs.  Influential corporations such as General Foods, IBM, and others redefined the office environment through new suburban models.  The transition from the typology of the urban office tower to a pastoral imagination of the workplace was simultaneously responsive to changing external circumstances and a deliberate quest to reinvent corporate identity.

Some of the factors contributing to the suburbanization of corporations are similar to those that instigated the flood of residential development.  While the expanding middle class bought new homes through favorable mortgage rates and affordable prices, the years following World War II also marked a period of profitability for many large companies, who began to require more room for expansion.  Office space was becoming more difficult to find and more expensive in urban areas, so companies such as General Foods(ref) began to scout peripheral areas to expand their working environments, where more land was available at a lesser cost.  Increasing criticism of the grittiness and danger of the city and fear of nuclear attack are also cited as an instigator of suburban flight, affecting both the movement of people and companies into the suburbs.  Louise Mozingo, associate professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at UC Berkeley has done significant research on America’s corporate landscapes, a topic that has not yet been widely researched.  Please see her article “The Corporate Estate in the USA” cited in the Sources for a detailed tracing of the corporate office from the urban to a suburban model.

The corporate move to the suburbs was also a necessary response to the residential movement, following the workforce into the suburbs and decreasing the commute between the white-collar worker and the office.  The movement of the masses signified a shared value system among many middle class Americans that became a new opportunity for the corporate sector to engage. The pastoral suburban setting became a common image of the American Dream, popularized in magazines such as House Beautiful and through numerous sit-coms depicting idealized suburban life.  Meanwhile, the physical aspect of the corporate image in the urban skyscraper was comparatively immense and hard-edged.  The office park embraced the landscaping language of the suburban neighborhood with grass lawns and planted trees to soften and re-familiarize the corporate image. 

3 Typologies
Current Trends
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