At first glance, A/D/O appears to be many things—a café/restaurant, trendy shop, exhibition space—but it certainly doesn’t look like an office. Sure, there are a few rows of tables where people are working, but there’s also a full kitchen in plain view. Located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the A/D/O building hosts a tech company accelerator and a paid membership coworking space, but it welcomes anyone with a laptop into its common areas, which also hold classes, panels, and exhibitions. This all makes A/D/O a superbly fitting venue for Out Of Office, an exhibition about the past, present, and future of the workplace.

Curated by Alex Gilbert and Andrea Hill, Out of Office comprises four sections, some more focused than others—Water Cooler Talk, History of the Desktop, Supply Closet, and Wellness 2050. These discrete exhibits were designed architects Lexi Tsien and Talitha Liu of local practice Soft-Firm.

But there is no overarching thesis to link them. Rather, the show aims to make sense of the many changes that have remade the workplace in our technology-driven times. “Some of the greatest leaps in the last century have been engineering or tech-based, but the role of the designer has kind of fallen away,” says Gilbert.

The Wellness 2050 room, which projects a bucolic field within a dimly lit room, feels more nostalgic than futuristic. Supply Closet is a taxidermy-like showcase of largely outdated office staples (pun intended) such as air mail envelopes and rubber band balls. A white ziggurat, topped with water cooler tanks, exhorts visitors to “Work smarter, not harder.”