The agile space, oasis or mirage? Putting into perspective some difficulties and paradoxes for workers[L'espace agile, oasis ou mirage ? Mise en perspective de quelques difficultés et paradoxes pour les travailleurs]

What happens to life at work when company premises are designed to promote organizational agility? Indeed, on the one hand, agile management methods tend towards permanent reconfiguration, perpetual movement, valuing deterritorialisation and nomadism, on the other hand, the turn to spatiality reminds us of the importance of the place where to settle and of the territory. Drawing on the case of a new building of a large French bank designed to arrange the workspace for agility, we contrast the discourses of managers and employees with the affects that arise when observing the place. The affects betray the creation of spacings, the minor uses of the common space regulated and policed by the agile order. Discourses on agility tend to erase the multiple facets of the work environment, underestimating the role of affects, territory, memory and status. Employees find it hard to live in spaces without trace, without history, without emotional investment. In order to be attractive and livable, the spaces of agile management will undoubtedly gain by learning to also make place, to combine with territories and memories.