Tracing the history of the office is not only about looking at the design of bespoke office furniture, but is also an exploration of the various social, cultural and technological changes in the wider world, and this can even be found in the shape of the office environment itself.
Whilst the open plan office is seen as a product of the workplace revolutions of the 1990s, it is actually a much older working standard, dating as far back as office work itself does, with many of the same debates and discussions surrounding them.
Early companies that relied on more office-based jobs tended to use unused factory space, where there was a large open space for the main workers and private rooms for managers and other higher-level staff. This remained true until the 1960s.
Robert Propst and George Nelson, both working for the furniture company Herman Miller at the time, researched the needs of office workers and workplaces and found, much to their surprise, that workers were less productive and less communicative in the bare open spaces that were the norm.
The reasons, Mr Propst assumed, were because whilst office work often needs collaboration, it also needs privacy due to how employees have become increasingly less specialised and will do a much wider range of tasks than in the past, some of which need privacy and concentration.
This led to the Action Office, a set of L-shaped desks that allowed a worker much more freedom to move, but its expense, lack of flexibility and complex assembly meant that it would sell poorly until it was redesigned as the Action Office II, which introduced the world to the cubicle.
It was still an open space, but it was one that was flexible for managers and allowed for some degree of privacy and personalisation without affecting nearby workers.
This type of design would largely fall out of favour by the late 2000s as the rise of the mobile employee led to a return to the open-plan office, albeit with a much greater focus on team working.
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