OUT IN THE OPEN: An office in Munich, 1963.
Image: Walter Henn
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Privacy-challenged office workers may find it hard to believe, but open-plan offices and cubicles were invented by architects and designers who were trying to make the world a better place—who thought that to break down the social walls that divide people, you had to break down the real walls, too.
In the early 20th century modernist architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright saw walls and rooms as downright fascist. The spaciousness and flexibility of an open plan, they thought, would liberate homeowners and office dwellers from the confines of boxes. But companies took up their idea less out of a democratic ideology than a desire to pack in as many workers as they could. The typical open-plan office of the first half of the 20th century contained long rows of desks occupied by clerks in a white-collar assembly line.
Cubicles were interior designers’ attempt to put some soul back in. In the 1950s Quickborner, a German design group, broke up the rows of desks into more organic groupings with partitions for privacy—what it called the Bürolandschaft, or “office landscape”. In 1964 American furniture company Herman Miller introduced the Action Office system, which offered such improvements as larger surfaces and multiple desk heights. In 1968 Herman Miller began to sell its system as modular components, with the unfortunate consequence of letting companies cherry-pick the space-saving aspects of these designs and leave out the humanizing touches.
As corporations began to shift all their employees, not only clerks, into open-plan offices, Herman Miller designer Robert Propst disavowed what he had spawned, calling it “monolithic insanity.” Today, many companies are even reverting to the precubicle rows of desks, now called “pods” to make them sound vaguely futuristic.
Although open plans do have advantages in fostering ambient awareness and teamwork, a meta-analysis published last year in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Health Management by Vinesh Oommen of the Queensland University of Technology in Australia found that they cause conflict, high blood pressure and increased staff turnover. Let us hope that architects’ next idealistic impulse will be rather more successful.
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11 Comments
Add CommentSorry, most of this sounds like poorly thought out BS.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToday's offices use low-wall cubicles, high-wall cubicles and offices to define status and pecking order.
Hey, even the inventors of weapons and bombs fool themselves into thinking they are doing something good for mankind.
I had worked more than 9 years in my own office; however, I changed jobs about 6 months ago and now work in a cubicle. I make more money now than I ever have, enjoy freedom from micromanagement, and rarely have too many demands. Yet, somehow, my stress level is about the same as when I had a much more demanding job with interpersonal conflict and too much work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can totally see companies across the board cashing in on the cheap aspects of open design while eliminating "the humanizing touches." Makes perfect sense to me.
A couple of decades ago, my boss was given a higher-level title, although with the same responsibilities. The HR folk had a policy on office size, and insisted on moving one wall of his office two feet so as to comply with the policy, to the great inconvenience of all concerned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe company was pretty much dismantled 5 years later to enrich the CEO. Amazing that companies make any money at all.
Office walls can serve a purpose - to divide units up, to preserve privacy when privacy is needed, and to reduce ambient noise levels. However, they can lead to a miserable lifeless existence of claustrophobia underneath a fluorescent sun.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOpen floor plans can be successful - when ample light is let in, when workers are allowed to personalize their workspace, and when management is put in the same environment.
I wonder if these studies looked at true open-floor plans, or hybrid open worker/closed management floor plans (where workers feel constantly scrutinized by obfuscated managers)?
A truly open floor plan (ALL staff in a large area in a job that does not produce a lot of ambient noise - in other words, NOT a call center) with private group meeting spaces (where managers can conduct interviews, or teams can meet to discuss plans with group presentation equipment) is very different to the hybrid floor plan mentioned above.
As arynix stated, it is more likely the lack of "humanizing touches" have a greater influence over the stress levels. I'd like to hear more about the offices sampled and what the precise layout was - as well as the types of industries these offices were used in - before concluding that the open layout plan if faulty.
Whoever though of this is a moron with very low self esteem and a zero sense of personal hygeine. Sneeze and the world sneezes with you. Pick your nose and you pick it alone. Fart and your office is history. Conflict, high blood pressure and increased staff turn over - well, add swine flu, avian flu, bubonic plague, ... carpal tunnel syndrome, premature aging, poor eyesight, balding, and spondylitis, just to name a few maladies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom what I understand there is a significant tax benefit for cubicles verses walls. I believe it was because the systems are leased instead of being installed parts of the building structure. So corporations, as always, are choosing the most profitable scenario. Which is why they are called businesses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a computer programmer and I have never been able to work without walls. The distractions, visual and aural, are impossible to block out in any sort of an open environment. For years I have worked nights and weekends and even in stairwells just to be able to concentrate. It is amazing to me that employers do not recognize that one size does not fit all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've worked in three office environments where cubicles were the standard config. In all three, one of the most striking things I noticed was that whenever you went to somebody's "cube" to speak with them, they weren't there. Considering that two of these environs were in fact call centers, I often wondered who besides me was answering the damn phones! I've concluded that "cubes" are places the average person can't stand to be in for any length of time, even preferring stalls in the restrooms to their working cubicles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article missed the fact that the cubicle was designed to deal with mental breaks caused when Robert Propst's design the Action Office 1 caused mental breaks. It was Subliminal Distraction and the vision startle reflex.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCubicles block peripheral vision for a concentrating worker preventing the subliminal detection of threat movement and a massive number of failed attempts to trigger the vision "startle reflex."
VisionAndPsychosis.Net is a seven year investigation of this phenomenon.
I'm always puzzled by these criticisms of cubicle systems. On the one extreme an open layout provides maximum distraction and NO privacy. On the other extreme real offices with walls and doors are very expensive, plus they cut off all contact between people, who are social animals. Cubicles are a compromise, and they have stuck around for 50 years because they work adequately well. All this talk sounds like whining to me. People don't like office work, and they blame the furniture and architecture.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Ambient awareness" sounds like code for "slightly distracted all the time". We've found that many workers actually prefer higher walled cubicles to the ones with low panels that are so popular right now. That's why we offer panel extenders to allow employees more privacy and noise control.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShasta
http://www.panelextenders.com/