Post on 23-Aug-2014
description
The Cube Meant to give workers autonomy and freedom, the cubicle turned
into one of the greatest symbols of white collar drudgery and servitude. !
But what factors lead to confining your existence within three walls?
When capitalism shifted into its second gear in the late 19th century, the need for greater administration became paramount and offices grew to be enormous; the number of jobs differentiated as well. The result was that the office became indistinguishable from the factory: dozens of people working in assembly-line-like arrangements, at a constant pace with mind-numbing consistency.
Factor One:
Creating the “Office Utopia”
Factor Two: Acknowledging and Compensating for Less-Than-Desirable Work
In 1905, The Larkin Building was the office of a mail order company that, like
Amazon today, sold everything and opened the workspace for clerks and administration.
Larkin tried to make people feel better about how bad the work was by giving them amenities:
noonday lectures to attend…
classes to frequent… a company newspaper…
Sound familiar?
Factor Three: Pioneering Works of Architecture
Lever House
Pioneering Architecture Skyscraper Amenities included: • lots of light • restaurants • Libraries • sitting rooms for employees
and employee families • model apartments for the
staff. The Problem? • the endless reproducibility of
the model: skyscrapers could be reproduced at nausea
Pullman Building
Factor Four: Suburbanization!
Connec'cut General
By the postwar era, suburbanization had accelerated, leading to an enormous flight of middle classes from the urban core; offices followed. Why? • racial and labor tension in the cities • the lack of space in the cities • access to younger female workers
German for “office landscape”, Bürolandschaft is the origin of the “open office plan”. The idea was to: • make things more informal • level hierarchies • create more serendipitous encounters
Instead, workers saw: noise, distraction, the emergence of ‘informal offices’ with makeshift screens and house plants.
In Europe, the open office plan was rejected by workers, the only place where it succeeded was the US….
Factor Five: The Bürolandschaft
Factor Six: Robert Propst’s Action Office
So where does your cubicle come from?
The Action Office. Developed for the Herman Miller company, the Action Office was created by Robert Propst who saw the potential in the open office plan but also realized that workers needed a space they could call their own. Unfortunately, Propst ran up against the desire for companies to cram as many workers into as little space as possible.
His workspace became a box.
One of the common problems we see over the course of office history is the dissonance between design and culture.
Looking Past The Cube…
*Photo from the new (and improved) TBWA/Chiat/Day
If we really care about the autonomy of workers, we have to make that autonomy more meaningful than being allowed to work wherever you want.
When we think about the future of the office, we shouldn’t just think about design and
technology.
We should think about control, and who has it.
Learn More in Cubed: The Secret History Of The Workplace by Nikil Saval
Photo Credit: Katrina Ohstorm
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