Brief History of Office Design

What goes on in the office - why we have offices - is not terribly different to offices as we have known them over the past 100 years or so. The work is similar: people work individually and in groups, they store and access files, they use technology, they socialise, they have formal meetings. The office is a place where people come together to engage in activities that help the enterprise persevere and prosper.

The primary difference from early offices and those today is that, over a hundred years, the idea of the office as a social setting got lost, or at least diminished.

We can thank Frederick Taylor and the Principles of Scientific Management (1911) for that. It was Taylor who, in the name of efficiency, broke down complex tasks in discrete, repetitive activities. It was Taylor who, reflecting the values of his time, saw most workers as inherently lazy, thereby generating the need for constant surveillance and strict management control." 1

It was in this climate that the image of rows of docile and subservient workers emerged. The dominant feature was that socialising was a waste of the corporation's time and work became principally "task focused". People came together to use specialised equipment, initially typewriters, telephones and then computers, copiers, printers and fax machines.

"In an evolutionary process, what began largely as a social setting evolved into one that more closely resembled a rabbit warren." 2

The history of the development of the "office" as we know it to day is an interesting one and there are many published sources available for further reading. (Refer to Acknowledgments). Suffice to say that the model instigated by Frederick Taylor has continued with frightening predicability.

"Struggle hard as architects and designers occasionally do to escape from the influence of Taylor's ideology, they habitually fall back on outmoded stereotypes. The reasons are obvious. First from 1920 to 1960 there were as few new ideas in organisation theory as in office design. Second, as the gap began to widen in the 1960's between the physical office environment and emerging ideas of new ways of working and new kinds of organisational structure, there were never enough intellectual or financial resources in the fractured supply-side-dominated furniture and construction industries to respond to change. Third, as the divorce between reality and design became more and more complete, an even harsher economic reality, manifested in fee cutting and lower and lower margins on fee bids, has made innovation next to impossible. " 3

Some of the important elements that have had major impacts on the office as we now recognise it are summarised below:

• New technologies - starting with the telephone and typewriter.
• Burolandschaft (Hamburg 1950s) - was an important attempt to increase communication and provide a more egalitarian, open environment relating to attempts to understand workflow.
• Systems furniture relating to early screen-based and panel furniture (Herman Miller Action Office 1964).
• Customisation of "building block" modules and standardisation of workspace standards - introduction of notions of "universal planning" and minimisation of large variations in space standards and increases in use of "one size fits all" (early 80's).
• Understanding that work doesn't always occur at your desk - evolving awareness of alternative ways of working and changing mindsets that may lead to exploring alternative ways of working - introduction of the so called Alternative Workplace Strategies or Alternative Officing concepts (Robert Luchetti and Phillip Stone - "Your Office is Where You are" - Harvard Business Review 1985).
• Emergence of leading thinkers, writers and researchers developing, writing about and analysing emerging workplace issues and trends (The Responsible Workplace - DEGW 1991, ORBIT 1 & 2 (DEGW and others), the Total Workplace (Franklin Becker 1990) to name a few.
• Introduction of the term "knowledge worker" by Peter Drucker opened a "new world " of thinking in relation to the type of environment which would support new organisations, sharing information and learning.
• Evolving styles of workstations, mobile furniture, ideas of "intelligent furniture" and emerging concepts of freestanding elements creating different work environments.
• Ongoing evolution of significant changes in technology particularly relating to innovations in communication tools (ongoing).

"Well over half the working population in advanced economies (including Australia) now works in offices. Information technology, having already made the office grow enormously, is now offering ubiquitous and reliable electronic access in ways that are certain to transform not only the physical landscape of cities but also the entire landscape of our temporal lives. Perhaps 10% of the huge population of office workers is already experiencing virtuality in forms such as home working and hotelling." 4

"Mobility will continue to increase and the demands of increasingly powerful and discriminating end users cannot be contained much longer in conventional office (environments)" 5

1 'Offices That Work' Franklin Becker , William Sims - Cornell University International Workplace Studies Program
2 Ditto
3 A Vision of the New Workplace" Francis Duffy and Jack Tanis
4 Frank Duffy Workplace Forum Paper 27/11/2000
5 Ditto

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