Technology And Furniture Design Shape The Office Of The Future

Office World News, May/Jun 2004 by Benhar, Mark

The office environment is an evolutionary process. Nearly 40 years ago, rows of desks began to give way to the rise of furniture systems-a combination of varied- height panels, cantilevered work surfaces and integrated storage and work tools that created highly flexible and efficient workstations for the rapidly growing white collar workforce.

Organizations adopted the new paradigm as they recognized both the efficiency of systems workstations over traditional architectural walls, in both initial construction and adaptability to changes in the interiors, and the opportunity to afford a measure of privacy and work support superior to open bullpens. They also afforded tax advantages as "personal property" rather than the "real property" treatment of traditional architectural offices. The eventual dominant application of systems furniture over linear rows of bland, identical stations (contrary to the original intent of the design) led to the term "cubicles." Today, systems workstations, or cubicles, are giving way to new 'desking systems" as office furniture evolves to meet the needs of today' s modern- day worker.

WORKSPACE EVOLUTION

In the first hall of the 20th Century, through the early 1970s, most office workers worked in a big open room with rows and rows of desks. As more technology came into the workplace, these tools generated more noise and a proliferation of wires, cables cind cords. Having this mess exposed on desktops was unsightly and inefficient. The advent of office systems provided greater visual and acoustical privacy, while providing space saving efficiency and a place to route the cables.

Workers welcomed it. In essence, it was like having your own office. But the acoustical and visual privacy that taller cubicles provided could also isolate workers and make it more difficult to communicate with others in the workplace. Throughout the ' 90s, more managers saw the value of open communication between workers, and furniture began to relied that desire. Walls started coining down. That led to desking systems, which have screens to offer a degree of privacy, but al lower heights to create a more open work environment.

Office cubicles are so often ridiculed loday in popular culture (like the "Dilbert" comic) that it's hard to believe at one time they were a revolutionary idea that would boost employee morale and accelerate ofiice efficiency. But that was the case in 1968, when the Herman Miller furniture company introduced the "Action Office" design by inventor Robert Propst. The Zeeland, MI-based manufacturer built its Action Office on modular, integrated components supported by panels. The concept was so popular that virtually every other office furniture company in America copied it.

Systems furniture workstations are now used in more than a third of all offices nationwide, and while Herman Miller is still a major force in the traditional systems business, its newer lines of modular furniture bear as little resemblance to their predecessors as laptop computers do to manual typewriters.

OPENING UP THE OFFICE

Office systems, defined as "any kind of furniture that fits together to form multiple workstations, " accounted for about 50 percent of total North American office furniture sales last year, according to the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) . Seating represented another 25 percent, more traditional desks made up about 11 percent, and tables, storage, files and other furniture accounted for the vest.

Today's showrooms offer systems workstations with sheer textile panels suspended from frames to divide space, while poles and overhead trusses hold the voice, data and energy wiring. There are boomerang- shaped worklables and divider walls made of wood and glass, and a growing number of desk- based systems to complement changing office needs. The gray cubicle walls upholstered in carpet- like labric are few and far between.

The quality of workstations is far superior today, wild a greater range of acoustic, consideration and visual privacy, and configurations offering multi- functional versatility, lint as wire-less technology becomes more advanced and affordable, a growing number of employers can he expected to move more of their space from panel- based workstations to the more flexible open desking systems.

The predominant factors driving this trend are a general management shift toward collaborative working environments, as well as advances in wireless voice, data and other technologies. Whereas lhc need for technology support (and resulting cables) drove many of the office furniture innovations of the last 20 years, the diminution of data wiring will undoubtedly lead to new furniture concepts that deftly blend privacy and collaboration.

Today' s workplace calls for a mixture of environments with areas for community and collaboration, which are blended with areas for heads down" individual tasks. This concept is sometimes referred to as "caves and commons, with the caves being private areas and commons as collaborative space. Today, about a 70/30 cubicle-to-traditional office ratio is the individual workspace norm in most large workplace settings, with a growing portion of the entire office shifting toward more shared, or collaborative spaces.