cubed: where did your cubicle come from?

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You mean this place we go to five days a week has a history? Cubed reveals the unexplored yet surprising story of the places where most of the world's work—our work—gets done. From "Bartleby the Scrivener" to The Office, from the steno pool to the open-plan cubicle farm, Cubed is a fascinating, often funny, and sometimes disturbing anatomy of the white-collar world and how it came to be the way it is—and what it might become. For More Info: http://smarturl.it/CUBEDSlideShare

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Page 1: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?
Page 2: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

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?

Page 3: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

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”

Page 4: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

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.

Page 5: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

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?

Page 6: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

Factor Three: Pioneering Works of Architecture

Lever House

Page 7: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

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

Page 8: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

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

Page 9: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

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

Page 10: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

Factor Six: Robert Propst’s Action Office

Page 11: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

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.

Page 12: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

One of the common problems we see over the course of office history is the dissonance between design and culture.

Page 13: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

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.

Page 14: CUBED: Where Did Your Cubicle Come From?

Learn More in Cubed: The Secret History Of The Workplace by Nikil Saval

Photo Credit: Katrina Ohstorm

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