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More than a decade since the swing toward open-plan offices — and the resulting backlash from workers concerned about noise and a lack of privacy — a host of ancillary spaces are cropping up in workplaces, offering employees an escape from their (sometimes overly loud) co-workers. These private spaces include prayer rooms, wellness rooms and libraries [...] All of which prompts the question: After pulling down the walls that defined yesterday’s workplaces, are we once again putting them up? — The New York Times
The idea of a workspace has transformed over the past decade, in large part, due to the emergence of co-working spaces like WeWork and Industrious. The shift has fueled the proliferation of the "open office," and the many documented problems associated with the setup. Is the pendulum ready to... View full entry
Bernstein hopes the research will offer empirical evidence that will help managers consider the possible trade-offs of moving to an open office plan. In seeking a lower cost per square foot, they buy into the idea that it will also lead to more collaboration, even if it’s not clear that’s true.
“I don’t blame the architects,” he said. “But I do think we spend more of our time thinking about how to design workspaces based on the observer’s perspective” — the manager — “rather than the observed.”
— The Washington Post
If you're not a fan of open offices, you now have some empirical evidence in your favor. In two field studies recently published by Ethan S. Bernstein and Stephen Turban, they found that face-to-face interaction decreased by approximately 70 percent in both cases, while digital... View full entry
And hierarchies don’t disappear when you place everyone at a communal table or “superdesk”; they persist in more subtle modes of workplace interaction.
I suspect that people thrown into open plans might even miss their cubicles. And there are features of cubicles—such as the need to partition wide spaces—that I suspect will continue to be useful and never go away; these needs precede the invention of the cubicle itself.
— theatlantic.com
Read more about the development of the American workplace in Archinect's feature article, Aftershock #2: "Serendipity Machines" and the Future of Workplace Design. View full entry
The open office was originally conceived by a team from Hamburg, Germany, in the nineteen-fifties, to facilitate communication and idea flow. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the open office undermines the very things that it was designed to achieve. — newyorker.com
