Modern Office Design from Cubiculum to Cubicle, Part 2
Work and Values in the Design of the Modern Office
In the previous entry we considered the modern office as an embodiment of the values that inspire work. We then considered how an architectural type not normally thought of as an office, the medieval monastery, satisfied comparable needs for the monastic movement. The monastery paired space and task to foster an efficient execution of the individual monk’s duties and a regulated communal life. The disciplined routine of the medieval monk, furthermore, was identified by the German sociologist Max Weber as a key moral feature of what he would define as the Protestant work ethic.
Herman Miller, Promotional Image of Action Office I, 1964 (Courtesy of Herman Miller Archive)
The discipline and self-control that were hallmarks of Weber’s ethic proved to be powerful impulses in the design of the modern office and the formulation of management theory. The scion of a prominent Quaker family in Philadelphia, Frederick Winslow Taylor, developed a minute analysis of the physical motions of workers on the factory floor. He devised a management system that sought to study the motions involved in a task, optimize every movement, and ultimately make the factory more efficient. Taylor published his analysis in The Principles of Scientific Management of 19131, and its appeal extended well beyond the factory floor. Every act of work, from forging an iron bar to composing and typing a memo, became the object of analytic scrutiny; and the people who conducted the analysis, furthermore, became part of a ballooning management bureaucracy that sought to maximize productivity through breaking down tasks into their simplest component parts. Taylor pursued the quest for efficiency and minimization of superfluity – the hallmarks of the self-disciplined Protestant merchant in the eyes of Weber -- to its logical conclusion. View Our Commercial Interiors Projects
Taylor’s work and research carried implications for both the practice of office management and the animating spirit of the office. As a tactic for the day-to-day operations of an office, it has been seen both as a marvel of analytic management and an instrument of the ruthless subjugation of workers2. The religious ethic that animated the drive for self-discipline in Weber’s analysis, however, went unarticulated in Taylor’s work, laying the foundations for existential discontent in the office.
After the second world war designers took a different approach from the rigid mechanism of Taylor. In his Action Office Series designed with Herman Miller Incorporated, Robert Propst recognized the white-collar worker’s need for constant movement – physical activity and cognitive activity were interconnected – and opportunities for chance encounters with colleagues. The product was an assembly of desks and shelving spaces that could be arranged, often independently of the orientation of existing interior walls, according to the preferences and needs of the individual worker3. The promotional photograph of the Action Office evokes a dynamic progression of activities – the close proximity of all the components of the Action Office allows for an efficient shifting of tasks, not unlike the alcove furnishings of the monastic cell.
In a 1966 essay on the Action Office, Propst noted that his concept harmonized with a system in European office design envisioned by the German consulting firm Quickborner, led by the designers Wolfgang and Eberhard Schnelle. Their office-planning concept, known as the Bürolandschaft, or Office Landscape, eliminated the grid-like spatial organization of the office in favor of a free-form arrangement that sought principle not in symmetry and geometric regularity but in the types of activity and work flows that were distinctive of a given firm’s activity4. The Bürolandschaft stands as a radical critique of Taylor and the monastery. Where Taylor emphasized mechanical efficiency to the neglect of any inquiry into the worker’s well-being, Propst and the Bürolandschaft acknowledged both mental and physical health in fostering productivity. In terms of spatial layout its free-flowing layout shatters the geometric rigor of the Florentine monastery of San Marco.
Osram Offices, Quickborner, Munich, 1963 (Walter Henn and Henn Architects) https://www.henn.com/en/project/osram-hauptverwaltung-muenchen
Despite their striking contrast in layout, the Bürolandschaft and the monastery share a deep-seated interest in the well-being of their occupants. Both seek to accommodate the daily work flow of their occupants and provide opportunity for the social affirmation of a shared mission; but they achieve these with radically contrasting strategies. The Quickborner office’s freely organized arrays of furniture evoke an ideal of how office work should transpire. It should not be a predictable sequence of tasks followed with mechanical regularity – workers need to craft their own routines with feedback emerging from spontaneous social interactions with one another5. The monastery, on the other hand, engendered a highly regimented sequence of tasks; but the routine also accommodated reflection upon the theological mission of the order and provided daily opportunities to reaffirm this mission in a communal setting. In doing so, both spaces seek to combine specific task with broader purpose. The tasks were designed differently and the mission articulated differently, but task and purpose were featured in both the Bürolandschaft and the monastery.
We would not expect (and probably not want) the present-day office to be animated by the Christian asceticism of the Carthusian monastery, the Calvinist’s shop, or even the freewheeling Action Office as envisioned by Propst. But the search for values and ideals that inspire work – like the spatial democracy and equal opportunity embodied in the GSA offices at One World Trade Center – represents a sustained effort to define the values of the office in the present day and to design working spaces that embody our ideals in a meaningful way.
1 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6435
2 See Nikil Saval, “The Birth of the Office,” Uncubed (48-58) for an insightful analysis of Taylor and Taylorism. Cubed by Nikil Saval | PenguinRandomHouse.com
3 Robert L. Propst, “The Action Office” Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 8: 4 (299-306). (https://journals-sagepub-com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/doi/10.1177/001872086600800405) Also see Saval, Uncubed, 206-14.
4 (https://journals-sagepub-com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/doi/10.1177/001872086600800405) (Saval, Uncubed, 202-204) (See Wolfgang and Eberhard schnelle, Bürobauplanen Grundlagen der Planungsarbeit bei Bürobauten (1958): https://www.worldcat.org/title/burobauplanen-grundlagen-d-planungsarbeit-bei-burobauten/oclc/610976246
5 A recent critique of Propst, however, questioned whether the designer saw the worker only as a conglomeration of “brains and legs” to the neglect of “emotions and deeper needs.” See Nikil Saval, Uncubed 206-14