The contrasting meaning of office space from Post-WW2/50s to today. Their purpose and how they shape social interaction. The contrasting way we live past and present and how the space spotlights this.

1. The Evolution of Office Culture and Its Spaces
April 5, 2010
Jin Sun Park
Michael Vendola

2. Office Space: Past and Present
Openness vs. Privacy
Interaction vs. Autonomy
Office Landscape c.
1950: German
movement in open plan
office space planning.
The European post WWII
socialist environment
encourage all levels of
staff to sit together in
open floor. Networking (present): move away from
cubicle design and encourage sociability
while allowing privacy and use of
personal space.

3. Work: Past and Present
Changing values of security and safety
•Looking for lifetime employment in 1950’s
•On average, 10.5 job changes for boomers
•Rediscovering the job as the most valuable asset
a person can have

4. Corporate Parks
•Prior to World War II, most corporations still clustered in the downtowns
of major cities
•After the war, corporations needed more space to house the growing
bureaucracies to run the organizations
•Top research and development scientists demanded work environments
that resembled universities

5. Western Electric Model 500
• Iconic rotary-dial phone was
introduced in 1949 and designed by
Henry Dreyfuss
• Five years passed before the model
saw its first innovation: five
additional colors
• Not until the touchtone was
introduced in 1963, did the 500
begin to seem outdated

6. Steelcase Office Furniture
• Line of free standing desks
and modules was Industry’s
first office furniture in colors
• Office landscape design
intended to provide a more
collaborative work environment

7. Resolve Systems Furniture
(Herman Miller)
• Systems furniture was
introduced as a modular office
furniture system with dividers
and flexible work surfaces
• Panels allow for privacy but
encourage sociability, greater
work diversity, and cost-
effective use of real-estate

8. Green Desk Office
• Affordable, month-to-month
rental office spaces in Dumbo,
Brooklyn
• Fully furnished workspace, with
high-speed internet access and
a phone line
• Utilities, copying, scanning,
printing, faxing, cleaning and
fresh organic coffee included
• Changing value of physical office
space

9. Smartphones
• Blackberry had 21% of
worldwide Smartphone sales in
Q2, 2009
• In May 2009, RIM announced
the number of BlackBerry
subscribers has reached
approximately 28.5 million
• Nielsen reports that there will
be 142.8 million Smartphone
users by 2011

10. Phones
Adoption of technology in work place Blurring lines of private life vs. work life
Ergonomics in the work place to encourage safety Work-life imbalance
and productivity

11. Office Space
Result of the automobile boom, interstate Rise of land and energy costs = challenge
highways, and suburbia
Changing values of physical work space +
“The corporate campus, corporate estate, and office park were economic work environment
the means by which the leaders of postwar capitalism fled
the urban core: a vivid abandonment of the city center by the
powerful, self-interested parties....”

12. Office Furniture
Undivided layout and side-by-side workstations Systems furniture address two crucial issues in
created a more collaborative and humane work the work place: privacy/personal space &
environment. collaboration

13. FORCES AT WORK (1950’s): Automobile boom, Increased infrastructure,
Post-war manufacturing technologies, Mass Production and Mass Consumption

14. FORCES AT WORK (Present) :Technology (mobile technology), Privacy and Personal Space vs.
Collaboration, Cultural Shifts and Meaning of Office Space, Recession

15. The Evolution of Office Space
• Shifting values of what
constitutes an office space:
Public vs. Private
– Work vs. Home
• “Doing away with the office!”