[MUSIC PLAYING]
When you think of the word office,
you probably think of something like this, or this, or this.
Our workspaces have evolved dramatically
over the course of history.
And given the future of work conversations,
these shifts show no hint of slowing down.
If you want to understand how we got here,
we have to look to the past.
Some of the first people to occupy an office-like space
were monks in the 5th century.
They worked in something called a scriptorium, which
is Latin for writing room.
We see similar secluded spaces in the Renaissance era.
Just look at Botticelli's famous painting
of St. Augustine in his cell, which lives in the Uffizi
Gallery in Florence today.
We know it as a museum today, but the Uffizi Gallery
was actually built for a different purpose.
The Second Duke of Florence wanted
the city's administrative and judiciary
staff to work under one roof, not from their homes.
There were some other buildings like this at the time.
But most people weren't working in offices yet.
The first building to be dedicated to office work
was the Old Admiralty Office in London.
It was built because the British empire needed a place
to do paperwork.
The next was the headquarters for the East India Trading
Company, who also had some paperwork on their hands.
This office featured grand halls and courtyards,
with enough space to work privately or host meetings.
Spaces like these began to pop up
around Europe in the mid 18th century.
In parallel, the British government
released a report that said, "People
who work with their head should have separate rooms so they
don't get interrupted.
But for mechanical work, clerks should work next to each other
and with proper superintendence."
Don't all people use their heads while they work?
This formulaic approach to productivity
was echoed by a man named Frederick Winslow
Taylor in 1911.
Taylor was a mechanical engineer and he
was obsessed with efficiency.
His thinking became the foundation of a theory
called scientific management,
Taylorism.
It is sometimes argued that Taylorism
has made the most lasting contribution to American
thought since the Federalist Papers.
Here's David Staley, associate professor
of history at Ohio State University.
So Taylorist principles applied to the office
meant taking office tasks, like stuffing an envelope,
and reducing it to the most essential, most
mechanical process.
The focus was solely on efficiency.
The next wave of workspace transformation
began after World War II.
Emerging research showed a correlation
between happiness and relationships
at work and increased productivity and motivation.
So in 1958, a German consulting group
introduced a novel design concept
called Burolandschaft, which roughly
translates to office landscape.
This was the beginning of what we know today
as an open floor plan.
The Burolandschaft was designed to be social,
that office workers would be able to see and interact
with others and not be atomized in their own separate little
spheres.
One idea was that they were meant to be more egalitarian.
In other words, the separation between the clerks and office
workers and the managers and the executives,
that was to be broken down in the sense
that everyone was to be out in this open office plan.
Management loved the open floor plan
because it was affordable and flexible.
The concept sailed across Europe and over to America.
This market fit caught the eye of Robert Propes, the head
of research at Herman Miller.
He was critical of workspaces of the early '60s, describing them
as wastelands that sap vitality and block talent.
Rough.
He believed he could design something revolutionary that
complemented the existing open office plan, and he did.
It was called the action office.
So in many ways, Action Office I was a reaction or a response
to the open office plan, and especially the lack of privacy,
as it was to be an individual office in the midst of a larger
open space.
When you look at some of the pamphlets at the time,
the worker is seen moving in an action between this desk,
and then over to the typewriter.
The design world and the press loved the action office,
but it didn't sell.
So he went back to make improvements.
And when he emerged from the work cave,
he had the Action Office II.
And this time, it was met with smashing success.
Action Office II was quite different from Action Office I.
The office spaces were smaller.
And rather than the irregular walls,
managers really wanted more rectangular walls.
Part of the reason they wanted that is
that they could pack more action offices
into the same sort of space.
And I don't know if anybody realized at the time,
but they'd really created a controversial product.
Competitors began copying the Action Office II,
but their designs didn't resemble the original creation.
It's like when you see a Jackson Pollock painting and think,
I can do that.
But then you try and, well, yeah.
Still, sales skyrocketed for the copycats and the originals.
These other manufacturing companies
didn't have altruistic intentions
about freeing the worker.
They cared about what management wanted,
and management wanted to squeeze as many people in an open floor
plan as possible.
They wanted a cubicle.
[FRIGHTENING MUSIC]
By 1998, 40 million employees in America
had worked in 42 different versions of the action office.
By numbers alone, that's an astonishing feat.
But Propes didn't see it that way.
Just two years before he died in 2000,
he described cubicles in an interview as hellholes.
And in some ways, the research affirms this.
But don't worry, something new was on the horizon.
Well, it's very hip to be on the internet right now.
When the internet first exploded in the '90s,
the assumption was that it would make offices obsolete.
There was lots of talk about work from anywhere,
but it was more hyperbole than it was reality.
But more people did start having home offices at this time.
Here's Liz Patton, associate professor
of media and communication studies
at the University of Maryland.
The first time we see home offices in history
is during the second Industrial Revolution.
So you start to see studies.
Sometimes you see a library, or den becomes a later term,
in architectural plans.
And then it wasn't till the '80s and '90s
where it became more popular that you
would see home offices.
While parts of the home were starting
to look more like offices, offices also
began to look more like home.
The trend started with tech companies
in the late '90s, whose offices were referred
to as the dot-com thrones.
Many earned crazy evaluations, and celebrated
by leasing gargantuan spaces and filling them
with high-end furniture, like this Herman Miller Aeron chair.
But when the dot-com bubble burst,
these chairs were among the first items
to get sold by failed startups.
Of course, this wasn't the end of the internet,
and it certainly wasn't the end of tricked-out workspaces.
The competition to attract and retain talent
was fierce in the early to mid 2000s, much like it is today.
Many organizations lean on design
to help win talent, which is a smart move, according
to research.
Here's Jeremy Myerson, the director at Worktech Academy.
Today's talent expects a lot from a workplace design
perspective, but it depends which end of the age spectrum
you're at.
If you're a new entrant to the workplace--
Gen Z-- you're looking to build a social network.
You're looking for professional advancement.
You're looking to make friends.
But if you're at the other end of the spectrum,
if you're a baby boomer, or maybe a Generation Xer
who are now in senior management positions,
maybe you're looking to come into the office
to focus, to concentrate, to get on with planning and strategy.
With all this attention to employee experience
and well-being, it's safe to say we've
come a long way from the Taylorist way of doing things.
And then, in 2020-- well, you know how the story goes.
The pandemic altered our workspaces in ways
that we're still trying to understand.
Some workers never want the office
to be a requirement again, while others miss and thrive
off the in-person connection with colleagues.
So there are going to be, I predict,
huge implications for a hybrid work environment,
from what are cities for, how do we deal with empty office
spaces, how do we deal with who pays the utilities
and the internet and equipment if you're working at home.
The workplace of the future will look very different
from the type of offices we've known in the past.
There will be more light.
There will be more space.
There will be more variety.
We'll move away from the fortress office tower,
and we'll be working in something
that's a lot more permeable and porous to the world around us.
The verdict is still out on what the future of our workspaces
will be.
But if we can go from the Taylorist era
to success from anywhere in just over 100 years,
well, who's to say where we'll be answering emails
from a decade from now?
If you learned something today, please like and subscribe.
They worked in something called a scriptorium, which
is Latin for writin' room.
Writin'-- right in a room.
Writing room.
[LAUGHS] [STAMMERS] The Southern is coming out.