Zones, from Teknion
The first truly experimental office furniture came out of Herman Miller, in 1964. The Action Office I, as it was called, comprised three adaptable upholstered walls, a swivel chair and stool, and a writing desk. At that time, most offices were filled with rows of clunky desks and drawers. The semi-enclosed Action Office was different, and embodied the ideas of its creator, designer Robert Propst, who believed individual workers needed dynamic, personal environments to feel inspired and be productive.
Propst’s well-intentioned furniture series had some major unintended consequences. Executives hated it at first. The second iteration of the Action Office eventually found commercial success, but that rapid adoption also spawned a wave of less sophisticated imitations. Propst had designed the Action Office series to set workers free. In the end, those workers wound up trapped in rigid, dreary cubicle farms.
