For centuries people have been getting up, joining a daily commute or retreating to a room, to work. The office has become inseparable from work.
Its history illustrates not only how our work has changed but also how work’s physical spaces respond to cultural, technological, and social forces.
The origins of the modern office lie with large-scale organizations such as governments, trading companies, and religious orders that required written records or documentation. Medieval monks, for example, worked in quiet spaces designed specifically for sedentary activities such as copying and studying manuscripts. As depicted in Botticelli’s St Augustine in His Cell, these early “workstations” comprised a desk, chair, and storage shelves.
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Sandro Botticelli St Augustin dans son cabinet de travail or St Augustine at Work. Wikipedia Commons via The Conversation.
Another of Botticelli’s paintings of St Augustine at work is now in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. This building was originally constructed as the central administrative building of the Medici mercantile empire in 1560.
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