Over the past 20 years, many big corporates have adopted some of the ideas of the startup scene including a more egalitarian workspace design and working styles where management is treated the same as employees. This is a departure from the hierarchical design lay-out of the past where senior leaders were sequestered in luxurious, closed offices.
The origins of the open-plan environment synonymous with startups have much earlier origins in the 1950s when the Germans pioneered the idea of a Bürolandschaft (office landscape) which was a movement in open-plan office spacing.
However, the roots of a social-democratic approach to a working environment also came from Scandinavia with strong staff representation and employees having a greater voice in the design of the workplace, says Philip Tidd, head of consulting for Europe at Gensler.
“Scandinavian countries were early pioneers of open-plan environments in the 90s, and the UK took that baton and led the way into new ways of working to make open-plan more mainstream,” he says.