At Yahoo in Omaha, employees work and play - in the same space. Kent Sievers/The World-Hearld
Today’s middle-aged office workers have watched the “bullpen” give way to “cubicle land” — and next, it seems, to the coffee shop — as a dominant ethos in commercial design.
But in businesses’ unending quest for the most productive workspace, the hot new trend can often resemble what once was deemed tried-and-true, three Midlands design professionals agreed.
Driven by the digital revolution and young adults’ preferences for comfortable, collaborative settings, they said, corporations such as Microsoft, General Electric and IBM are dismantling desks, cubicles and even formal conference rooms and private offices.
Their replacements: open-floor concepts, mobile desks and fully wired, lounge-like co-working spaces where employee teams can gather, plug in their laptops or other electronic devices, work together and then dissolve as members move on to their next projects.
“That’s moving away from assigning everyone the same type of space even when they’re not working on the same type of project,” said Gretchen Golter, design director and 31-year employee at All Makes in Omaha, formerly All Makes Office Equipment Co.
As employees’ portable walls tumble — except for temporary private areas for concentrated work — they’re also beginning to see more green plants and sunlight, according to Nanci Stephenson and Dana Vaux, who respectively lead interior-design programs with commercial-design emphasis at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha and the University of Nebraska at Kearney.