It has become something of a preoccupation of mine to consider why so many of the conversations we about workplace design are largely about the rediscovery of old ideas. It may be because there are constants about how people interact with their surroundings and each other and the truisms underlying those interactions. Although these are often reframed by the amount of data we now have to support them, some things never change.
But that can’t be the whole story, because it ignores the reasons why we have to rediscover ideas, rather than internalise them and absorb them into the foundations of working culture. One answer might be found in the corruption of the open plan and the commonly held belief that it is inhumane and counter-productive.
This perception has little to do with the original people-centric principles of the open plan as a model of progressive workplace design. Both Robert Propst who created Action Office for Herman Miller in the 1960s and the European Quickborner team who developed the idea of Bürolandschaft saw their ideas as focussed on the needs of individuals and espoused organic, flexible design as a way of achieving them.
Both saw these ideals corrupted, especially with the now familiar exposed and regimented layouts that fail to provide people with proper acoustic and visual privacy. The current solution we have fallen on is to offer a range of spaces that allow people to escape the hubbub on an ad hoc basis. Even this idea, now called agile or activity based working harks back to the combi-office in European parlance and caves and commons in that of the US. Whatever it is called this is an old solution to an old problem.
A descent into order
Both historically and currently workplace designers and managers have sought ways to improve the flows of information and people around a building. The proposed solutions from Bürolandschaft through to the work of Tom Allen, Dieter Rams and the organic forms expressed by the team from Zaha Hadid have relied on the creation of organic, if not exactly chaotic layouts. Although it too is an old idea, there is also a focus on engineering serendipity, the vaguaries of which are discussed by Neil Usher in this piece.