![]() Instead, they want spaces that feel homier and human. Nowadays, workers aren’t exactly gushing at the idea of spending 8–10 hours a day in a soul-sucking cubicle. ![]() Herman Miller stills sells a variety of Action Office systems, some of which look quite elegant and functional, but the associations they conjure have changed a lot over the decades.Modern office design is a workplace design movement acknowledging the needs and desires of today’s workforce. Today’s “cubicle farms” are often static, cramped and the subject of derision in popular media (including Office Space and The Matrix). Along the way, though, much of the optimism and modular vision was lost. A large market.”Īs Nelson foresaw, Action Office II cubicles went on to become a commercial success and its systems were widely imitated by other companies. But it is admirable for planners looking for ways of cramming in a maximum number of bodies, for ’employees’ ‘personnel,’ corporate zombies, the walking dead, the silent majority. In 1970, George Nelson (by this time the Vice President of Corporate Design and Communication), lamented the “dehumanizing effect” of the system, writing in an internal memo: “One does not have to be an especially perceptive critic to realize that AO-II is definitely not a system which produces an environment gratifying for people in general. One of the key personnel involved with the project, however, would go on to become one of its sharpest critics. Herman Miller would ultimately expand this strategy into other environments, developing a modular Coherent Structures series for hospitals and laboratories. It would provide privacy, balancing open and closed office designs. And at the heart of this successor was a mobile wall system enabling modular flexibility, like the “office landscape” but rectilinear. It featured a system of interchangeable and standardized components that were easy to assemble and install. But the products were difficult to assemble, expensive and ultimately failed to gain traction.Īction Office II aimed to address the shortcomings of its predecessor. Their first stab at a solution, the Action Office, involved furniture of different heights for different tasks. Shortly after the “office landscape” debuted, Herman Miller’s research also led them to conclude that open offices needed to be broken up - workers, they decided, needed to get up, move around and interact more. Action Offices Action Office I furniture designs from Herman Miller ![]() The innovators behind the concept imagined employers and employees flowing around modular partitions and interacting more naturally in this fluid environment. Curved screens and potted plants turned otherwise rigid spaces into more organic-looking places, shaping work groups within larger floor plans. In the 1950s, German designers began developing what was dubbed an “office landscape” system. Buero Landschaft (office landscape) layout of the 1950s Of course, he also designed special furniture and created plenty of space between workstations - things missing from many open offices today. SC Johnson open office design by Frank Lloyd Wright with custom furniture and skylightsįrank Lloyd Wright also championed open space designs, first in his residential projects but later also for office environments. Like Henry Ford’s assembly lines, open layouts with rows of desks were seen as an organized and efficient option as office work expanded in the early 1900s. ![]() Open Plans Open office layout from the late 1800sĪs a space-saving strategy, open plans dominated offices up through the middle of the 20th century. Made to modernize work environments, this system included a key design element that would fundamentally reshape offices: the cubicle. Out of this endeavor came a modular Action Office system.
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