THE EVOLVING OFFICE Workplace considerations post-pandemic.
KAREN E. SEGRAVE | KES PHOTO
BY ZAC CERRATO
Rock Dental Offices, Little Rock
T
he COVID-19 pandemic will serve as a capstone to more than two decades of cultural change in the workplace. As we emerge to find a new normal, companies that identify and leverage the positive aspects of these changes will have massive competitive advantages. Companies that don’t will fall behind. Let’s take a look at the history of office spaces and the efforts to change them over the decades, and then forecast what is on the horizon. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, white-collar workspaces existed inside the four walls of a company’s building, and the design thinking that organized the space within was fundamentally about status and the maximization of real estate. Moving forward, different philosophies now drive workspace design. Employers are more likely to seek out buildings that maximize natural elements that bring people joy, with plants, natural sunlight and views of the moving, robust cities in which we live. Likewise, interiors feature local art and décor that celebrate the communities in which businesses exist. Going even further, companies will begin to recognize that giving their staff access to outdoor workspaces and the panoply of rich work settings in urban landscapes increases both their well-being and their productivity. One of the first efforts to change the status quo was Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Co. headquarters. It was designed with a 76-foottall light court to provide natural sunlight to all of the floors. 28 | BLOCK, STREET & BUILDING VOLUME 7 | 2021
Unfortunately, the Larkin Co. still organized its staff into tightly packed rows of desks to maintain a culture of “supervision and surveillance” over work that employees described as “numbing.” Another pioneering figure was Herman Miller designer Robert Probst, who invented Action Office in 1964. The kit of modular furnishings included features such as tackboards for individualization, and for each employee one sitting and one standing desk. It also included a variety of collaboration stations, meeting tables and private phone booths. The forward-thinking design was “about movement” and not “keeping people in place.” It was another Herman Miller designer, George Nelson, who anticipated that planners would use the system not for freedom, but to “cram in a maximum number of bodies.” By the end of the 20th century, the brilliant system designed to liberate workers would be bastardized to create those work milieus lampooned in movies like “Office Space” or cartoons like “Dilbert.” The millennial generation began to enter the workforce in the 21st century. They brought revolutionary values that championed time and experiences above money and status. In 2020, Generation Z represented one quarter of the entire global workforce. The penultimate culture changers, Gen Z takes the values and the technological skills that millennials championed to a new level. The technologies that both generations were brought up with are strong egalitarian forces generally, so the specific expectations
