How did the Concept of Office Start?

An office can be defined as a place, or a room, where administrative work is done. Architecturally, an office could be a small room, a floor in a building, or the entire building dedicated to one company. An office can also refer to a location where white-collared workers are employed.

Anciently, sometime between the 11th and 14th century, offices were part of temples, palaces, and other such community places. All the administrative, functional and managerial decisions and work took place here.

The 18th and 19th centuries brought in the intensification of Industrial Revolution. There was a huge growth in the banking, retail, railway, petroleum, telegraph and insurance industries. With a large number of organizations sprouting, the need to have dedicated administrative professionals sprung up. This brought up the need to have offices and that’s when the first formal office space was constructed.

Originally, offices were large open spaces or open-plan offices with desks and chairs for individuals. Though the places was well set up and served the purpose of an office — to support its occupants in performing their jobs — it was noisy.

During the early 20th century, cubicles were introduced in the office design. Derived from a Latin term which means chamber, cubicles were really small enclosures, or “rooms”, which had light weight partitions, or walls, that did not reach the ceiling. The purpose was to provide a professional, distraction-free ambience to the workers.

Cubicles were also introduced to add a human touch, or soul, to the offices. Because open-plan offices, though not planned that way by the designers, ended up having long rows of desks that seemed like an assembly line of white-collared employees. Cubicles allowed organic grouping but with partitions for privacy. Varying-spaced cubicles were designed to encourage teams of different sizes to work together, multiple desk heights were designed to cater to employees’ convenience and helped reduce physical fatigue. However, sadly, the companies built cubicles in their workspace for its space-saving aspect over any employee-benefitting ones and the offices ended up looking like a bunch of tiny work cells.

With its essence being lost in translation, lack of interaction and a mechanical feel of the otherwise bunch of interesting people, the companies began to make the shift from cubicle workspaces to open-plan offices. But it was soon realized that none of these office landscapes in its entirety works well for an office. And so the new design carried both — cubicles and open spaces. This design catered well to the employees’ privacy, as well as their need to bond, interact and work together in teams, depending on the kind of project they were involved in.

The early 21st century marked the onset of well thought of, sensitive and practical office designs that gave ample freedom and privacy to the employees:

The types of workspaces trending today are driven by technology, changing work habits and business uncertainty and the companies/business centers aren’t shying away from providing the needed infrastructure. There is a need to combine fixed and flexible workspaces to save on resources and enhance productivity.

Similarly, our serviced workspace OfficingNow offers more and better options: a small meeting room, 6-seater boardroom, 12-seater conference room, 20-seater training hall, hot desks or executive offices. We will be happy to assist you with your workspace requirements. Do visit our website for details.