Critique: Beyond Open Plan

By Hank de Cillia

It was 37 years ago, in 1968, when an unheralded Michigan-based residential furniture manufacturer by the name of Herman Miller published "The Office: A Facility Based on Change". This revolutionary document was authored by Robert Probst, who was president of a new company division called Herman Miller Research Corporation.

Probst coined the term Action Office to describe new workspace space planning techniques that permitted creation of enclosed "work stations" for each employee, were flexible to change, provided appropriate variable height enclosure, and made use of vertical space for information storage/display. Accompanying this new office planning philosophy was a system of furniture components known as Action Office 2. (The first generation of freestanding Action Office furniture products was not successful.) Thus was born the uniquely American version of office design that became known as open plan, as well as an equally unique generation of new office furnishings known as systems furniture or panel systems.

The advent of systems furniture with panels that offered degrees of enclosure for employees was considered beneficial to most office workers back then, considering what little most had beforehand, but it was frequently opposed by management in its early years of development. Eventually, however, the worker productivity, space utilization, and perceived flexibility benefits of these products won out, although a management compromise was often struck. In many cases, managers retained their private offices, while the employees got the cubicles.

Today, open plan is the dominant form of office workspace planning in the United States, while systems furniture is the largest segment of U.S. office furniture industry sales, according to the Business & Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA). Further, the open office mantra has been embraced by managers and even senior executives in many using companies.


Current Design Issues
Many workplace researchers and planners, as well as some key end user organization executives, are now questioning the validity of open plan and systems furniture as the primary office design approach. Some have conducted extensive new research revealing significant worker dissatisfaction with the open office. The media see "cubicleland" as a term of derision. And even the inventor of systems furniture, Robert Probst, stated before he died that he never intended his creation to be used in the negative way he believed it had.

It is now time to revisit our thinking about the new office and build a 21st century platform for workplace design and furnishings in the U.S.

But first, what are the concurrent thoughts leading researchers and planners to conclude that all is not well with open plan and systems furniture? There are three main areas of inquiry that conspire to make the case for a new approach:

1. Recent office environment research in U.S. businesses and government agencies reveals substantial worker dissatisfaction with current office conditions?especially lack of acoustic enclosure for personal work and lack of space for undistracted group or team work activities.

In September 2000, I participated in a private conference organized by the Chicago Institute for the Study of Architecture and Technology and sponsored by the Japanese office furniture manufacturer Okamura. Among the six invited participants were Mike Brill and Vivian Loftness?both considered to be our leading U.S. office environment researchers. Brill had just finished the BOSTI 2000 Study and Loftness, a professor in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, was just completing phase one of her Adaptable Workplace Laboratory project for the Federal Government's General Services Administration (GSA).

Brill and Loftness spoke forcefully about their research findings and what they believed was missing from effective work environments. Their statements of workplace issues were remarkably similar. They both agreed the most significant deficiency of the workplace was "lack of support for distraction-free personal work" and while they both predicted individual workspaces would become smaller (termed "home bases" by Mike), they also believed those smaller footprint offices should be more enclosed, preferably by full-height movable walls to achieve acoustic privacy.

Vivian and Mike also spoke about the corresponding need, often misunderstood, to provide space for undistracted group or team work activities by creating team or project rooms. Brill called them "workshops" and Loftness referred to them as "project places", but their concepts were almost identical?provide enclosed spaces for teams to conduct and manage projects, including the ability to store and display what Lotness called the "project memory". They felt it is just as difficult and counterproductive to conduct team work in the open as it is for individual work to be accomplished in the open.

Ironically perhaps, they firmly believed the need for better enclosure for both individual and team work would foster improved organizational communication, not hinder it, as the conventional wisdom dictates. Brill was often quoted as saying "open offices do not an open organization make". He would chide business managers and executives who wanted to "take down the walls to create a more open organization", mistaking a needed psychological or organizational change for a physical one.

2. Organizations have become much more customer-focused, with a corresponding emphasis on team and project work organization to improve customer relations and develop new products or services. The need to support collaborative or "working together" activities has now become paramount in office design and furnishing.

During the past 10 years, we have witnessed a sea change in work organizations?from downsizing to outsourcing to the emergence of the temporary or contract work force. Peter Drucker recently predicted that within 20 years, fully half the people working in an organization will not be full-time employees. And, those fewer full-time employees will be required to do even more work, resulting in a dramatic increase in the need for people to work with others ("collaborate") in an organization to get their job done.

Most organizations adopting a team-based work philosophy still (or should) provide a space for team members to work individually. Brill's research recognized that even in high performance team settings, individual team members spend the majority of their time doing "focused, quiet work" alone, like working on a computer, speaking on a telephone or reviewing reference materials. And noise is growing in the office as an impediment to effective individual work?from speaker phones to co-worker's conversations to personal printers to personal videoconferencing and, soon, voice input to computers.

3. While end user organizations now have an even greater need for flexible furnishings to support ever changing work conditions, they have come to learn that conventional panel-based systems furniture isn't really that flexible at all.

As experienced practitioners, you won't be surprised to learn that panel systems furniture, although highly flexible in planning and layout, is actually rather inflexible after installation. Not that it can't be altered?it simply isn't very often, unless a major move is taking place to a new facility. An example might explain why. The need to counterbalance furniture components like overhead storage units and some types of worksurfaces in a clustered layout makes it impossible for one workstation occupant to relocate a component on his or her side without throwing off the balance of the other side of a workstation, or even the whole cluster.

Future Considerations
The A&D Community and the Office Furniture Industry need to collaborate in developing new office space planning concepts and related integrated furnishings that overcome the workplace deficiencies expressed by an overwhelming majority of office workers. And these combined forces then need to convince the management of end user organizations that their recommendations will produce cost-effective benefits.

To be certain, many leading A&D Firms have been designing office space to support individual and team work for years, but it is accurate to state that no formal space planning methodology for "team space" has yet evolved in the interior design profession (or in our design schools for that matter) that replaces "open plan". One reason may be that we have not yet resolved the disparity between office environment research and interior design practice on this topic. That may be our biggest challenge; nevertheless, we need to face it.

Also to be certain, the office furniture industry has produced many innovative products that support teamwork over the past ten years, but it is safe to say that no unifying product development concept for teamwork has yet emerged. We are still living to a large degree with a "systems furniture" paradigm that is now over 35 years old.

In my opening background comments, I mentioned that an office environment researcher from Herman Miller actually gave birth to the systems furniture industry and open plan design for office workspace. This time around, it will take a collaborative effort on the part of office environment researchers, office interior design professionals and office furniture product developers to make it happen.

Sadly, the perceived value of good office interior design and furnishings has diminished since the late 1990s in the minds of many key decision makers like organization and facility executives. Fortunately, that does not seem to be the case with the office workers themselves, who still value a supportive workspace, albeit one that may differ from what they have today in many respects.

TEAM PLAN? Space Design
As a researcher and product development consultant in the office furniture industry for the past 25 years, I've given much thought to the subject of workspace design and furnishings for teams. My work in this area was first published in the September 1984 issue of Facilities Design & Management magazine in an article by then Managing Editor Pat Lyons entitled "Does Open Plan Hinder Teamwork?"?when recognition of the importance of teams was first emerging, as was the limitations of panel systems furniture. My answer to that question was and still is: Yes.

One example follows of what a research/design community/furniture industry collaboration might produce in defining a new design platform. I'll use the term Team Plan? to refer to these concepts, which would be based on the following design principles:

? Team Plan would be a new office space planning methodology that formalizes the need to support both individual and collaborative work, primarily in enclosed spaces.

? Team Plan would be a multi-settings approach to accommodate the need for a variety of places or 'settings' for people to work in the modern workplace.

? Team Plan would be a modular furniture concept for outfitting and reconfiguring office space, based on typical footprints for individual and collaborative workspaces.

? Team Plan would provide balanced workspace for four highly inter-related modern work behaviors: individual work, team or group work, learning and spontaneous interactions. These four work behaviors could be accommodated in the following types of spaces:

1. Home Bases
Home Bases would be small footprint private offices designed to support distraction-free individual work. The space would be formed using thin profile full-height walls with glass fronts and sidelights for visual access to teammates, and free standing furniture elements. Home bases could be located adjacent to team/project rooms or within them, depending on work behavior analysis.

2 Team/Project Rooms
Team and/or Project Rooms would also be fully enclosed, occupant controlled spaces, supporting distraction-free collaborative work. Furnishings may include modular tables that can be configured by occupants for a variety of collaborative activities (identical to work tables in home bases), modular team file & storage to reduce personal storage, mobile information display products (electronic and manual) that can move between home bases and team space, and multi-task seating that integrates task and meeting room seating functions.

3. Learning Rooms
Learning Rooms would support high-impact presentations, seminars and meetings, mainly in formal, enclosed spaces. Unlike team or project rooms, they support an organization's need to temporarily convene segments of its work force or customer base for communication, education and training purposes. Besides furnishings, learning rooms would be equipped more extensively with av/video communications technology, including connection to remote facilities.

4. Ad hoc Spaces
Ad Hoc Spaces would support spontaneous worker interactions and would be, by definition, out in the open. Typical locations might include all or part of lobby/reception areas, cafeterias, corridors, hallways, and even stairwells. Physical support for informal interactions could include marker boards, standing height counters or tables, stools, coffee dispensers, electronic whiteboards, etc.?so even chance encounters could produce meaningful work results.

TEAM PLAN? Furniture Design
In the same way that Action Office 2 systems furniture facilitated the new open plan space design concepts with a complete range of components, Team Plan furniture would be designed to achieve the same goal. The Team Plan? furnishings concept would include the following elements:

A. Full-height Movable Walls
A next generation full-height movable wall system, designed as furniture, is a critical part of the overall Team Plan? furnishings concept. It should be a thin-profile product that makes extensive use of glass for front walls, sidelights and clerestory to permit acoustically private, small footprint office design for home bases and project/team rooms that does not reduce visual accessibility. Sliding glass doors would be standard to enclose individual and team spaces.

B. Multi-setting Tables
Individual and team workspaces would make use of the same freestanding, modular "work/meet" tables that could be connected together by occupants for a variety of semi-permanent applications. All models would have a "stationary/mobile" design to permit ease of movement and some would have nesting or folding options for temporary storage in a workspace.

C. Team File & Storage
A modular, multi-media file and storage sub-system is required for team and project rooms that would minimize or even eliminate the need for personal storage. Most units would have locking casters to permit mobility in the workspace. Small mobile units would permit occupants to move some files and reference materials between home base and team space.

D. Multi-purpose Display
Home bases and team rooms require support for both manual and electronic information display, with some elements being mobile for movement between the private workspace and the group area. The offering would range from simple marker boards to electronic whiteboards to videoconferencing screens.

E. Task/Ambient Lighting
Adjustable task and ambient lighting elements should be integral to the Team Plan furnishings system. Some models would free-stand, while others would permit furniture and wall attachment. The same fixture design would be used for "up" (ambient) or "down" (task) lighting conditions in home bases, team rooms and learning rooms.

F. Multi-task Seating
The seating element should support individual task work and team work equally well. It would be a hybrid design that integrates the functions of task chair and meeting room chair in a cost-effective manner. Some models should fold or nest for temporary storage by occupants. Other seating models will be needed for ad hoc spaces, like stools, tandem seating and/or temporary work booths.

Conclusion
The next generation of office work behaviors is already with us, but the office environment research community, the interior design profession, and the office furniture industry have yet to come to an agreement on the best approach for providing workspaces and furnishings for teams, while enhancing support for individual work activities. The sooner we can achieve a consensus, the better off we all will be, including our customers.

Hank de Cillia is Principal of De Cillia Associates, Inc. (Sag Harbor, NY), a product development and marketing consulting practice established in 1981, focused in the contract furnishings industry. He can be reached at decillia@earthlink.net

This article is dedicated to Mike Brill, founder of the BOSTI office environment research organization, who passed away unexpectedly on July 26, 2002. Many believe he was the most significant office researcher and creative workplace thinker our profession has ever had. We can best honor his memory by paying attention to his research.

References
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