History does repeat itself, and we are now seeing a change in the American workplace that resembles the look and feel of how we worked almost one hundred years ago. Smaller, leaner, more flexible and more open workspaces are proving to be more effective in helping us work today.
Why? Because in order to do more with less, workers have a mandate to share all their information with everyone else. Technology, corporate restructuring, downsizing, reengineering: they have all had roles and will continue to influence the design and shape of our work environments, but fundamental change may also be coming from a cultural shift in how we think about ourselves at work. Entrepreneurial, creative and a desire to constantly innovate are how many people would describe the ideal worker today.
The psychology of work has moved from a mentality of "don’t rock the boat" stability to one of constant change based on providing the customer ever increasing value. Not surprisingly, the ability to change requires a workforce and a workplace that can be quickly reshaped in response to customer driven demands.
A hundred years ago these themes, although much less forcefully articulated, were nevertheless manifested in how and where people came together to work. Companies at the turn of the century also had fewer location options and less resources, so they learned to modify and make do with what already existed. For many, that meant a family labor pool and a home office.
"The offices of our grandfathers were without steel frames and files, without elevators and radiators without telephones and without skirts." Architect Charles Loring in 1930| Past and Soon to be Future | Presently Disappearing |
| Male environment | Men and women working together |
| Small scale merchant | Machine driven corporation |
| Low 4-5 story buildings | Mid rise and high rise skyscrapers |
| Little record keeping | Data driven enterprises |
| Family partnerships | Business organizations |
| Residential address | Physically dispersed |
| Manufacturing work dominated | Office work dominates |
| Self-contained one room office | Multiple rooms horizontally/multiple stories vertically |
| Interdependence | Division of labor |
| Domestic casual | Institutional formality |
| Roll-top desk | Modern efficiency desk |
| Entrepreneur | Corporate manager |
"Metropolitan Life’s original home on Broadway in New York City was a typical urban commercial building. The rented rooms were divided into two main work spaces: the company president occupied a small rear room, while the front room contained ‘the remainder of the staff – vice president, secretary, cashier, policy clerk and boy. The entire space was not over nine hundred square feet.’"
"Work done in such offices was not visibly stratified; in fact, the physical separation of workers, a mark of the division of labor, would have undermined harmonious workplace relations in a small office. The lack of divisions reinforced a kind of democracy of clerkship: Workers relied on one another for assistance."