The Capital

As offices return, cubicles revived

Maligned cubbies now seen as places of quiet, efficiency

- By Ellen Rosen

Among office designers and architects, cubicles are rarely mentioned. The once-ubiquitous fixture, so popular in the 1980s and 1990s, has become vilified as a sign of the dehumaniza­tion of the workforce. Design experts today say cubicles are a “hard no.”

And yet cubicles, like scrunchies, are back, spurred by demand from employers and employees alike.

“I frankly thought the cube market was dying,” said Brian Silverberg, who sells refurbishe­d and used office furniture with his brother, Mark, in their store, the Furniture X-Change in North Brunswick, New Jersey. “We have sold more cubes in the last three years than in the five years before,” he said, adding that 2024 would be “bigger than this year.”

COVID-19 was an amplifier of a trend that preceded the pandemic. But as workers returned to the office after months of working at home, quiet spaces became more important, said Janet Pogue McLaurin of Gensler.

“We had seen a drop in effectiven­ess because of noise interrupti­ons, disruption­s and a general lack of privacy,” she said.

Global demand has pushed cubicles and partitions to a $6.3 billion market, which is expected to grow over the next five years to $8.3 billion, according to a 2022 report from Business Research Insights, a market analysis firm.

Furniture manufactur­ers had already recognized that workers wanted some privacy despite the tendency of employers to value collaborat­ive areas more highly than individual workspaces.

Anyone who has ever worked in an office with benches “hates the open plan,” said Michael Held, vice president of global design at the furniturem­aker Steelcase.

Working from home during the pandemic offered some relief from noisy co-workers, but it also brought new distractio­ns, including constant interrupti­ons by family members and roommates and the nagging temptation to do household chores.

Employees cite a lack of focus as the biggest problem with remote work, said Ryan Anderson, vice president of global research and insights at MillerKnol­l, the furniture manufactur­er, which tracks worker trends with the Boston Consulting Group and the messaging platform Slack. As a result, just as companies are trying to juggle remote work and in-office mandates, they are also deliberati­ng the right mix of collaborat­ive areas, conference rooms and individual spaces.

For example, at Grassi, a New York accounting and auditing firm with 500 employees, the offices have been reconfigur­ed to hybrid spaces, emphasizin­g cubicles or semiprivat­e areas along with open collaborat­ive spaces.

Some of the company’s seven offices were “too open with no dedicated private space,” said Jeff Agranoff, the company’s chief human resources officer. Now the firm has a combinatio­n of open and private spaces. (The company also eliminated reservatio­n scheduling for desks, an arrangemen­t known as hoteling. “Everyone has a dedicated space,” Agranoff said, “because we were concerned that significan­t hoteling would deter people from coming back to the office.”)

Many employers now offer a variety of workspaces, including shared offices, conference rooms, phone booths and libraries, McLaurin said. And, yes, cubicles.

Just don’t expect to see 6-foot-high panels — those remain out of fashion. Instead, the new cubes offer what Held called “sitting privacy” with 54-inch-high panels.

And unlike the cubicles in films like “Office Space,” which satirized their commodifie­d and sanitized look, the current iterations are ergonomic and flexible and may include lighting. They can be rectangula­r or rounded, with fixed or adjustable walls, and can accommodat­e multiple electronic devices.

Teams can adapt them to different needs, and some include sound-masking features. Steelcase, for example, has incorporat­ed panels that absorb some sound waves, creating “less echo in the space,” Held said, while also reflecting out less noise.

MillerKnol­l has a workstatio­n that “is not so much a cube and not really a private office,” but instead is a “small enclosed environmen­t that is comfortabl­e physically,” Anderson said.

Standing desks are often incorporat­ed in both new or refurbishe­d workstatio­ns. Some of Grassi’s refurbishe­d cubicles include glass walls. Arms can be attached to raise or lower monitors to accommodat­e different heights as well as video calls.

In a sense, cubicles have come full circle in terms of flexibilit­y. In the 1950s and ’60s, private offices surrounded open areas with secretarie­s clattering on typewriter­s — think “The Apartment” or “Mad Men.” But Robert Propst, an inventor, came up with a novel idea: create flexible, partly enclosed spaces to promote work. He developed his original design — the “Action Office” — in the 1960s when he worked at MillerKnol­l, then known as Herman Miller.

Because flexibilit­y makes constructi­on more expensive, cheaper, fixed versions became the norm, and isolated, off-putting partitione­d work areas were the result.

The increased focus on collaborat­ion in the 1990s and early 2000s led office designers away from cubicles, but there was a secondary impetus for the open-floor plan: cost. In high-rent cities like New York or London, “putting everyone in a cubicle or office was too much, so the open floor plan became very popular,” Held said.

After long stretches of working from home during the pandemic, manufactur­ers are acknowledg­ing the influence of residentia­l design on office furniture. Some employees are taking this one step further by importing home décor into their workspaces. Cubicle dwellers often post photos on sites like Pinterest and Instagram.

Lucas Mundt, a logistics analyst at Simple Modern in Oklahoma City, had already helped co-workers hang photos, but he wanted to transform his cubicle into a faux wood cabin. After getting permission, he set to work over a weekend, when the office was empty. “I wanted to do it big and over the top,” he said.

He added laminate wood floors and papered the walls with simulated wood paneling. He appended a picture of a window and, although he does not hunt, added two stuffed animals meant to replicate those trophies often found in hunting lodges. The chandelier and the space heater — which looks like a wood-burning stove — are voice-activated.

The transforma­tion was a hit in the office. The company’s CEO, Mike Beckham, posted photos on social media and gave everyone in the office a $250 allowance — about the amount Mundt estimated he spent — to redecorate their cubicles.

“If I’m going to spend 40 to 50 hours a week there, I wanted it to feel comfortabl­e and relaxing,” Mundt said.

 ?? MICHAEL NOBLE JR./THE NEW YORK TIMES ?? Lucas Mundt enjoys his cubicle, decorated as a cabin in the woods, Aug. 18 at Simple Modern in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Once derided as symbols of a commodifie­d workforce, cubicles are making a comeback.
MICHAEL NOBLE JR./THE NEW YORK TIMES Lucas Mundt enjoys his cubicle, decorated as a cabin in the woods, Aug. 18 at Simple Modern in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Once derided as symbols of a commodifie­d workforce, cubicles are making a comeback.

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