Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are so glad
you're here. It's good to be here. Today we are
tackling a subject that is, well, it's so ubiquitous,
so woven into the fabric of modern life that
it's almost invisible to us. Completely. It's
just the background radiation of our lives. It
is. It's a place where we spend, what? Nearly
a third of our adult lives. We commute to it.
We complain about it. We organize our entire
existence around its hours. We drink its questionable
coffee. We drink its questionable coffee. But
we almost never stop to ask, what is it? I mean,
really, where did this whole concept come from?
It's such a great point. It is the backdrop of
the modern human experience. Yet we take its
architecture, its history, and its psychological
impact completely for granted. Yeah, we just
accept it as the container for our days. Exactly.
We are talking, of course, about the office.
And before you roll your eyes and think, oh,
great, a deep dive on spreadsheets and fluorescent
lights, just, hmm. Because the sources we have
today paint a picture that is, frankly, surprisingly
dramatic. We're talking about Roman palaces,
the British Navy, the psychological warfare of
open floor plans. Oh, absolutely. and the invisible
economics that decide whether you get a window
or a wall. It really is a fascinating evolution.
It is. When you look at the stack of research
we have here, from architectural histories to
psychological studies, you realize the office
isn't just a room with a desk. It's a technology.
A technology? It's a tool. A tool for control,
for organization, and for better or worse, for
shaping human behavior on a massive scale. Right.
It's a machine we live inside. So, okay, let's
start with the basics. If I asked someone on
the street to define an office, I'd probably
get, it's a place where I go to type on a computer.
Sure. Or sit in a swivel chair. Exactly. But
our sources suggest the definition is a little
more... slippery than that. It is, yeah. If we
look at the strict functional definition, an
office is simply a space where administrative
work happens to support an organization's goals.
Okay, that sounds straightforward enough. But
the physical form of that can be anything. It
could be a massive glass skyscraper in a city
center, sure. But it could also be a single floor
in a strip mall. A spare room in your house.
Or even just a bench in the corner of a workshop.
Right. And then there's the legal definition,
which is where it gets really weird. This is
the part that I found so surprising. Go on. According
to the source material, a company is considered
to have an office anywhere it has an official
presence. And the example they gave was wild.
The storage silo. The storage silo. It said even
if that presence is just a storage silo, that
counts legally as an office. Which really stretches
the imagination, doesn't it? We think of the
office as the chair, the desk, the water cooler.
But legally, it's just about the official presence.
It's the footprint of the company. Exactly. A
grain silo in the middle of a field can be the
legal office, if that's where the company exists
physically. I just love the image of a guy in
a suit standing in a grain silo holding a briefcase.
It's fantastic. But for the sake of our listeners
today, when we talk about the office, we're really
focusing on that environment where white -collar
workers are. The architectural phenomenon, yes.
The place where the magic or the drudgery happens.
So here is the mission for this deep dive. We're
going to uncover the history of the office, tracing
it all the way from Roman scrolls to the very
first skyscraper. And we'll get into the psychology
of the design. Oh, yeah. That never -ending battle
between open plans and cubicles that seems to
make everyone miserable in different ways. And
we'll break down the economics, what makes a
building Class A versus Class C. Essentially,
we want to understand how the spaces we work
in shape how we work. And that's the crucial
link. As Winston Churchill famously said, we
shape our buildings and thereafter they shape
us. And that is nowhere more true than in the
office. So let's go back, way back. Etymology
is always such a good place to start to understand
the soul of a thing. When I hear the word office,
I just, I think of a physical box, a room. But
you found that wasn't the original meaning at
all. No, not even close. The word comes from
the Latin officium. Officium, okay. And in ancient
Rome, officium didn't mean a building. It didn't
mean a place you went to. It meant a duty or
a service. Oh, interesting. It could also refer
to the staff. the people themselves, or the abstract
position like the office of the magistrate. So
in the Roman mind, you didn't go to the office.
You were the office. Wow. You held the office.
The office was a concept of responsibility that
you carried with you. That's a huge mental shift.
So when did it change? When did it become a...
The shift in meaning to a physical location is
actually relatively recent in the grand scheme
of things. The sources point out that it wasn't
until around 1395 that the word started to change
in English. 1395, so late Middle Ages. Right.
And it's Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales
who's one of the first recorded users of the
word office to describe an actual place where
business is transacted. So Chaucer did it. That's
the pivot point. That's where the duty becomes
a location. Good old Chaucer. Always inventing
things. So, okay, before Chaucer, if you were
in ancient Rome or Byzantium and you had paperwork
to do, and we know they had a ton of paperwork,
they ran massive empires, where did you do it?
They certainly did. Rome ran on bureaucracy.
But these offices were usually integrated into
palace complexes or large temples. There wasn't
a separate business district like we have today.
So the administration was physically attached
to the seat of power? Or the seat of religion,
yeah. And this leads to a funny confusion for
modern archaeologists. Oh, right. The library
confusion. I loved this detail in the source
material. It's a classic case of misinterpretation,
isn't it? Archaeologists often dig up these rooms
in ancient ruins. You know, Roman forums, Byzantine
palaces. And they're filled with all these niches
in the walls. And the immediate thought is library.
The instinct is to call them libraries because,
well, they held scrolls. And we associate scrolls
with literature, poetry, philosophy. But they
weren't sitting in there reading Homer. Exactly.
These were administrative centers. The scrolls
were tax records, grain inventories, legal decrees,
census data. They were spreadsheets. They were
ancient spreadsheets. Yeah. These were offices
in every functional sense. They were for record
keeping and management. But because the medium
was the scroll, we tend to romanticize them as
libraries. I love that. The ancient tax auditor
gets credit for being a philosopher just because
he used parchment. Pretty much. It really changes
how you visualize those ancient spaces. They
weren't these quiet retreats for reading. They
were probably bustling with clerks yelling about
grain shipments from Egypt. Absolutely. It was
the data center of the ancient world. So let's
move forward to the Middle Ages. The years say
1000 to 1300. This is where we see the chancery.
The medieval chancery. Yes. This was essentially
the government office of the day. It was where
the kingdom's laws were copied, official letters
were written. And visually, this is where we
start to see things that look familiar to the
modern eye. The sources describe walls full of
pigeonholes. Pigeonholes. Yeah. I mean, that's
such a classic office image. We still use that
word metaphorically today. We do. Don't pigeonhole
me. And there were literally holes for pigeons.
Well, not for pigeons, but for rolled up parchment.
And if you think about it. That grid of pigeonholes
is the direct ancestor of the modern bookshelf.
Or the filing cabinet. Or the filing cabinet.
It's the same problem. How do I store a massive
amount of information in a way that is retrievable?
You create a grid. It's interesting, though,
that even then there was this blur between the
personal and the professional. The source mentions
that there was no real distinction between a
private office and a private library in the Middle
Ages. That's right. And that's largely because
of the scarcity of books and writing materials.
I mean, parchment was expensive. Literacy was
rare. You wouldn't have a separate desk for work
and a separate desk for leisure reading. You
had one desk. Your one good desk. You had one
desk. You read your devotional books there and
you wrote your business letters there. The office
as a distinct separate zone just for commerce
hadn't really calcified yet. It was just your
writing space. So when does that separation happen?
When do we get the first building that is just
for work, where you leave your house and go to
a building that has no other purpose than administration?
For that, we have to look to the 18th century.
And the catalyst, as with so many things in history,
was the growth of large, complex organizations.
The original mega corporations. Specifically,
navies and trading companies. Right. Running
a global empire requires a level of administration
that you just can't do from a desk in your living
room. You need an army of clerks. You need centralized
records. So we see the first purpose -built office
building in Great Britain appearing in 1726,
the Old Admiralty. The Ripley Building, yes.
It housed the Royal Navy's administration. And
it had a boardroom, which is a key feature we
still have today. But it also had apartments
for the Lords of the Admiralty. So even then,
people were living at work. In a sense. The bosses
had to be on site 247. And then later in the
1770s, you get Somerset House, which gathered
all the scattered Royal Navy offices into one
massive block. But the real titan of bureaucracy,
the one that really changed the game, seems to
be the East India Company. Oh, absolutely. East
India House on Ledenhall Street, built in 1729.
This place was the nerve center for administering
vast colonial possessions in India. The scale
must have been incredible. Unimaginable. The
sheer volume of paperwork meant they needed thousands
of clerks. It was a massive information processing
machine. And this is where we see a major cultural
shift. Which is? The invention of clocking in.
Wait, really? The East India Company invented
clocking in? I thought that was like a 20th century
factory thing. They were certainly early adopters
of the concept on a massive scale. The company
realized the benefit of centralized administration,
but they had a problem. How do you manage thousands
of people? You make them sign a piece of paper
when they arrive. They required workers to sign
in and out daily. It's the birth of the 9 -to
-5 surveillance, in a way. You weren't just completing
a task, you were selling your time. That is a
pivotal moment, the commodification of presence.
Before that, work was make this shoe or harvest
this field. And when you were done, you were
done. Right, now it's... Be in this room from
this hour to that hour. Exactly. It defines the
modern employment contract. And then, of course,
the Industrial Revolution just kicks the door
down on all of this. Boom. Now it's not just
the Navy and the East India Company. No. Now
it's banking, rail, insurance, telegraphy. These
industries grew explosively in the 19th century.
And they're all information -heavy industries.
A railroad isn't just trains. It's schedules,
tickets, cargo manifests, payroll. They need
massive amounts of order processing and accounting.
And they needed somewhere to put all those clerks.
Correct. And this brings us to the furniture.
I found this detail fascinating. The desks of
the 19th century were very different from what
we have now. They're described as top -heavy.
Yeah, the source mentioned they had cabinet -like
cubbyholes above the workspace, like those old
roll -top desks you see in movies. Right. Think
of those beautiful antique desks. They have all
these little nooks and crannies and highbacks.
And what that did, completely accidentally...
was offer privacy. Accidental privacy. I like
that. If you were a clerk sitting at one of those
desks, you had a little wall of wood in front
of you. You were in your own little cocoon. You
couldn't see the guy in front of you, and he
couldn't see you. They didn't design it for mental
health. They designed it for storage. But the
result was a bit of solitude. But enjoy that
privacy while it lasts, folks, because the 20th
century is coming for it. Before we get to the
death of privacy, though, we have to talk about
the buildings themselves growing up. Literally.
The vertical shift, yes. This is simple economics.
As these industries clustered in city centers,
London, New York, Chicago land prices skyrocketed.
You couldn't build out. There was no land left,
so you had to build up. And the source mentions
the Brunswick building in Liverpool, 1841, as
the first purpose -built office block. But there
was a technological limit, right? You could only
ask people to walk up so many stairs. Exactly.
Ten stories was about the limit of human endurance
for a daily commute. If your office was on the
12th floor, you were going to have a very sweaty,
very tired workforce. And a very unpopular boss.
Right. But then, in 1852, Elisha Otis invents
the safety elevator. The game changer. Suddenly,
the sky is the limit. You can stack hundreds
of offices on top of each other. And this creates
the modern skyline, but it also creates the modern
density of workers. You can now put thousands
of people on a single footprint of land. Which
brings us perfectly to the 20th century, the
era of efficiency. And this is where the vibe
of the office really shifts from a gentlemanly
administration to a factory for paper. It really
does. And the scale just gets enormous. By 1906,
Sears, Roebuck, and Co. opened a headquarters
in Chicago that was 3 million square feet. 3
million square feet. I can't even picture that.
That is a city. It was the largest building in
the world at the time. And when you have a workforce
that size, management starts looking for ways
to optimize. They stop seeing individuals and
start seeing a mass. Enter Frederick Winslow
Taylor. And scientific management? Or... Taylorism.
I feel like Taylor is the villain in so many
stories about modern work. He is certainly a
polarizing figure. Taylor pioneered time and
motion studies and manufacturing, you know, measuring
exactly how long it takes to turn a screw or
lift a shovel. But then people like the Gilbreths
applied this thinking to the office. They did.
And the philosophy was managers need an active
role in directing subordinates for efficiency.
You can't just trust the clerk to do the work.
You have to watch them do it. And this, this
killed the cozy cabinet desk. It did. In 1915,
the Equitable Life Insurance Company in New York
introduced the modern efficiency desk. It just
sounds ominous, doesn't it? The modern efficiency
desk. It was a design revolution, had a flat
top, no cubby holes, no high back. All the drawers
were strictly below the waist. So nowhere to
hide. Precisely. The why behind this design was
explicitly surveillance. It removed the privacy
of the old cabinet desks so managers had an easy,
unobstructed view of the workers. So the open
plan office, which we all think of as this modern,
hip Silicon Valley thing. It actually started
in 1915 as a way to spy on people. Yes. The source
explicitly says this was the return of open spaces,
not for collaboration, but for surveillance.
Wow. It was about turning the office into a factory
floor where the product was paper and the manager
was the foreman walking the lines. That is chilling.
But it also makes so much sense of what came
next. You have these vast open floors of flat
desks, zero privacy. The noise must have been
incredible. The lack of focus. And that leads
us to the next big pivot. The war for privacy.
To fight back. By the mid -20th century, companies
started to realize that this factory floor approach
had backfired. The total lack of privacy was
causing tedium. It was hurting productivity.
People felt exposed and stressed. So they needed
the solution. Enter the cubicle. Or, as it was
originally called, the action office. Action
office sounds so much more dynamic than cubicle.
It sounds like a place where things get done.
That was the hope. In 1964, Robert Probst, a
designer for Herman Miller, came up with the
action office system. And his goal was actually
very noble. What was he trying to do? He wanted
to give knowledge workers a flexible, semi -private
space that would encourage focus and collaboration.
He wanted to liberate them from the open bullpens.
He designed walls that could move, standing desks,
different zones for different tasks. But it morphed
into something else entirely. As companies adopted
it, they realized, hey, we can just pack a lot
of these little boxes into a room. The action
office devolved into the cubicle system. It became
a way to warehouse people. Pretty much. And the
source points out some really specific flaws
with the cubicle. The famous Dilbert world. It
solved visual privacy. You couldn't see your
neighbor eating a sandwich. Which is a plus.
A definite plus. But it failed completely at
acoustic separation. Right. You can still hear
everything. The phone calls, the typing, the
sighing, the chewing. It's the worst of both
worlds. You feel alone because you have walls
around your eyes, but you're constantly disturbed
because you have no walls around your ears. And
then there's the back problem. I never thought
about this specifically, but it's so true. Cubicles
often force you to sit with your back to the
entrance of your workspace. It's a primal anxiety.
Evolutionarily, we don't like having our backs
exposed to the cave entrance. We want to see
who is coming. And the source mentions that workers
often use mirrors on their monitors. Little rearview
mirrors. Yeah. Just to see people approaching.
That speaks to a low -level constant state of
vigilance that is just exhausting. If you have
to install a rearview mirror at your desk, you
are not relaxed. Not at all. Okay, so. We hated
the open plan. So we built cubicles. Then we
hated the cubicle. So what did we do? We went
back to the open plan. We did. We just tore down
the walls again. But this time we called it collaborative
and innovative. We did. We rebranded it for the
90s and 2000s. But the modern data on open plans
is what's damning. Let's unpack that data. Because
I think a lot of managers out there still believe
open plans create synergy. The source cites research
that shows open plan offices. are associated
with increased stress and a 25 % uptick in negative
moods. 25 %? That's a lot. It is. But here's
the real paradox. They led to a 70 % decrease
in face -to -face interactions. Wait, say that
again. A 70 % decrease. The whole point is to
make people talk. That's the theory. But the
reality of human behavior is different. When
you are in a fishbowl, when you're in a library
-like open space, you don't want to be the person
making noise and disturbing everyone else. You
feel socially pressured to be quiet. Exactly.
So what do you do? You put on headphones. You
withdraw into your own little bubble. You send
an email or a Slack message to the person sitting
six feet away from you instead of talking to
them. So the open plan actually creates a wall
of silence. That is a perfect way to put it.
We built walls of silence because we took down
the walls of drywall. And productivity dropped
up to 20 % due to distractions. It's just hard
to do deep, focused work when you can see everyone
walking by and hear every single conversation.
Now, the source does mention a different approach
to the open plan, the Japanese model. This seems
like a cultural variation on the theme. Right,
the island -style layout. Yes, this is very distinct
from the western rows of desks. In Japan, desks
are often arranged in clusters or islands with
people facing each other. How does that change
the dynamic? It's designed to promote teamwork
and top -down management. Usually, the team sits
together in a pod, and the manager sits at the
head of the island, kind of like a captain at
the helm. So it reinforces the group unit rather
than the individual. Precisely. And it facilitates
some unique Japanese business concepts. The source
mentions Uchi Aways and Ringisho. What are those?
Uchi always refers to informal meetings. The
island layout encourages quick, ad hoc check
-ins at the desk without needing to book a formal
room. You can just lean over and talk. Right.
And Rigi shows us the consensus system. It's
a way of circulating a proposal to get input
from the group, literally passing a document
around the island to build agreement before a
final decision is made. So the physical space
is built to support this collective decision
-making style. It's a cycle. The culture dictates
the furniture, and the furniture reinforces the
culture. It's amazing. So, okay, we've talked
about the desk. But the modern office isn't just
a sea of desks. It's a complex ecosystem. The
source breaks down the anatomy of a modern office
into zones. It does, and this is really important
because a good office isn't one thing. It's a
menu of spaces. The source identifies three main
categories, workspaces, meeting spaces, and support
spaces. Let's run through the workspaces first.
There are nine types listed here. We've got the
open office and the private office, which are
the obvious ones. But what else stood out to
you in this list? I think the nuances are interesting.
For instance, the team space. This is a semi
-enclosed area for maybe two to eight people.
It acknowledges that sometimes a small unit needs
to be cut off from the herd to get things done.
It's not a meeting room. It's a workroom. Exactly.
Then there's the touchdown space. I like that
name. The name says it all, doesn't it? It's
an open space for one person designed for short
-term, low -concentration work. This is for the
salesperson who is in the office for an hour
between meetings. They don't need a dedicated
desk with pictures of their dog. They just need
a surface and a plug. A surface and a plug. And
then there is the office pod. This feels very
current. I see these everywhere now. The little
phone booths. The little phone booths. The pod
is the direct response to the failure of the
open plan. It's a cost -effective way to buy
privacy. If you can't build walls, you buy a
soundproof booth for phone calls. It's a Band
-Aid. It's a Band -Aid, but a necessary one in
an open plan. Then we have meeting spaces. We've
got the standard meeting rooms, but then there's
the brainstorm room. Which is specifically distinguished
from a normal meeting room. It's for workshops,
usually 5 to 12 people. And the implication is
that the furniture is different. Whiteboards
on every wall. Movable chairs. Sticky notes everywhere.
It's a space designed for active creation, not
just passive listening. And the meeting point.
Which is an ad hoc, informal spot for 2 to 4
people. This is the water cooler conversation,
but formalized. It's those standing tables you
see in hallways. Right. It acknowledges that
the best ideas often happen in the margins, not
in the boardroom. Exactly. Finally, support spaces.
These are the spaces that keep the humans alive.
Pantries, break areas, locker areas. But there
are some unexpected ones on this list for me.
The smoking room was one. An enclosed space specifically
for smoking. You don't see these in new builds
in the U .S. or U .K. anymore, really, but historically
and globally, they're a specific architectural
feature. With heavy -duty ventilation systems.
Hopefully. Then there's the games room, pool
tables, darts. That's the dot -com influence,
right? Trying to make work feel like a clubhouse
so you never want to leave. That's the idea.
And one that is legally mandatory now in the
U .S., lactation rooms. Yeah, under the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. This
is a crucial addition. It recognizes that workers
have bodies and families. It's a dedicated, private
support space that isn't a bathroom. It represents
a huge shift in who the office is designed for.
It's not just for the male clerk of 1915 anymore.
It's for a diverse workforce. It's a long way
from the pigeonholes of the Middle Ages. It really
is. Now, we have to talk about the invisible
hand that shapes all of this. Money. Real estate.
The business of buildings? We walk into these
lobbies. with marble floors and security guards,
but we rarely think about the lease structure
or the grading systems that put them there. It's
a massive industry. Office buildings are commercial
buildings specifically designed for admin work.
That means they have to handle specific technical
needs, light levels, networking, HVAC loads.
It's a very specific asset class. And the rental
economics are fascinating. How is rent even quoted?
It's usually cost per floor area per time. So
you might see a number like $29 per square foot
per year. Okay, so if I rent 1 ,000 square feet,
I'm paying $29 ,000 a year. Roughly, yes. But
the devil is in the lease type. And this is something
every aspiring entrepreneur needs to know. You
have the gross lease and the triple net lease.
Break those down. What's the difference? A gross
lease is all -inclusive. You pay your one rent
check, and the landlord covers utilities, taxes,
repairs, janitorial services. It's simple. You
know your monthly cost. And triple net, that
sounds ominous. It's the one to watch out for.
In a triple net lease, the tenant pays a share
of everything. Everything. You pay the base rent,
plus property taxes, insurance, maintenance,
climate control, landscaping, janitorial, the
whole shebang. So if the air conditioning for
the whole building breaks? You might be paying
for a portion of that repair based on the square
footage you occupy. Wow. Wow. So the advertised
rent might look low, but the actual cost could
be much, much higher. Exactly. It shifts the
risk from the landlord to the tenant. And then
there is the class system. Literally. BOMA, the
building owners and managers association, grades
office buildings. Class A, class B, and class
C. It sounds like a report card for buildings.
It basically is. Class A is the most prestigious.
These are the trophy buildings. State -of -the
-art systems, exceptional accessibility, a definite
market presence. If you're a high -powered law
firm, you pay for Class A to signal your success.
Okay. And Class B? Average. Adequate systems,
fair finishes. It competes for a wide range of
users. It's a solid building, but it doesn't
have that wow factor of a Class A. And Class
C is? Functional space at below -average rents.
This is for tenants who just need a roof and
a power outlet. The finishes might be dated,
the lobby might be small, but it works. But the
source notes that real estate agents often push
the boundaries with this. Oh, always. You'll
see class A plus or class B. It's marketing.
Everyone wants to believe they're in a class
A building. Of course. So we've covered the history,
the design, the money. And usually we try to
wrap up with a neat summary. But looking at this
whole picture from the scroll to the Zoom pod,
it feels like we are in a constant cycle. It
really is a cycle. We started with the pigeonhole
and the cabinet desk, these little private nooks.
Accidental privacy. Then Taylorism tore down
the walls for surveillance. Then we built cubicles
to give privacy back. Then we tore down the cubicles
for collaboration. And now. And now the data
suggests we might be turning back again. This
is the final provocative thought from our sources.
There is a post -pandemic trend emerging. Private
cell office plans. Cell office. It sounds like
a prison, but it's actually what people seem
to want. It's essentially a return to the private
office. A small room with a door. And the data
that's coming out reports that these layouts
enhance productivity by up to 22 percent. 22
percent is huge. Any CEO would kill for a 22
percent productivity bump. It is. These plans
address health precautions, obviously, which
is on everyone's mind now. But they also address
the distraction crisis that the open plan created.
So are we about to see the death of the open
plan and the return of the door? The office of
the future might actually look a lot more like
the office of the past. Walls. Doors. Quiet.
The return of the door. I like the sound of that.
It raises a big question for you, the listener.
If you feel exhausted at work, if you feel like
you can't think, is it you? Or is it the architecture?
Is it the building itself that's wearing you
down? That is something to mull over the next
time you are trying to have a private phone call
in a glass box. Indeed. Thank you so much for
walking us through this. I will never look at
a cubicle or a storage silo the same way again.
My pleasure. It was fascinating stuff. And thank
you for listening to this deep dive. We'll catch
you next time.