Designs Beyond Time: 85-years of Kusch+Co Exhibition,
London
14 October 2024
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Wellbeing at Work Summit South Africa 2024,
Johannesburg, Cape Town and Online
22 October 2024
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Designer's Urban Retreat,
London
26 October 2024
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CoreNet Summit - PEOPLE POWER: FUELING HUMAN CONNECTIONS,
Washington DC
01 November 2024
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Dubai Design Week,
Dubai
05 November 2024
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Smart Workspace Design Summit,
Amsterdam
05 November 2024
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ESG Summit: Exploring climate, costs and choices,
London
05 November 2024
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CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition,
Manchester
06 November 2024
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August 17, 2017
How workplace design shapes and reflects organisational hierarchies
by Angela Love • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design
The roots of the open plan office can be traced back to the 1960s when post-capitalism was beginning to emerge as a political and intellectual movement. The social and political upheaval that followed World War Two and the emphasis on the autonomous, motivated and engaged worker combined to inspire designers and architects to develop a new and more “modern” way of working. A mode of work characterised by an increased emphasis on social relations and flattened hierarchies. The open plan office was heralded as the ‘office of the future’; a progressive, transformative and near utopian design concept which would enable its occupants to thrive and succeed in a more socialist world. Yet the proponents of the open plan do not appear to have been fulfilled in large corporate businesses in the UK. I’d like to suggest that this failure is not a design fault but rather a problem caused by a clash of ideologies. Upon closer inspection, it appears that these larger corporations have not fully been able to shift into the social-democratic model of collaborative, open working styles.
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