This process was in its infancy when COVID-19 hit in 2020, adding more challenges for businesses and office design and furniture vendors to solve. Over the last several years, designers have tested a variety of new design concepts that aim to avoid the negatives of open-office floor plans while optimizing their benefits. How much truth was there ever really behind many of the supposed productivity and collaboration benefits tied to open-office layouts? Was it always just a cost-saving move to help businesses pack more workers into less office space? Were the other benefits simply a facade to justify moving to an open floor plan and reducing real estate overhead? Or did the open-office concept deserve to take the place of the closed floor plan?Īs the younger generation of talent questions the design of the open office concept, employers strive to find new designs that keep them competitive in the current business climate. Most notably, the Harvard Business Review published a powerful study and analysis on this topic, “The Truth About Open Offices.” Moreover, studies appear to disprove many of its touted benefits, indicating that open offices can actually lead to lower productivity, less collaboration, and damaged employee morale. While the concept’s proponents contend that it encourages collaboration, camaraderie, flexibility, and comfort, employees complain about distractions, lack of privacy, and feeling exposed in the workplace. The Pros and Cons of an Open-Office DesignĪs open offices became more established, however, cracks in the design began to show. Today, the open office may be the norm: roughly 70% of American offices use an open floor plan. First developed in Germany during the mid-20 th century, open-office plans really took root in the United States during the early 2000s, gaining traction among East Coast creative agencies, Silicon Valley tech firms, and other forward-thinking companies. This design concept has been popular since the 1950s but has undergone changes over the years. The open-office design concept proposes floor plans that arrange office spaces to have minimal or no physical barriers, allowing for more collaboration and interaction among employees. In this blog, we explore the open-office design concept in detail, discuss the pros and cons of the design, and present some solutions for redesigning an office space to create something more suitable for the needs of a modern business. Many companies are designing flexible, hybrid workspaces that acknowledge these changes and allow employees to work both in-person and remotely. These workforce changes are now influencing the next evolution of open-offices layouts. Technological advancements slowly ushered in a shift toward remote work which, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, abruptly became the new normal.

The design has since evolved to include additional and more-varied workspace options such as private phone booths, standing desks, and lounge areas. In their heyday, open offices had long rows of desks with little privacy and personal space. Rather than carving up offices with cubicles or walls, the open-office concept seats employees together in open, communal workspaces.ĭecades ago, the open-office concept became the big trend for American offices, replacing older floor plans that often consisted of private offices around the perimeter with row upon row of cubicles on the inside.

Just about anyone working in business today is familiar with open-office design. Modern Office Design Concepts: Changing The Open-Office Trend Quick Ship Benching and Desking Systems.

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Open office space plan