As office workers return, so does the humble cubicle

Among office designers and architects, cubicles are rarely mentioned. This once ubiquitous fixture, so popular in the 1980s and 1990s, has been vilified as a sign of the dehumanization of the workforce. Today, design experts say cubicles are a “hard no.”

And yet, like scrunchies, booths are making a comeback, driven by demand from employers and employees alike.

“I honestly thought the cube market was dying,” says Brian Silverberg, who with his brother Mark sells refurbished and used office furniture at their store, the Furniture X-Change in North Brunswick, NJ. “We have sold more cubes in the last three years than in the five years before that,” 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 employees returned to the office after months of working from home, quiet spaces became more important, says Gensler’s Janet Pogue McLaurin. “We had seen a drop in effectiveness due to noise interruptions, disruptions and a general lack of privacy,” she said.

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

Furniture manufacturers had already recognized that employees wanted some privacy, despite employers’ tendency to value collaboration spaces more highly than individual workspaces.

Anyone who’s ever worked in an office with couches “hates the open space,” says Michael Held, vice president of global design at furniture maker Steelcase.

Working from home during the pandemic provided some relief from noisy colleagues, but it also brought new distractions, including constant interruptions from 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 maker, who tracks employee trends with the Boston Consulting Group and messaging platform Slack.

The result is that just as companies are trying to balance remote work and office mandates, they are also thinking about the right mix of collaboration spaces, meeting rooms and individual spaces.

For example, at Grassi, a New York accounting and accounting firm with 500 employees, offices have been redesigned into hybrid spaces, emphasizing cubicles or semi-private spaces, along with open collaboration spaces.

Some of the company’s seven offices were “too open and lacked dedicated private space,” said Jeff Agranoff, the company’s chief human resources officer. Now the company has a combination of open and private spaces. (The company has also eliminated desk reservation scheduling, an arrangement known as hoteling. “Everyone has a dedicated space,” Mr. Agranoff said, “because we were concerned that significant hotel activity would keep people from coming back to the office. “)

Many employers now offer a variety of workspaces, including shared offices, meeting rooms, phone booths and libraries, Gensler’s Ms. McLaurin said. And yes, cabins.

Just don’t expect panels that are 6 feet high; they remain out of fashion. Instead, the new cubes offer what Mr. Held called “seating privacy” with 54-inch-tall panels.

And unlike the cubicles in films like “Office Space,” which satirize their commodified and tidy appearance, today’s versions are ergonomic, flexible, and can include lighting. They can be rectangular or round, with fixed or adjustable walls, and can accommodate multiple electronic devices.

Teams can tailor them to different needs, and some include sound masking features. Steelcase, for example, has incorporated panels that absorb certain sound waves, creating “less echo in the room,” Mr. Held said, while also reflecting less sound.

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

Standing desks are often integrated into both new and renovated workstations. Some renovated Grassi cabins feature glass walls. Arms can be attached to raise or lower monitors to accommodate different heights and video calls.

Demand for refurbished workstations has fallen after the pandemic peak, but still exceeds pre-pandemic levels. With the increase has come a decline in the number of office couches, says Trevor Langdon, CEO of Green Standards, a Toronto company that refurbishes and resells office furniture. More popular now are smaller booth setups, he said, adding that his inventory “suggests that our customers are sticking with their low-panel workstations.”

In a sense, cubicles have come full circle in terms of flexibility. In the 1950s and 1960s, private offices surrounded open spaces with secretaries clattering away on typewriters — think “The Apartment” or “Mad Men.” But Robert Propst, an inventor, came up with a new idea: create flexible, partially enclosed spaces to promote work.

He developed his original design – “the action office” – in the 1960s while working at MillerKnoll, then known as Herman Miller. Mr. Propst, who hated cubicles, was an early proponent of applying urban planning concepts, such as neighborhoods, to office layouts.

As flexibility makes construction more expensive and cheaper, fixed versions became the norm, resulting in isolated, uncomfortably separated workspaces. It didn’t take long for critics to ridicule the tall, mostly dust-covered booths. Eventually, the two-metre-high walls gave way to lower partitions, until the office once again contained large open work spaces, full of couches and couches.

The increased focus on collaboration in the 1990s and early 2000s caused office designers to turn away from the cubicles, but there was a secondary impetus for the open floor plan: cost. In cities with high rents, such as New York or London, “it was too much to fit everyone into a cubicle or office, so the open floor plan became very popular,” Mr. Hel said.

After extended working from home during the pandemic, manufacturers are recognizing the influence of home design on office furniture. Some employees take it a step further by importing home decor into their workplaces. Cell residents often post photos on sites such as Pinterest and Instagram.

Lucas Mundt, a logistics analyst at Simple Modern in Oklahoma City, had already helped colleagues hang pictures, but he wanted to convert his cubicle into a faux-wood cabin. After receiving permission, he went to work for 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 covered the walls with wood-like adhesive paper. He included a photo of a window and, although he doesn’t hunt, he included two stuffed animals meant to mimic the animals often found in hunting lodges. The chandelier and space heater – which looks like a wood-burning stove – are voice-controlled.

The transformation was a hit in the office. The company’s CEO, Mike Beckham, was such a fan that he posted photos on social media giving everyone in the office a $250 stipend — about the amount Mr. Mundt estimated he spent — to redesign their work stations to target.

Mr Mundt acknowledged that his renovation was above and beyond the norm. “If I was going to spend 40 to 50 hours a week there, I wanted it to feel comfortable and relaxing,” he said. “And I feel at home in the mountains.”