Sea of Cubicles - Impact On Society

Impact On Society

It is unlikely that any other office furnishings have had as great a social impact as the introduction of the office cubicle in the 1960s, though the outcome of the cubicle's arrival is still open to debate, in both its pros and cons. Author Thomas Hine has gone so far as to speculate that the cubicle made it possible for women to move into middle management positions in the late 1960s because the introduction of cubicles gave their male counterparts a new office environment in which to place women managers without having to allow their entry into the private "bull pens" that had been the exclusive domain of men.

Despite becoming Herman Miller's most successful project, George Nelson disowned himself from any connection with the "Action Office II" line. In 1970 he sent a letter to Robert Blaich, who had beome Herman Miller's Vice-President for Corporate Design and Communication, in which he described the system's "dehumanizing effect as a working environment." He summed up his feeling by saying:

One does not have to be an especially perceptive critic to realize that AO II is definitely not a system which produces an environment gratifying for people in general. But it is admirable for planners looking for ways of cramming in a maximum number of bodies, for "employees" (as against individuals), for "personnel," corporate zombies, the walking dead, the silent majority. A large market.

Scornful as he may have been, Nelson was right that there turned out to be a "larger market" for AO II. By 2005 total sales had reached $5 billion.

An office with excessive amounts of cubicles can be derisively referred to as a sea of cubicles, a cube farm, or a cubicle farm.