Internet firms such as Google and Facebook were not the first to bring changes to the work environment, however. Hewlett-Packard introduced an open-plan office to drive interaction back in the 1970s. In 2000 Steve Jobs bought a former canning factory in Emeryville, California, to house his animation studio, Pixar. The office was arranged around a central atrium, where the café and a single set of loos was situated, forcing employees to engage with one another and – as in Mr Cobley’s lunch queues – to wait, to chat and to generate ideas. “We wanted to find a way to force people to come together,” Jobs said of the design. “To create a lot of arbitrary collisions of people.”
Or didn't....
According to one survey around 70% of all offices in America have gone open-plan. Yet evidence is mounting that this is a bad idea. Over the past five years Gensler, a design firm, has asked more than 90,000 people in 155 companies in ten industries what they think of this way of working. It has found an astonishing amount of antipathy. Workers say that open-plan offices make it more difficult to concentrate, because the hubbub of human and electronic noise is so distracting. What they really value is the ability to focus on their jobs with as few distractions as possible. Ironically, going open-plan defeats another of Montessori management’s main objectives: workers say it prevents them from collaborating, because they cannot talk without disturbing others or inviting an audience. Other studies show that people who work in open-plan offices are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress and airborne infections such as flu.
