New Cubicle: Utopian Office Space?

Aug. 17, 2006 — -- Sitting in your cubicle at work, do you ever wonder sometimes just how you ended up there?

Not too long ago, someone came along with a vision for a new and improved "office space" of the future that was more than just rows of desks lined up next to each other.

The time was the 1960s, the person was Robert Probst, and the futuristic office space: the cubicle.

Through the years, the cubicle has become despised by some and immortalized in pop culture in the comic strip "Dilbert," which found comedy in the plight of the modern-day office worker.

Now, after years of derision, one company is giving the cubicle a major face-lift, one designed to give those toiling officer workers the option of working in the same type of enclosed office as the boss.

But do companies want office staff to be able to separate themselves, or will they prefer the openness of the traditional cube system?

It's a question the architects of the modern office have been faced with since its inception.

The invention of the cubicle started as something of an accident, but with more utopian ambitions.

A residential furniture company, Herman Miller, was looking for another business to expand into.

The company had never made office furniture, but it had lots of architects on staff and needed to do something fast with the future of the firm.

The firm hired Probst, an inventor best known for his invention in timber harvesting.

"He developed a big truck that backed up to a tree and would chop it off at the base," said Joseph Schwartz, Herman Miller's former marketing chief. "[The truck would] then pile the trunks into another truck that would be able to transport it."

Herman Miller set up a research facility in Ann Arbor, Mich., adjacent to the University of Michigan and just down the road from the company's headquarters in Zealand, Mich.

Probst's mission was to set up the office and then begin to innovate.