What are the origins of the open plan office?

Available for over a year

There’s long been a debate about how to design open-plan offices that promote collaboration whilst also giving workers privacy and space to concentrate. As Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler explains, in the mid-20th century two major schools of office design emerged, one in the US and one in Germany. Jennifer is Associate Professor of Design History at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. She's the author of Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office.