Affordable Office Cubicles

Archive for the ‘About cubicles’ Category

Remanufactured, or refurbished, office furniture offers your company the benefits of high-quality furniture at a significant discount. The labor and energy required to remanufacture an item is 85 to 95 percent less than the labor and energy required to manufacture a new product, and this savings goes right into your bottom line.

All items are custom built to your specifications. You specify the size and color of workstations, the panel heights, the style of matching desks, and the configuration you want. Long after you have received your order, you can order additional items to match your original order in the same color, fabric, and laminate. Your investment is well protected.

Corporate buyers frequently choose re-manufactured office furniture not only for the savings, but also for the high quality of the product. Steelcase®, Herman Miller®, and Haworth® office furniture systems are examples of the superior brands most dealers choose for remanufacturing, as their components are built to last, readily available, and of the highest quality. Discriminating buyers want the office furniture they select to match a specific color scheme and fit perfectly into the physical layout of the office environment.

Multiple steps requiring expertise in many different areas are involved in remanufacturing. All metal pieces are removed from the original item and thoroughly cleaned. The pieces are treated to ensure that the new paint will properly adhere to the metal. Every component is repainted. New, top-quality fabric is put on all panels over the padding. The original laminate is stripped off work surfaces and refinished with new laminate and edging or molding. You have over 200 colors to choose from! The electrical components in cubicle panels with built-in wiring are tested. Skilled workers ensure a quality product. After inspection of all aspects of the cubicle panels, they are delivered to their new owner!

The office cubicle provides a compromise between the open plan and the private room. It is not a perfect solution, as it fails to some extent on acoustic dampening and security, but it does offer visual privacy and delineates personal space.

The cubicle has probably been made most famous by the Dilbert cartoon series, created by Scott Adams, which all cubicle or “pod” dwellers can relate to. Speaking his mind through his character Dilbert, Adams offered not only sarcastic criticisms of the cubicle, but new insights and ideas as well. In 2001 he teamed up with IDEO, a San Francisco design company, to create the perfect cubicle. The resulting cubicle featured comical aspects, to be sure, but also some sound ideas. A couple of examples include an original modular arrangement and attention to details before overlooked, such as the change in the angle of lighting as the day advances.

Writer Douglas Coupland coined the phrase “veal-fattening pen” in reference to the cubicle in his novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.

Between 2000 and 2002, IBM and Steelcase®, the office furniture manufacturer, partnered to conduct thorough research on the software, hardware, and ergonomics of the cubicle of the future under the name “BlueSpace.” They created several prototypes of their hi-tech, multi-screened work space which contained movable, multiple screens inside and outside, a projection system, and individual lighting, heating, and ventilation controls, along with software applications to orchestrate everything. One of these was exhibited at Walt Disney World.

In 1994, designer Douglas Ball designed and built several “Clipper” or “CS-1″ capsule-shaped desks that looked like the front fuselage of a fighter plane. This streamlined computer workstation had louvers, an integrated ventilation system, and advanced ergonomic features. An office space filled with these capsules would look like a hangar of small flight simulators. The Design Museum in the United Kingdom now houses these workstations among its permanent collections.

The office cubicle is much criticized in some sectors, not only because it can be compared to a pen or cell, but also because of the unrealistic expectations generated by promoters. It is true that the cubicle provides more privacy and quiet to users than they would have if they were working side by side with no partitions. However, unlike promoters would have you believe, the installation of cubicles does not magically reduce the noise level to zero or eliminate all distractions.

The cubicle alone cannot be expected to solve all problems. Too frequently, insufficient attention is paid to the proper design and installation of baffled ceilings, acoustic flooring, staggered corridors, and tactically placed meeting rooms. Without a global approach to all design elements, the cubicle only offers visual privacy and little acoustic protection. Traditional suspended ceilings cannot prevent noise conduction in large spaces despite their being constructed with “acoustic” tiles.

In addition, recent academic studies highlight a major disadvantage of the cubicle office, especially in conjunction with interoffice e-mailing capabilities: a reduction in person-to-person communication. Users tend to become very attached to their cubicles as their personal territory over which they have nearly complete control. They become very comfortable and possessive of their private space, and some users may become anxious if they have to change cubicles, even if it’s due to a promotion. At the extreme are those users who stay in their cubicles almost all the time, sending e-mails to the coworker on the other side of the partition but rarely speaking in person, eating lunch while continuing to tap away on the keyboard or read reports, and venturing out of the cubicle only when absolutely necessary for a quick bathroom break.

The cubicle may effectively reduce noise and distractions in the workplace, but decreased interaction among employees has resulted in decreased teamwork, lowered productivity, and a decline in morale. The negative effects of working in cubicles, especially lowered productivity, have become a factor in new office design.