Evolution of Workplace Designs

~By Mr. Shrinivas Rao, CEO-Asia Pacific, Vestian~

Our relationship with work has come a long way. Twists and turns of time have given the
relationship ways to get back to the roots ,ie appeal to the resource; right from the way workplaces
are designed, built and not to mention digitalized, in and out. The overall concept of an office space
has also changed in the eyes of an employee. Over the past century we saw evolution of workplace
in terms of utilization of space, structuring, placing of equipments, LEED certification and more.
Companies have changed their view of the whole process of designing an office space as we know it;
from just placing desks and chairs to ensuring digitalization of the office, setting up a fully functional
cafeteria, recreation room among the gamut of offerings for their precious employees. Basically, the
need of treating resource as people, and spiralling down to the root has led to the evolution that we
see.

Here’s a look at the journey of an office from a traditional set up to a more vivacious, swanky
workplace of today

The British Era

This era might actually have been the harbinger of the concept of organized labour in India. The way
the offices were built during that time is akin to the way it was built back in England. The offices
during those times wore a traditional look with chairs and desks made of solid wood and amenities
such as telephone connection and electricity were needed for set up. Work was done on hard copy
and stored in hardcopy, resulting in the need of big file cabinets that often used to be stored in the
attic, basement or right where the officers used to sit.

Post Independence and Pre-liberalization Era

The post- independence era also saw the birth of modern architecture in India. This era saw a surge
in construction works as corporate office and government office buildings started to come up. Not
only the targets were the big corporations looking to set up their operations, but also the modern
architecture was required for entire cities to be built. Tatas and Birlas just took their baby steps in
the era. Famous personnel like Le Corbusier, a Swiss- French architect was brought in to design the
now well planned city of Chandigarh, Otto koenigsberger, a German architect was brought in to
design the city of Bhubaneshwar, Frank Lloyd wright, Mies van der roheso, Walter gropius were also
brought in for various other projects to be executed in the newly freed India.

Cubicle offices concept was mooted and passed by the office designing patrons of the pre-
liberalization era. The style promoted collaboration and flexibility more, while employees could still
enjoy their privacy. The cubicle concept became popular as open office concept was seen by
employees as a method of continuous surveillance. Thus, the privacy of cubicles was embraced.
Further on, the 80s also saw the advent of technology in office spaces with telephones, fax machines
and computers making way into our work styles. This reduced the use of file cabinets to a large
extent, thus reducing the size of office cubicles.

Post-Liberalization

This era was the harbinger of IT in India. Post 1990, India saw the foray of multimedia and windows
OS into India, promoting digitization of files. With digitized files and documents, file cabinets became
a thing of the past. Digitization enabled easy storage and duplication, thus easing work for all. Open
office concept was brought in fore for organizations which needed people to collaborate on a daily
 basis. Cubicles were seen to restrict the concept of team work and hence done away with, for
certain genres of business.

In the late 2000s, as broadband connections became available along with mobile phones, the
concept of remote working and flexible working evolved. Companies started offering them to
employees as a perk which enabled employees a choice of working flexibly in terms of place and
time. Escape from their cubicles came as a relief.

The 2000s also saw LPG knocking doors. With LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization) the
whole working culture changed. Multi National Companies became part of the market humdrum and
proved to be a good inspiration and competition to the way offices were being developed in India.
The main reason behind the infrastructure building was the advent and use of elevators (which lead
to building of high rises), use of steel/ concrete in building, and including building parking spaces for
the array of private cars, courtesy industrialization. Modern architecture, technology started to be
imbibed and a spectacular shift in infrastructure building was seen all over India (mainly A Grade
Metro Cities).

Today

The times today are seeing a lot of variety in terms of how offices spaces are built, maintained and
taken care of in the long run. New ways of working also took hold in this era such as, hot desking
(letting out empty spaces in ones office to another smaller party), Virtual offices (Using a common
office space and operating from remote places, basically encouraging work from home functioning
structure and out of station deployed personnel), Co-Working spaces (the concept being, one big
office space developed to house many small start-ups under one single roof maintaining individual
identity and functioning).

Introduction of IT Parks (only office buildings) and BioTech Parks (office spaces along with
manufacturing units) also brought in a lot of companies (Indian and foreign) to start/ setup
operations in places designated for offices. This ensured many positive and welcoming points for
investment as well.

With the current generation of employees turning heath conscious, corporates have started to move
towards building biophillic spaces i.e. building alongside nature. Being in a sense of natural
environment impacts the employee’s health and performance. Best examples for such green
buildings would be Google and Apple offices. Post 2010, also saw the concept of ‘fun at work’
catching everyone’s attention. Corporates started installing arcade machines, gym, indoor swimming
pool, club membership, inter-corporate house matches, health conscious cafeteria food options, cab
facility, pool tables and bean bags in common space etc; to make the offices more fun and appealing
to the employees. With open space, open door and open to change taken to a whole new level, one
can only wonder what the next evolution will add-on/change.

The industry expert is presently the CEO-Asia Pacific of Vestian, an ISO 9001, ISO 14001 & OHSAS 18001
certified workplace solutions firm. For any further inputs please reach out to us at
queries@vestianglobal.com.

Media Contact:
Aditya Kumar Nayak
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