Dictionary Definition
cubicle
Noun
1 small room is which a monk or nun lives [syn:
cell]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Noun
Translations
A small separate part or one of the compartments
of a room
- Finnish: koppi
A small enclosure at a swimming pool etc used to
provide personal privacy when changing
a small enclosure in a public toilet for
individual use
Extensive Definition
- "Cubicle" is also used to refer to a toilet stall in a washroom.
A cubicle, cubicle desk or office cubicle is a
partially enclosed workspace, separated from neighboring workspaces
by partitions that are generally five to six feet high. A cubicle
is partially or entirely open on one side to allow access. A
cubicle's purpose is to isolate office workers from the sights and
noises of an open workspace, the theory being that this allows
workers more privacy and helps them to concentrate without
distractions. Horizontal work surfaces are usually suspended from
the partitions of cubicles, as is shelving, overhead storage, and
other amenities.
Origin
The term cubicle comes from the Latin cubiculum, for
bed chamber. It was used in English as early as the 15th century.
It eventually came to be used for small chambers of all sorts, and
for small rooms or study spaces with partitions which do not reach
to the ceiling.
Like the older carrel desk,
a cubicle seeks to give a degree of privacy to the user while
taking up minimal space in a large or medium sized room. Like the
modular desk of the mid-20th
century, it is composed of modular elements that can be
arranged in various ways with standard hardware or custom
fasteners, depending on the design. Installation is generally
performed by professionals, although some cubicles allow
configuration changes to be performed by users without specific
training. Cubicles are highly configurable, allowing for a variety
of elements such as work surfaces, overhead bins, drawers, and the
like to be installed, depending on the individual user's
needs.
Some sources attribute the introduction of the
cubicle desk to the computer chip manufacturer Intel Inc. during the
1960s. Its
creation is generally attributed to Robert
Propst, a designer from Colorado who
worked for Herman
Miller Inc., a major manufacturer of office furniture. It was
based on a 1965 prototype and named the
Action
Office, made up of modular units with an open plan, an entirely
novel system for the time.
An office filled with cubicles is
sometimes called a cube farm. Although humorous, the phrase usually
has negative connotations. Cube farms are often found in high-tech
companies, but they also appear in the insurance industry and other
service-related fields. Many cube farms were built during the
dotcom
boom.
Bad planning and cheap approaches
The cubicle desk is a much reviled and often
mocked piece of office
furniture in large part because of the expectations it invokes but
rarely fulfills. An array of cubicle desks gives more peace and
quiet to its users than if they were all working in an open office
with no partitions, as is the case with many newsrooms and some
other kinds of offices. However, promoters of cubicle desks often
present them as magic ingredients which can make noise levels and
other distractions fall to zero in any office after their
installation.
As a result of this, scant attention is paid,
most of the time, to the design and correct installation of
specially designed baffled ceilings, acoustic floor coverings,
staggered corridors and tactically placed enclosed meeting rooms.
Without a global approach to all these elements, the cubicle desk
offers only a limited form of visual privacy and no sonic
protection whatsoever, since traditional suspended ceiling tiles
are insufficient to prevent noise conduction in very large office
spaces, despite their being sold as "acoustic" tiles. This global
approach is lacking in most installations done in large companies
or large government bureaucracies.
More recent academic studies have noted the
disadvantages that the cubicle desk has brought to American
corporate culture. While effectively reducing the amount of noise
and distractions in the office environment, the cubicle has also
produced a negative effect in the reduced amount of
person-to-person communication among office workers. This
unexpected result of cubicle installations has led to declines in
company-specific corporate cultures, declines in morale, and
production delays. Notably, productivity declines due to cubicle
desks have become a recent concern in new office designs. As The
Galt Global Review has noted, "researchers have been conducting
studies in the area of workspace design for over two decades and
the results are consistent: when workers spend a significant time
isolated, whether alone in a cubicle or not seated closely to their
co-workers, it reduces person-to-person communication among the
members of an organization. This often affects morale and can lead
to a decline in production."
Versatile cubicle walls
On the positive side the cubicle desk offers an occasion for customization by its users which is not comparable to other desk forms, past or present. The secret is that it can transform all of the walls surrounding the white-collar worker into productive work surfaces, or nooks for personal expression. Because all of the walls are within grasp or reach all of the time, and because many of them offer holes and hooks for hanging small shelves, bulletin boards or other accessories, elements which were once placed only on the horizontal surface of the desktop can be moved to the vertical surfaces all around. While the makers of cubicle desks usually employ proprietary standards for their fasteners and accessory hooks, this has not stopped the makers of small-scale desktop accessories from producing and marketing myriads of pen holders, magazine racks, and other items which are made to fit the most popular brands of cubicle desk partitions.Note that it is also possible to create a
cubicle-filled office environment without the use of cubicle desks
by combining traditional free-standing desk forms like the pedestal
desk with special types of free-standing partitions. This kind
of environment is often part of a general office
landscaping effort which was popularized in the 1950s and the
1960s in Germany and the
United
Kingdom.
Explorations of the cubicle form
Some interesting R&D has
been going on in the field of cubicles at the turn of this
millennium. One of the most sarcastic critics of the cubicle has
been Scott Adams, speaking through his comic strip, Dilbert. In 2001 he
teamed up with the design company IDEO to create
"Dilbert's Ultimate Cubicle" http://www.ideo.com/dilbert. It
had some whimsical aspects but there were also some very sound
design ideas such as an original modular approach and attention to
usually neglected ergonomic details like the change in light
orientation as the day advances. Similarly, Douglas
Coupland has coined the phrase "veal-fattening pen," in parody of
the cubicle in his novel
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.
Between 2000 and 2002 IBM partnered with the
office furniture manufacturer Steelcase, and
did some very thorough research on the software, hardware and
ergonomic aspects of the cubicle of the future (or the office
of the future) under the name "BlueSpace". They
produced several prototypes of this hi-tech multi screened
workspace and even exhibited one at Walt
Disney World. Bluespace offered movable multiple screens inside
and outside, a projection system, advanced individual lighting
heating and ventilation controls and a host of software
applications to orchestrate everything.
In 1994 the designer Douglas Ball
planned and built several iterations of the "Clipper" or
"CS-1", a
"capsule" desk looking like the streamlined front fuselage of a
fighter plane. Meant as a computer workstation, it had louvers and
an integrated ventilation system, as well as a host of built-in
features typical of the ergonomic
desk. An office space filled with these instead of traditional
squarish cubicles would look like a hangar filled with small flight
simulators. It was selected for the permanent design collection of
the design Museum in the United Kingdom.
In 2006, New York City based office furniture
company Fast Office www.fastoffice.com
became the first distributor in the United States to offer brand
new cubicles at pre-owned prices with a three day shipping
guarantee policy.
Cube farms in pop culture
- Dilbert, the quintessential cube farm comic strip. Additionally, the term chronic cubicle syndrome was invented in the television series. This is a term used jokingly to tell about the effects of working in a cubicle for too long. In one point in the comic strip, there is even a cube farmer.
- Office Space is a film about programmers distressed by their jobs working in a cube farm at a software firm.
- Tron features a massive cube farm.
- The Office television show from the UK featuring employees of Wernham-Hogg working in a mixture of desks and cubicles.
- Thomas Anderson (Neo), the main character from The Matrix, works inside a cubicle that emphasizes his isolation from the world. A scene plays out in his office, amidst the cubicles.
- The Drew Carey Show Much of the show was set in the titular character's cubicle in the fictional Winfred-Lauder department store. The cubicle was a source of much of the show's humour; it was remarked that it was, in fact, invented by the store's founder after discovering it "only took three walls to make a man feel trapped".
- A song from Beatnik Turtle's third album: The Cheapass Album
- "Cubicles", a song by American rock band My Chemical Romance
- "Cubicle", a song by French band Rinôçérôse
- Regina Spektor's song Consequence Of Sounds from her record Songs has the line "What if one of these days your heart will just stop ticking//And they sort of just don't find you till your cubicle is reeking?"
- The punk rock band CUBICLE from Los Angeles, CA plays music about working in an office.
References
- Adams, Scott. What do you call a sociopath in a cubicle? : (answer, a coworker) Kansas City, Missouri. : Andrews McMeel Pub., 2002.
- Blunden, Bill. Cube Farm. Berkeley: Apress, 2004.
- Duffy, Francis. Colin Cave. John Worthington, editors. Planning Office Space. London: The Architectural Press Ltd., 1976.
- Inkeles, Gordon. Ergonomic Living: How to Create a User-Friendly Home and Office. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
- Klein, Judy Graf. The Office Book. New York: Facts on File Inc., 1982.
- Schlosser, Julie. Cubicles: The great mistake. CNNMoney.com, 2006
External links
- CNN/Fortune - Cubicles: The great mistake
- Building a Better Cubicle Article on cubicle trends
- http://www.fastoffice.com/officecubicles.html Examples of current office cubicle trends.
- CubicleCruiser.com In search of the ultimate cubicle
- Cubitopia Article on the utopian ideal of the cubicle
- MyLifeInACube.com Cubicle Humor: My Life In a Cube
- Cubicles: A Documentary Site for short documentary on cubicles.
cubicle in German: Großraumbüro
cubicle in Spanish: Cubicles
cubicle in French: Bureau à cloisons
cubicle in Hebrew: תא משרדי