Office design has changed significantly through the centuries. Dedicated offices were first introduced in Roman times, but the first office buildings did not come into being until the 18^th century. At the time, office designers found that separate spaces were needed for introspective executive work, but for daily tasks, workers got more done working alongside their peers in a communal atmosphere. This type of office design, known as Taylorism, was designed to extract maximum productivity from the workforce – and maximum profits for the company.

Open-concept workspaces continued to be the norm in many industries right through to the 1970s. In the 80s, this dynamic changed and we saw the advent of cubicles. Made up of acoustic panels, these cubicles effectively separated workers from each other and while they offered a greater degree of privacy, they were widely panned as being one of the most depressing periods in office design.