Content area
Full Text
In today's electronics-dominated offices, the simple 30" by 60" metal desk, swivel chair and typewriter seem like relics of the industrial age. In their places are high-tech work tools: microcomputers, laser printers, speedy copiers and FAX machines. Two-thirds of today's office workers, in fact, now use a personal computer. Nearly half of all top executives have their own terminals -- and the percentages are expected to rise, according to a 1987 Steelcase Inc. office survey.
Not surprisingly, accommodating these changes in office technology is rivaling productivity and cost of space as the top design issue for interior designers, architects and space planners.
"We are addressing office automation more than we ever did in the past," says Scott O'Brien, vice president and general manager of PHH Walker Associates, an interior architecture, planning and design firm. "We act as our clients' visionaries and have to be up-to-date on changing office technology. We don't want our clients to be in their space for three years and then have to rip up the floor to change the cable wiring."
"The key word is change," says Gloria Brown, district manager for the Shaw-Walker Co., a manufacturer and distributor of office furniture and systems. "People are realizing how much change is happening and are looking for furniture and systems that can change with them."
Office systems -- those modular work stations that transformed the work environment in the 1970s -- are now designed to merge the old with the new and to make room for future technology.
Designer Eileen Kallaway of PHH Walker Associates, for example, planned Morrison & Foerster's new space at 345 California Center so that the firm could add new technology or staff without racking up excessive refurnishing charges. Office systems for secretaries and other staffers are comprised of movable desks, partitions, computer storage and work surfaces. Like building blocks, pieces of the system can be removed or repositioned as the need arises.
"The dilemma we faced with Morrison & Foerster," says Kallaway, "is that the business -- like many law firms -- is not yet state-of-the-art but is moving in that direction. We had to find a way to accommodate typewriters and old files with the new computers and equipment to come. We solved the problem...