---
title: "The Future of Startup Office"
description: "Explore how startup office design has evolved over 100 years, from fluorescent lights to open plans. Key trends shaping the future of workspace innovation in tech."
categories: ["trends","books"]
keywords: ["startup office design","workspace innovation","open office plan","cubicle evolution","remote work trends","Theory Ventures","Tomasz Tunguz","office productivity","workplace culture"]
ai_summary: "Explore the evolution of startup office design and its impact on workplace innovation and employee productivity."
date: 2023-01-31
lastmod: 2026-07-28
canonical_url: https://www.tomtunguz.com/history-of-the-cubicle/
author: "Tomasz Tunguz"
---

100 years ago, fluorescent lamps & suspended ceilings topped the list of hottest trends in office design. In 1928, [San Antonio's Milam Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milam_Building) claimed the honor of the first office skyscraper with air conditioning. 

Twenty-five years later, window-encased skyscrapers with internal glass walls distinguished the modern office. Employees ensconced in the [Lever House](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever_House) & the [Seagram Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagram_Building) in New York enjoyed more daylight at work than any other Manhattanite.

Another generation would pass before the open office plan bulldozed walls separating managers & employees. [Robert Probst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Propst_(inventor)) conceived & George Nelson designed the [Action Office](http://www.georgenelsonfoundation.org/george-nelson/works/action-office-1-a01-132.html) - the iconic aluminum, wooden veneer, & black plastic desks of the 1980s. 

Within a decade, the Action Office evolved into the cubicle, wrapping white-collars in a warren of workspaces. Before the millennium's end, 40 million cubes dotted the American urban landscape.

In the late 90s, startups in Silicon Valley eschewed the grown-up Legos for more frugal & more dynamic tables.

Each of these major shifts occurred because of some underlying societal or management philosophy change. [Frederick Taylor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor), the original productivity-maxi, discovered employees' productivity surged in better conditions, leading to air conditions.

White-collar, a term coined by Upton Sinclair, delivered initially as an insult, required employers to raise the stature of paper-pushers, luring them with increasingly beautiful workspaces - the skyscrapers of the 1920s.  

Startups' desire for speed sounded the death knell for the cubicle. No walls meant the kinetic energy of new ideas translated immediately into Brownian-motion implementation: a sales person could yell two rows over to a product manager, relaying a customer's request for an item on the roadmap.

[Cubed](https://www.amazon.com/Cubed-History-Workplace-Nikil-Saval/dp/0385536577) is a history of the office & how employers evolved to attract, retain, & encourage employees. 

It's a riveting little book that weaves societal & political backdrop into the evolution of the workspace & provokes questions about what the office will become in the next decade with WFH rationalization atop every employers' mind.