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News & ArtsFriday, November 18, 2011
Architecture "She's An Action Secretary!"
Posted by Jen Graves on Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 10:57 AM
The family room, the storage wall, and the Action Office—developed into the cubicle system—are all inventions of one George Nelson, whose furniture arrangements, dangling lamps, and cosmological clocks are all on display at Bellevue Arts Museum now, in an exhibition called George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher.
The show also includes full-scale reconstructions of environments, architectural models, and a video that demonstrates just what the Action Secretary needs ("dignity!").
It's all magnificently Mad Men, and just beneath the surface lurk the constructs and conflicts of mid-20th-century American life. Recommended. One of my favorite images from the show, on the jump, is Louis Sullivan meets corporate Teutonism.
- Floor plan of an office landscape by the German group the Quickborner Team, from the late 1950s. The rise of the cubicle starts here.
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That's George off to the left in the photo, but Robert Probst (working under Nelson) led the development of "Action Office" at Herman Miller - and a lot of the furniture in that photo is by Charles and Ray Eames, also for Herman Miller. Shoulda bought a Nelson Sling Sofa when I had the chance :(
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Its a good show, and the Bellevue Art Museum (was it once the 'Bellevue arts and crafts museum'?) is a nice place. Funny story, I tried snapping a photo of the 'Pillow Sofa' and was stopped by the guard. How strange to be told not to take a picture of a commercially available piece of furniture.
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Actually it was tax code that created the Rise of the Cubicle.
During their rise open floor space in Manhattan was taxed at a lower rate than spaces divided up into offices. While at the Federal level they were allowed to write of depreciation on "temporary offices" (cubicles) over 7 years versus 49.5 years for actual, you know, walled offices.
(So who says the minutiae of tax policy doesn't have big impacts!)
During their rise open floor space in Manhattan was taxed at a lower rate than spaces divided up into offices. While at the Federal level they were allowed to write of depreciation on "temporary offices" (cubicles) over 7 years versus 49.5 years for actual, you know, walled offices.
(So who says the minutiae of tax policy doesn't have big impacts!)
5
Probst's estate sale was a few weeks ago in Sammamish, and the company that did it bungled it terribly by not advertising it was his beforehand.
His beautifully designed house was, of course, of his own design and had an open plan that was divided by Action Office partition walls.
His beautifully designed house was, of course, of his own design and had an open plan that was divided by Action Office partition walls.
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