The Complete Handbook of Workstations & Cubicles

Chapter 1: Understanding Workstations & Cubicles

What You Are Really Buying

When you buy a workstation or cubicle system, you are not buying a chair or a desk. You are buying an infrastructure system for an environment where people spend a large portion of their waking lives. Understanding this distinction is the first step to making a smart purchase. A cheap desk is just a flat surface on four legs. A workstation is a modular kit of parts that must be configured, assembled, and often disassembled and reconfigured as your company changes. It is a system designed to deliver a specific amount of work surface, storage, privacy, and power and data connectivity to a defined square footage of floor space. Every decision, from the tile fabric to the panel height, affects all the others, and a failure to understand how those parts work together can lead to a costly, inefficient, and frustrating workspace.

The modern workstation system is the product of nearly a century of evolution in how we think about office work. It began with the open bullpens of the early 20th century, where rows of identical desks were designed for maximum supervision and minimum space. The mid-century office introduced the concept of the "action office," which was less like a single desk and more like a kit of parts: panels, worksurfaces, and storage that could be arranged to fit the individual tasks of a worker. This idea was the direct ancestor of the systems we use today. The