Behind Office Doors - by Jens Van de Maele (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Throughout the twentieth century, office buildings became central to the organisation of modern societies - yet what went on inside them has remained remarkably understudied. Behind Office Doors explores this history by focusing on users and everyday practices. It examines how office spaces were conceived by architects, designers and managers, and how they were inhabited, experienced and sometimes contested by workers. From filing cabinets and air-conditioning to EU offices and colonial bureaucracies, the chapters trace how design, technology and organisational thinking shaped office life. Alongside new case studies on Europe, Asia and colonial Africa, the contributing authors reflect on how the office has been approached in historiography. Drawing on cross-disciplinary research, this book challenges the assumption that the office is too familiar to analyse - offering instead a fresh perspective on the architecture and politics of work.

Review Quotes

Devoted to the role of uses and users in the configuration and appropriation of the space of administrative work, this book opens up a new perspective on the history of the office, inviting us to move away from linear narratives based on the analysis of the architectural canon and on a reductionist vision of the dynamics of power and control that have often marked the historiographical tradition on the office. - Gianenrico Bernasconi, Université de Neuchâtel

Behind Office Doors brings welcome attention to the often overlooked inhabitants of architectural history: users. This interdisciplinary collection shows how office inhabitants across many contexts, from Japanese corporations to European bureaucracies to Congolese colonial administrations, navigated their environments. Each chapter opens another door on the unwritten rules, hierarchies, and adaptations that defined office life. Like the flexible workspaces it examines, the collection offers varied perspectives that together illuminate the rich terrain between architectural intention and practical adaptation that defined twentieth-century professional life. - Joseph L. Clarke, University of Toronto

About the Author

Jens van de Maele is a postdoctoral member of the research group Modernity and Society 1800-2000 at KU Leuven.