Office Furniture Styles through the Years in Tampa, FL
Look around at your office furniture in Tampa, Florida. You might not realize it, but the furniture you see both looks and functions quite a bit differently than office furnishings from decades ago. Just like home décor, office furnishings evolve with the times. Arguably the biggest driver of change has been the introduction of information technologies (IT) to the workplace and the corresponding need for office furniture that accommodates how 21st century white-collar employees work. Here is a decade-by-decade look at how office furnishings have changed:
- 1960s – Picture any office scene from “Mad Men” and this will provide you an accurate idea of what office furniture was like in the 60s. Large metal desks. Manual typewriters. Ash trays.
- 1970s – The colors were bold and consistent with the trendy disco nightlife. Around this time, cubicles began to emerge.
- 1980s – Typewriters were supplanted by word processers and desks grew bigger to accommodate monitors.
- 1990s – Corporate America’s full-fledged embrace of the cubicle happened in the 1990s. Ever seen the movie “Office Space”?
- 2000s – Office furniture around the turn of the century largely was a reflection of our transition to a knowledge economy. Desks became workstations and just about everyone required Internet connectivity.
- 2010s – Ironically, most offices in Tampa, FL, today favor the open plan layout similar to what was popular in the 1960s. Instead of being walled off from one another by cubicle dividers, todays’ office workers much prefer office furniture configurations (such as benching systems) that make it easier for them to collaborate and engage in ad hoc discussions.
For more information, contact Ajax Business Interiors, a dealer of both new and used office furniture with a 25,000 square foot warehouse that is located in Pinellas County just a short drive from Tampa, FL. We have a wide selection of cubicles, workstations, desks, benching systems, chairs, tables, and more.
