“Where Do You Cry in an Open Plan Office” explores the space of the commercial office; a daily fixture in the lives of hundreds of millions of white-collar workers around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has placed the design, use, and future of office space under unprecedented scrutiny. However, despite increased attention, decades-old assumptions regarding office spaces remain unquestioned. Extant literature frequently characterizes the history of the commercial office as one of continuous positive evolution, suggesting that over the past hundred years offices have been transformed from controlling Taylorist workhouses to, well-lit, comfortable, humane centers of high-tech work.

Rooted in the Marxian tradition, this dissertation uses labor process theory (Braverman, 1974) to interrogate dominant office history narratives, examining the office first and foremost as a site for capitalistic extraction of labor.

The wider history of the office is contextualized through in-depth analysis of three key time periods and corresponding themes/events: the turn of the twentieth century, Scientific Management, and the birth of the commercial office as a discrete spatial type, the middle of the twentieth century and emergence of Theory Y, and the early twenty-first century and the rise of the technology worker. Three case studies are used to examine the particulars of office ideology, design, and utilization: Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1904 Larkin Administration Building, Robert Propst’s 1968 Action Office 2 furniture system, and an anonymized contemporary Midwestern American technology headquarters.

The dissertation suggests the history of the commercial office can most accurately be described as one of continuity—with the same office design, the open office, being repackaged and repeated throughout history. Continuity of office design, it is argued, emerges from the continuous influence and pressures of capitalism upon the space, place, and operations of the office. From the factory to the Googleplex, capital’s never-ending quest for profit has dictated the possibilities and realities of physical work spaces, shaping the very foundations of our understanding of what the office is and might be. It is only though a refutation of capitalism, the dissertation concludes, that we will achieve fully human spaces of work.