ABSTRACT

The office emerged as a distinct building type in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The complementary roles of both office developer and facilities manager first emerged along with a series of divisions of labour between the roles of architects, mechanical and electrical engineers, space planners and facilities managers, defined by how long each layer of designed artefacts was intended to last. Two very different and original office design concepts developed in Northern Europe in the 1960s and 1970s: Burolandschaft, and Office as city. In London in the late 1970s and early 1980s, developers such as Stuart Lipton and Godfrey Bradman realised that an entirely new class of office building would be necessary to accommodate globalising organisations, particularly in the financial services sector. Facilities management is a North American concept and was an essential factor in the development of the office. Paper-based office work was relatively slow moving and often static.