Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Nikil Saval review

From the cubicles that became hellish boxes to the skyscrapers that became boring blocks, Saval's history of office life reveals how the best intentions can lead to disaster

At the newspaper I worked for in the early 2000s, I remember a moment of great excitement when we moved into new premises. It was the dawning of a new age. Instead of the usual dreary desk arrangement, with time wasted in long conferences and senior executives sequestered in status-enhancing glass boxes, a revolutionary new newsroom would channel the dynamic work-flows of the 24-hour digital future. There was excited talk of "vertical silos" and a lot of nodding.

The editor and his right-hand men were to sit at a "hub" at the heart of the newsroom, with minions of decreasing seniority on "spokes" radiating out from it. Ad hoc micro-conferences would take place right there in the thick of it, and the dynamic ideas proceeding from them would ripple outwards down the spokes and into action. There were "break-out areas", plasma screens, vague instructions to circulate the hub in a clockwise direction like worshippers at a Tibetan stupa Anyway, obviously what happened is that within a few months the senior bods had quietly arranged to have some nice quiet glass boxes reinstalled, and conferences happened in these glass boxes several times a day at appointed hours, just as they had before the revolution.

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