A newbicle day dawning: cube originator targets 'high-end knowledge workers.'(My Studio Environments)

• Author: Caley, Nora

In 1964 Herman Miller, the Michigan-based furniture design company, worked with University of Colorado fine-arts professor Robert Probst to come up with an office design that would make it easy for people to work together yet still give them some privacy. Probst called his creation the Action Office.

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Today the rest of us know this revolutionary system as the cubicle.

More than 40 years later, Herman Miller introduced a new version of the cubicle, called My Studio Environments. Nicknamed the "newbicle," the concept made its debut in June 2006 at the NeoCon World's Trade Fair, a commercial interior design tradeshow in Chicago. The spaces measure about eight feet by eight feet--64 square feet.

"The size isn't too different from what the cubicle is now," says Marc Gellmann, account manager with Herman Miller Workplace Resource in Denver. (The average cubicle in 2006 was 75 square feet, according to the Association of Building Owners and Managers trade organization.) The difference is the use of space. Instead of workers having their back to the entrance, they now sit in the middle of the cube and swivel back and forth between the computer workspace and the paper workspace.

The newbicle walls are on legs, giving the appearance of floating a few inches off the floor. The more practical feature is they make it easy to install computers without drilling holes for cords. The updated cubicle is also environmentally friendly: It's 74 percent recyclable and made from 28 percent recycled materials.

Most important, at least to some workers, is that the newbicles have "permeable privacy," or translucent glass walls and a sliding glass door to keep out distractions. According to a study by the East Greenville, Pa.-based furniture company Knoll, 59 percent of workers in cubicles and 74 percent in offices said privacy is crucial to their productivity.

Gellmann says when he visits clients who want to redo their office space, he shows them the Diagnostic Deck, 25 cards printed with workplace issues. "We have...