This episode is released exclusively on Pushkin+. Episodes are released on the main feed each Friday.
Robert Propst is more than an inventor: he is a visionary, an innovator dreaming up how to make the perfect office workstation. When he reveals his bold design for a creative, flexible ‘cockpit of tomorrow’, he comes into conflict with the unyielding push for workplace efficiency. This clash of ideals will go on to shape our working lives forever.
Further reading
The definitive sources on Robert Propst and the invention of the cubicle are Nikil Saval Cubed, and Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office.
Other sources on the history of the cubicle include Wired, Pinup, the Financial Times, Fortune, Whalebone, the New Yorker, the Harvard Business Review, the Henry Ford blog, and Herman Miller’s archives.
On surveillance systems we relied on reporting from the New York Times and the Guardian. The meta-analysis of productivity tracking systems was published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports.