Are historic design trends coming back to the workplace? It’s impossible to generalize, but one thing is sure:  In Frank Lloyd Wright’s SC Johnson Administration Building in Racine, Wisconsin, with its neat rows of desks, we can’t see a private office, just as these inner sanctums are missing in many of today’s offices. And although the rows of desks faced the same direction at SC Johnson, they were simple desks and returns. Today we might call this design a modified bench.

The SC Johnson desks were not the typical benches by today’s definition, where collaboration and bringing people together is the aim of the furniture. Nevertheless, Wright’s grouping is modern in that it makes the great room flexible, while maximizing real estate potential. And the complete lack of panels is reminiscent of current benching designs.

Has the panel run its course? Is it destined for retirement? Most designers say no, or, as some add, not until technology catches up with the ability to power office equipment. For now, the panel helps organize and house electrical requirements and data cables. In the past, panels with acoustical properties helped stifle the noise from the dot matrix printers that sat at the end of many workers’ desks. Today the printer is located in a communal space, to keep its noise away from people.

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Groups of 1950-ish Modernist buildings usually mean Corbusian-style autotopias of heroic proportions (New York’s Empire State Plaza in Albany comes to mind). Plymouth Circle on Madison, Wisconsin’s leafy west side proves the opposite. Here, perched above a sea of generic bi-levels is a collection of, can we say “nifty”, yet modest, Mid-Century Modern homes with a distinctively local pedigree. More than just a collection of rare houses, the neighborhood represents something almost existential: a decades-ago marriage of enlightened consumerism and environmental ethics. So is this suburbanism as it was always meant to be—light on the land, lighter still on the ranch dressing? Read more…