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processed documents or managed processes became what I would call an office. The furniture in these rooms continually evolved to adapt to changes in organisations and technical possibilities. One of the major and more drastic changes was certainly the onset of digitalisation. meetings than at our desks. We like to discuss things with colleagues ‚on the fly‘. So yes, the question is per- haps justified: do we still need a desk at all or is the desk more or less redundant? In my opinion, a desk in an office will continue to be a permanent fixture. But that does not mean that there will not be changes. Quite the opposite. Both the of- fice and the desk will continue to undergo transforma- tions, as they already have in the past. It is important to keep two strands of development in mind. One is the organisational changes to the work life and the other is the technical development, which in turn influences the organisational changes. True to the motto: ‚The tool adapts to requirements and technical possibilities‘. A LOOK INTO HISTORY Let us look back in history: the first room where people The computer made its way into the office. Not only in the accounting and secretarial departments, but also in the planning and design departments. Techni- cal draftspersons moved from the big drawing board to CAD software. Architects, designers, and drafts people swapped their ruler, pencil and compass for a compu- ter, mouse, and keyboard. They were also the ones who prompted a particular development in the office: the electrically height adjustable desk. The drawing board offered the option of working in both a sitting and stan- ding position, so draftspersons and engineers would sit or stand in front of an almost vertical plan. Working while standing? Why shouldn‘t that also be possible with a computer? So, it is not surprising that the first height-adjustable desks were those belonging to the designers. In the ear- ly 1990s, there were CAD desks that could be manually adjusted in height. If you go back further to the year 1910, you will come across the German company Reiss, which launched the first height-adjustable desk. Of course, it could not be adjusted at the push of a button, just like the CAD workbenches at the time. In the 1990s, LINAK developed the first solutions for the electrically height- adjustment of desks. In 1998, LINAK introduced the DL1 lifting column, the world‘s first sys- tem for an electrically height-adjustable office desk. Occupational physicians and ergonomics specia- lists were quickly inspired by the idea of alternating between sitting and stan- ding. However, it took a long time for the sit-stand workplace to establish itself in Germany. 2
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The boundaries between office and home office will become even more blurred in the future. The desk will continue to evolve and acquire more features. It will adapt to the changing work situations and be digitally networked. INNOVATIONS NEED FERTILE GROUND One might assume that global demand would go through the roof after the product launch of the first height-adjustable desks. Far from it. Only in the Scan- dinavian countries did the trend of alternating between standing and sitting in a back-friendly and health-pro- moting way catch on. Here, the share of electrically height-adjustable workplaces was already more than 90 % in 2005. In Germany and other European countries, investing in height-adjustable desks to offer office employees an er- gonomic and thus healthy workplace was still very dif- ficult. It took a lot of convincing to get the advantages of working at alternating heights into the minds of the decision-makers. Acceptance, and thereby demand, only increased slowly. As demand increased, the price also fell, which also contributed to the triumph of the electrically height-adjustable workstation. According to the IBA Study on the development of office Work (2019/2020), as many as 28% of all office workers in Germany worked at a sit-stand workstation in 2019. The Publication from IBA (in German only) can be down- loaded here. Over the years, the technology for the height-adjustable desk has steadily evolved. In the beginning, actuator sys- tem technology only enabled up and down movements. From an early stage, LINAK equipped the controls with more intelligence, allowing for optimal implementation of important features such as absolute parallel drive, collision protection or energy saving. Intelligent systems allow even more innovative steps to be made. Key ele- ments here are the integration of intelligent booking systems and the area of individualisation. LOOKING TO THE FUTURE Even more flexibility: The desk will continue to evolve and acquire more features. It will adapt to the changing work organisations. Flexibility is key here. The past few months of the pandemic have accelerated this develop- ment. Do we need a separate desk for each employee? 3
