JUST A PART OF THE FURNITURE INTERIORS

A desk like a billiard table says top dog; a chair without arms means

underling. Dinah Hall considers the knotty politics of office equipment

and meets two workers who have taken these particular problems home

HOW SEXY is your office? Does your computer desk "straddle you like a lover who only wishes to serve" or do you have one of those which are like "butlers that quietly retreat into the background of your eclectic office". Anyone who has never before thought in quite such explicit terms about their office furniture should read the latest in Thames & Hudson's Chic Simple series, Desk (£7.95), which gives the term office romance a new meaning: it was but a short step from workaholism in the Eighties to having sex with your desk in the Nineties. This book, which devotes a whole spread to the paper clip, photographed as sensually as if it were lingerie, turns office accessories in to an erotomaniac's playground.

OK, so it's American, and I exaggerate. But the desk has never been simply a surface on which to work. Historically, its changing design, like that of the office, has always reflected an underlying social and cultural manipulation that has its roots in power.

In Objects of Desire (Thames & Hudson, £11.95), Adrian Forty demonstrates this by tracing the rise and fall of the Victorian clerk through the changes in his desk. In the second half of the 19th century, the office clerk held a position of relatively high responsibility, though this was not reflected in his pay. He was in a kind of no-man's land, evidently not "working class" and yet without the means to project him into the established middle class. But towards the end of the century his position became even less secure as education for all meant that the working classes - and even women - were able to join the ranks of clerks, and the introduction of "scientific management", which imposed factory-style regulation on offices, stole his last shreds of dignity and status. Not to mention his desk.

The typical Victorian clerk's desk had a high back, roll top, drawers and pigeon holes for filing. Its design suggested that he was responsible for its contents and the management of his own time, and as such it did not fit in with the principles of scientific management. As L Galloway wrote in 1919 in his book Office Management, the new type of desk with flat top and two or three drawers which replaced it was "no longer a storage place - nor even ornamental - but a tool for making the quickest possible turnover of business papers". The disappearance of the high back and roll top represented the final destruction of the clerk's privacy and status.

In the 1950s, however, as Forty points out, an increased demand for clerical workers and competition between office and factory for labour changed the office environment dramatically. Offices could not compete with factories on wages, but they could offer greater "respectability", and a pleasant office environment was an important part of this. Although, ironically, work processes were becoming more like a factory in their dependence on machines, the design of offices was intended to differentiate between the two, just as scientific management had tried to assimilate them. Open plan, stressing the importance of human relations, was the perfect tool.

Otherwise known as the landscape office, open plan was established in the 1960s and is generally credited with the non-hierarchical qualities associated with that decade. In reality, of course, there was little substance behind this. Office design, as The Responsive Office (Polymath Pub-lishing, £l7.95) puts it, "is based not just on considerations of efficiency and productivity but the desire to establish and control relationships between individuals." Look around at any seemingly egalitarian open-plan office and the pecking order will be obvious. The big guys get the chairs with padded seat and arms and the minions have to make do with the armless chairs.

So even in the open-plan office, hierarchy rears its head - however well disguised. People find ways to give themselves more space, or mark out their territory, perhaps by rearranging furniture or decorating their space.

"Personalisation" of office space is a revealing exercise. People who makes no attempt whatsoever to add a personal touch to their work station - not so much as a dusty spider plant, let alone the traditional framed photograph of spouse and kids - may just want to keep a strict delineation between office and home life; on the other hand, they may be expressing unhappiness with their job.

There is a general consensus that pinboards on which employees can stick pictures or cartoons increase the sense of well-being among staff. But that may just be because again it denotes one's rank on the ladder. It is part of controlling your environment - and the extent to which you can personalise your own space usually corresponds to your place in the hierarchy. The receptionist may be allowed a clandestine postcard or two - but her personality is not allowed to interfere with the corporate message being relayed by the design of the reception area.

Decorating one's own workspace sends out signals to others. It tells them something of your personality, style and habits. In the image businesses, such as advertising and publishing, the choice of pictures on your pinboard can be a crucial career decision. But while high-profile industries may have switched on to the idea that design has a part to play in annual turnover, and staff are more productive if they are physically and psychologically comfortable, it is a different story in less glamorous occupations: accountancy, manufacturing, council offices, for example. Here, as The Responsive Office puts it, a certain anarchy, which is peculiar to the British, reigns: "Employers and staff often collude to create an atmosphere of domestic scruffiness in their workplace, which seems to have an appeal that the `hygienic' office lacks."

But then workers are notoriously hard to please. Look at Lloyds, a masterpiece of architecture, a modern hymn to technology. And generally hated by all who work there. Insurance brokers apparently need pilasters, fake wooden panelling and neo-Georgian desks to confirm their status. Merchant bankers go for the stern Victorian paternalistic decor, while the lending banks have to tread a careful line: their interiors have to reflect a certain gravitas and stability - but if they spend too much on opulent fittings it could look as if they have been frittering away customers' money.

Working from home should in theory free you from the tyranny of the power desk. But it is only in recent years that people have felt secure enough in their status as home workers not to be dictated to by the standards of a commercial office. When working from home started to gain popularity in the late Seventies and early Eighties (though it was an option open to relatively few), the ideal was a very hi-tech look - as if home workers had to reassure themselves, and others, that they really were working. As more and more people began to work from home, by the early Nineties the look in home offices had softened considerably; it was as if people felt confident enough to domesticate their work space. What is the point in working from home, after all, if you are only going to reproduce the city office from which you have escaped? !

SPACE TO EXIST

Silvie Turner, an artist and publisher of books on paper and prints, is a nomad in her own home, sampling different rooms as offices every couple of years. "I like change; it makes me rethink." Her present office is tiny, which is why she centred it around a glass desk. "If you had a wooden desk here," she says, "it would be too crowded - glass allows the space to exist."

Every aspect of her office is carefully considered to nourish her creativity. "I like it to reflect how I work - so it is professional, ordered, clear and clean, but exciting and individual at the same time. And it is very important for me to be surrounded by books and words." But underneath the streamlined efficiency is a curious Through the Looking Glass effect that only becomes clear when she explains her liking for opposites. Hence the Conran bookshelves, one side a wave and the other straight, and the Chinese proverb pinned to her easel: Empty and be full/ Bend and be straight/ Have much and be confused/ Have little and gain everything. "I enjoy opposites working to-gether. So I have a lot of white space because its blankness allows me to think; on the other hand I love the visual excitement of colour and shape I have on the bookshelves."

In the same way, though far from being a technophobe, she avoids aligning herself too completely with the technical wizardry of the computer by standing it primitively (and probably strictly against the manufacturers' instructions) on a pile of books - "about men and sex, the menopause, art and essentials the computer couldn't possibly understand. Then it all begins to balance out." Post-it notes stuck irreverently on to the screen demonstrate further that in this office the machine is definitely slave, not master.

DESK AS TASKMASTER

In curious contrast to the exquisite ethereal quality of her children's book illustrations and her own reedlike stature, the desk on which Angela Barrett works is heavy and ponderous. It doesn't straddle her, so much as pin her down. Immensely practical for its large shallow drawers (which are ideal for drawings) and its capacity to hold books, cat's toys and make-up as well as a drawing board, the partner's desk was bought from a neighbour 10 years ago. "Reproduction, I'm afraid," confesses Angela, though it doesn't look as if Nancy the cat has done an expert job in distressing the leather top.

As a piece of office furniture it could be intimidating with a bank manager behind it, but "because it is so messy, it's sort of kitchen-table friendly". The two sides create a natural division of labour. "I sit at one side for `real' work and at the other for footling things like sewing and putting together scrapbooks."

Visually, Angela has taken a long time to come to terms with what she calls "the paraphernalia of work: horrible Anglepoises and melamine drawing boards"; less than perfect eyesight is testimony to years spent working by the light of a fringed lampshade. One of her most valuable working tools is a gilt mirror: check out the long, thin faces of her fairytale characters and you will see that it is not just a prop to vanity.

But the seamless join between work and home life, common to artists like Angela who do not work set hours, is not without problems. Through the glass doors of her drawing room she can always see her hard taskmaster of a desk out of the corner of her eye. "It sits there brooding reproachfully at me when I'm not working."

OFFICE DIRECTORY

FURNITURE

IKEA, 2 Drury Way, North Circular Rd, London NW10 0TH (0181-451 5566): First stop for low priced desks and shelving, suitable for both commercial and domestic use. Drawer units in galvanised metal add glitter at £50.

THE CONRAN SHOP, Michelin House, 81 Fulham Rd, London SW3 (0171-589 7401): Where style is at least as important as efficiency.

VITRA, 13 Grosvenor St, London W1 (0171-408 1122): State-of-the-art office furniture and status classics, such as the Eames Lounger. Supremely comfortable chairs, some at back-breaking prices.

DAVID SALMON, 555 Kings Rd, London SW6 (0171-384 2223) and 9 Market Rd, Coggeshall, Essex (01376 563587): Good reproduction furniture for those who prefer to project a solid paternalistic look.

ACCESSORIES

MUJI, 26 Great Marlborough St, London W1 (0171-494 1197): No-name products to show everyone how deeply anti-fashion you are.

SMYTHSON, 44 New Bond St, London W1(0171-629 8558): Flaunt your international connections with their leather London, Paris, New York address book.

OGGETTI, 133 Fulham Rd, London SW3 (0171-581 8088): Executive toys are, of course, unspeakably naff. But if you must have something to play with, this is the place for acceptable designer toys.

PIVOTELLI UK Ltd, Church Road, St Sampsons, Guernsey, Channel Islands GY2 4LW (01481 46818): Makers of wall-mounted, adjustable computer stands. Telephone for stockists.