Nobo Modular Free Standing Room Divider, 800x1800mm, Clear Acrylic

In some work environments it is necessary to partition workstations in order to contain noise, to separate work teams and to afford an amount of privacy. Screens can also be used to create discrete office cubicles. Our range of top quality office screens and partitions are manufactured to the highest specifications to provide you with solid and sturdy ‘walls’ and multi-purpose display areas.

The office screen range at Paperstone

We offer a full choice of flat and shaped desktop screens, top vision screens and even curved screens. Fitted with a unique and revolutionary patent-pending linking mechanism, you can arrange and re-arrange your office layouts with the minimum of fuss and effort.

• Choice of standard and custom colours
• Full height range from 400mm desktop screens to 1600mm high partitions
• Widths from 800mm to 180mm
• Mini screens which attach to side of desk also available
• Noise reduction built in

Free-standing office screens and partitions may require stabilising feet

If you plan to have individual free-standing screens or screens that are linked together in a straight line, don’t forget to order stabilising feet to stop them from toppling over.

The origin of office partitions

Folding screens as items of furniture for partition, privacy or decoration have been around for yonks. Píng feng may have originated in China as early as the 4th century BC. Japanese byobu date from the 8th century, Korean irwolgonryundo are attested from the 16th century or earlier and Coromandel screens were made in northern China and introduced to Europe in the 17th century. But screens didn't appear significantly in office environments until the latter half of the 20th century.

Unpartitioned offices are nothing new, but until the 1950s these were characterised by regimented rows of desks or benches occupied by typists, clerks and accountants performing highly regulated and repetitive tasks à la Fordism and Taylorism. In the 1950s, a German team named Quickborner developed an 'office landscape' employing conventional furniture, screens, potted plants, and organic geometry on large, open floors, thus heralding the beginning of open plan offices proper. Office landscape was soon superceded by cubicle-based layouts as office furniture companies emerged producing modular furniture. An early - if not the earliest - instance of cubicle desking was at Intel Inc. in the 1960s. Offices with homogonised partitioning are sometimes referred to pejoratively as 'cube fams' or 'seas of cubes'. Both highly regimented cubicle partitioning and more relaxed, 'organic' partitionless office space models persist today, while modern businesses experiment in between with mixes of partitioned and partitionless spaces.

Open plan pros and cons

For open plan

• Effective, dynamic communication
• 'Tacit learning' (overhearing colleagues, gaining knowledge, etc)
• More frequent interaction between employees
• Information sharing which in turn can lead to more efficient task allocation
• Increased social interaction and thus less risk of alienation in the workplace and associated mental health problems
• Flexibility
• Cost

Against

• Less privacy
• Stress
• High staff turnover
• People prefer closed offices