"Everyone used to get a cube, but that doesn't work for the way people actually do their work today," said Neil Tunmore, director of corporate services at Intel, who spearheaded the corporate redesign that began in 2007.  In 1994, the average office worker had 90 square feet of office space, but the area had been whittled down to 75 square feet in 2010, according to the International Facility Management Association, a professional network for the facility management industry.  Space for senior office workers shrunk, too, from 115 square feet in 1994 to 96 square feet in 2010.  But not to worry, that corner office keeps growing. During this same time, space for executive management actually increased.  Gensler, a design firm in San Francisco has renovated spaces for 70% of the Fortune 500 companies. On average, they estimate those companies have downsized the cubicle from an 8-by-10 foot area to a 5-by-5 foot work space.  Open-space seating found at companies such as Facebook are becoming a popular "team-oriented" model in the past 10 years, she says.  "In recent years, we've seen how companies are trying to shed real estate cost," says Shari Epstein, director of research at the IFMA. "When you have less space to work, you will try to cram as many people into one space."  The word "cubicle," which emerged in the 15th century, is derived from the Latin word for bedroom. But the office partitions to which most white-collars workers are accustomed were introduced in the late 1960s. At the time, Robert Propst with Herman Miller Inc. of Michigan pioneered the idea of a more efficient open-office model called "Action Office," which became known as the cubicle.  Cubicles became attractive because they were a functional way to give workers an office without relying on heavy construction, says Lisa Bottom, a design director at Gensler.  Over the years, cubicles have been mocked in popular culture such as the Dilbert comics and the movie "Office Space."
If you feel like your cubicle walls are closing in around you, you may be right.A combination of the troubled economy and the influx of mobile technology is changing the workplace landscape.