AcknowledgementsIntroduction. Retracing Use and Users in the History and Historiography of the 20th-Century Office BuildingJens van de MaelePart 1. Categories and representations of office usersChapter 1. What’s the Use? The Users and Usability of the Filing CabinetCraig RobertsonChapter 2. The Office in Popular Culture, or the “Plight of the Clerk”Nicola BishopPart 2. The impact of normativity and standardisation on the office as an “environment”Chapter 3. Too Cold? Gendered Conflicts over Mechanical Cooling in Early Post-war Japanese Office SpacesTatsuya MitsudaChapter 4. Thresholds of Comfort : Managing Light, Sound and Focus in the Post-War Office EnvironmentJoeri BruyninckxChapter 5. Surviving the Office : Workplace Design, Activism and the Health of Women Workers in 20th-Century BritainAmy ThomasChapter 6. Measuring, Evaluating and Configuring : The German Debate about Safe and Healthy Screen WorkBernd HoltwickPart 3. Office uses conceptualised by and for the managerial eliteChapter 7. A “Facility Based on Change” (for the Worse) : Leveraging Labour Process Theory to Understand the Evolution of Herman Miller’s Action OfficePetra SeitzChapter 8. The European Commission’s Office Spaces in the 1950s and 1960s : Constructing a Materialised ImaginaryMarco NinnoPart 4. Visual essaysChapter 9. “Mimic Men” in the Office Spaces of a “Nervous State” : The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Late Colonial CongoJohan Lagae and Jens van de MaeleChapter 10. Between Hierarchy, Efficiency and Pragmatism : Picturing Portuguese Government Offices in Historic Buildings during the Estado Novo DictatorshipAna Mehnert PascoalChapter 11. Office Life in ChandigarhRuth Baumeister (text), Shaun Fynn (photography)EpilogueMartin Kohlrausch and Andreas FickersContributorsIndexA transdisciplinary history of the 20th-century office, exploring how its spatial forms, technological systems and managerial ideologies were constructed, challenged and lived with.Throughout the twentieth century, office buildings became central to the organisation of modern societies – yet what went on inside them has remained remarkably understudied. Behind Office Doors explores this history by focusing on users and everyday practices. It examines how office spaces were conceived by architects, designers and managers, and how they were inhabited, experienced and sometimes contested by workers. From filing cabinets and air-conditioning to EU offices and colonial bureaucracies, the chapters trace how design, technology and organisational thinking shaped office life. Alongside new case studies on Europe, Asia and colonial Africa, the contributing authors reflect on how the office has been approached in historiography. Drawing on cross-disciplinary research, this book challenges the assumption that the office is too familiar to analyse – offering instead a fresh perspective on the architecture and politics of work.