From protecting an existing flooring system to providing essential cooling and wiring for server rooms, access flooring is an essential part of many offices, industrial and commercial buildings and has been since at least the 1980s.
However, whilst this makes raised access floors a relatively recent development and effective requirement for many offices in active use today, the concept is actually over 5000 years old, with some early examples nearly 2000 years older than that.
The concept, which predates the office as we know it by at least 6500 years, was developed for a very specific and unique purpose before the technology and concept were lost for centuries.
Ondols And Hypocausts
The very first form of raised access flooring, using a broad definition of a floor of a room deliberately raised up so the space underneath can be used for another purpose, can be found in Ancient Korea and the concept of the ondol.
Also known as gudeul, the ondol is an early, surprisingly sophisticated series of raised flooring used for the purpose of underfloor heating.
The concept, whilst sometimes elaborate in practice, is somewhat simple in concept; underneath the ondol floor is a tunnel, a bonfire and a chimney system.
As the fire burns, the heat and smoke are drawn through the underfloor channel and into the chimney, heating the masonry and stones that make up the floor and providing a warm, inviting space.
It was an exceptionally efficient use of resources, as it allowed for the furnace heat typically used for cooking rice to be channelled and used for heating as well, ensuring that fuel was not wasted.
The earliest remnants of an ondol have been found in North Hamgyong Province in what is now North Korea, as well as a similar system found in the Zhoukoudian ruins in Beijing, China.
The system was used for thousands of years and became so culturally important in Korea that there was a hierarchical system in place where more important people were based closer to the furnace where the stones were warmest.
A similar system known as the hypocaust was used in Ancient Rome that worked on a very similar principle, although it replaced the solid stone flags with hollow tiles to better channel heat.
It was originally designed to be used for Roman baths to heat up the warm and hot rooms in the complex, but also became a standard part of heating homes in the northern parts of the Roman Empire.
However, when the Empire crumbled, the hypocausts crumbled with it, and for over a millennium the concept of raised flooring had largely been lost in Europe aside from a few historic monasteries and in the pages of De Architectura.
The concept was revived by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who developed and revised the concept of underfloor heating in the process of designing a Japanese hotel.
From there, it stands to reason that more industrial, uniform and utilitarian forms of underfloor heating would slowly transform into more versatile raised access floors as designers realise that it is not just heat that can be stored and transported underneath the floor.
