For decades, the copy machine was the beating heart of the office. Tucked in often windowless rooms, the whirring, humming machines were essential tools in the daily lives of office workers, from lawyers printing out court documents to clerks shuffling memos to middle managers having copies made of quarterly reports. It was a time when nearly all white collar work was done in an office, and on paper. Whether you were an intern or an executive, you depended on the copy room.

Those days are over. With a growing amount of work able to be accomplished entirely in the digital realm of computers and phones, and with more people working remotely, the humble copy machine is fading from relevance. With less printing and copying, the copy room itself has become an obsolete use of office space. Architects and designers are increasingly being called upon to figure out what to do with them, and copy rooms across the office world are finding new lives as storage, privacy booths, and, in the age of e-commerce, something as seemingly anachronistic as mail rooms.

“The copy room is a thing of the past,” says Dan Mazzarini, principal and creative director at BHDM Design, an interior design firm based in New York. “We’re a digital culture now and copy rooms are now the Amazon delivery rooms. Something that was once about duplicating is now about receiving.”

But even if the copy room is not the nicest or most sun-drenched part of an office, Mazzarini says the square footage still has meaning for a modern workplace. Some have become more multipurpose, and maybe even as well-used as the copy room once was. “Something that was once behind the scenes is now front-of-house,” he says.

These spatial transformations are happening across industries. Suzette Subance of the interiors firm TPG Architecture says her firm has seen law office clients really cutting down on copying and paper use, and chopping the footprint of their copy rooms significantly. It’s part of a post-pandemic trend of companies reevaluating how much office space they really need and what it’s best used for.

Some are eliminating cushy private offices. Others are subdividing big but underused conference rooms into small group meeting areas. One even turned its corner suite into an in-office dog park. The copy room is just another chunk of office space facing reconsideration.

Technology and work trends are driving much of this change. Holly Williamson, national design leader for workplace at the architecture and design firm Nelson Worldwide says her team recently worked on projects for two large financial services firms in Boston that have gone paperless. That’s resulted in fewer of the printer/scanner/copiers that would have typically taken up a few dozen square feet here and there throughout their offices.

In the past, they would have had one device for 30 people, Williamson says, but now they have one device for an entire floor, or roughly 125 people. “The space used for copy areas is easily translated into space for lockers or phone pods,” she says. “One of my favorite copy room transformations was into a locker suite, which included individual lockers for coats and bags, an umbrella stand, a few mirrors, benches to change your shoes, and a monitor that tells you which coworkers are in the office and where they are sitting.”

Copy rooms may be fading away in some offices, but they’re not going entirely extinct. Scott Spector of the architecture and design firm Spectorgroup says the continued need for copying and printing is keeping the copy room alive, at least as a concept. He says his firm has seen offices opt for smaller and multifunctional equipment rather than the bulky machines of the past. Not so big that they require their own dedicated rooms, these machines can fit more easily into existing spaces. “They’re becoming more like copy stations or nooks,” Spector says. “Copy rooms are being downsized, but not disappearing.”