The Open-office Trap

Precisely. And that's still the culture in some places (Microsoft being a good example). Generally many devs will establish a rapport with folks on their team and in other parts of the company to a degree where occasional visits won't translate into wondering what needs fixing ASAP. Also, if everyone has an office then you can schedule meetings with other folks in their office, or your office. As long as it's not more than like 3 or 4 people. Or, if you're working on something and need to ruminate you go wander into a friend's office and talk about it or whatever. Though if someone has their door closed they probably don't want to be disturbed.

People who don't have experience with offices have these bizarre notions about office etiquette and collaboration. They also easily fall into post hoc / confirmation bias fallacies, where they see some positive result of collaborating in an open plan office and imagine that they would be forced to live in a world without the benefit of that spontaneous collaboration in an environment with offices. But they ignore the fact that such things very much do occur with offices, and they also ignore the opportunity cost of open plan layouts. Of conversations which don't happen because the work space is deathly quiet due to everyone trying to work, and you can't just hop into a friend's office space and close the door so you don't bother other people, as just one of many examples.

Depends on the cubicles. They used to be 78" high, but low panel heights are much more popular now. 42" panels don't afford much privacy.

It is amazing, how a so old wisdom (I read it many years from now in a book called "Peopleware" from 1987! could be ignored so many decades (by people, who claim to be reasonable).

But it just seems that some ideas, because they are economical interesting, stick so much, that management people come up every 6 month with an other idea or excuse, why the dead horse must be ridden again (and not buried).

It is simply a myth, that the Japanese make everything right. This myth arose, because of the success of their industries and the quality engineering movement they coined. But they just don't do everything right. They do of course some things right. How is, that they have stagnating industry for decades now. How is, that they produced Fukushima and showed, how a country can fail in letting one totally incompetent corporation mess everything up. (Fukushima was not the first problem, this corporation produced -- but the bureaucrats did let them continue and problems where pushed under the carpet).

I always wonder when i see reports like this at the amount of cherry picked data in the studies - and also the ability for the journalist to properly interpret it. The problem i have with this piece and so many others is that its just calls out a number of sometimes unrelated "problems", cites some studies with open offices and calls it a day. They fail to really come up with a strong conclusion or offer viable solutions.

As a designer working under an architect and having just completed an open office building for a 150+ employee financial firm[1] - i feel i have a pretty good handle on this subject. There a a couple key anecdotal design criteria that i'd like to address in relation to open offices that the report does not address.

Natural Light - Access to natural light

Artificial light - using the correct lighting for the task with the right output measured in lumens for the particular task.

Ventilation - Natural and sufficient HVAC Acoustics - Are proper acoustic absorbent materials being used.

Planning - has the space been thought out in a thorough way - is there a meaningful program to which the open office functions in both arrangement, flow and activities.

Psychology - Has there been effort to educate the staff about the new space and general systems in place to govern how it functions.

All of these points above can be easily planned for by hiring and adhering to the advice of design professionals like architects, electrical engineers, hydraulic engineers, acoustic consultants etc. Does this happen? In my experience - the answer is generally - no. Building offices and fitting thee out is an expensive exercise and time and time again i see clients willing to cut corners and forgo professional advice at the sake of saving a few thousand dollars. It may be that the ROI in terms of employee productivity could be significantly diminished due to a insignificant saving during the build phase.

I would agree in some respects that there are limitation to open office layouts - but that its due more to the ill-conceived notion that achieving an open office work environment is as easy throwing some workstation and humans into a cavernous space and expecting it to just work.

Moreover that is why indeed planners are moving away from open office and employing the newer philosophy of ABW (activity based working)[2].

[1]http://marklawlerarchitects.com.au/commercial/hunter-street-...

[2]http://www.jll.com.au/australia/en-au/Documents/jll-au-activ...