Open offices are bad architecture. They represent a failure in psychology as much as design. In order to understand why the open office is so pervasive despite its obvious downsides, we have to understand the underlying psychology and rationale. Here are the most common arguments in favor of the open office:

Spontaneous Creativity over Focus

Point : Having people in one large office naturally increases the amount of spontaneous collaboration and creativity.

: Having people in one large office naturally increases the amount of spontaneous collaboration and creativity. Counterpoint: How often are these serendipitous moments actually happening? And even if they are, does your company’s structure allow for them to be utilized effectively? You’re optimizing for a long-tail event at the expense of something every single employee will benefit from — focus.

Busyness as a Proxy for Productivity*

Point : When everyone is in the same room, people are motivated to work more because other people can see what they’re doing.

: When everyone is in the same room, people are motivated to work more because other people can see what they’re doing. Counterpoint: This is a terrible way to judge performance. Managers who value the physical location of their employees do so because they have no real way or ability to measure output. If you’re judging someone’s value by how busy they appear, good luck getting an accurate reading.

*Lifted from Cal Newport’s Deep Work

Cost Efficiencies

Point : We save money by not having to build everyone their own office.

: We save money by not having to build everyone their own office. Counterpoint: Cool, you’re going to spend a fuck ton of money on talented engineers and designers and then put them in an environment where they’re constantly distracted. Airtight plan.

Open-concept offices also give workers the knowledge that they are constantly being watched, whether passively or actively. They encourage us to look busy and productive.

We look busier, but we’re less efficient, take more sick days, and our communication and happiness suffers. It’s not a smart trade-off.

Alternatives

We should strive to create better environments for meaningful work. Numerous concepts have been proposed, and my favorites include:

MIT Building 20 Aerial View / All those offices and one central entrance. Credit: MIT Museum via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0

Hub and Spoke

Potentially the best of both worlds, hub-and-spoke spaces feature a single entryway into a common space and hallways that spoke out to individual offices. People have the ability to collaborate or to ensconce themselves in their offices. Hub-and-spoke spaces have large, central spaces and hallways that encourage conversation.

MIT’s Building 20 is a famous example of the hub-and-spoke approach. Building 20 was famed for the amount of innovation facilitated within its walls. Some of this has been attributed to the unique structure of the building. The hallways and staircases were the sites of creative collisions, not people sitting with 3 feet of each other.

The Eudaimonia Machine

“Eudaimonia” is the Greek concept that Newport describes as “a state in which you’re achieving your full human potential.” I learned of the “Eudaimonia Machine,” a design concept by architecture professor David Dewane, from Cal Newport’s Deep Work.

In the Eudaimonia Machine, there are five spaces that get progressively more focused on concentrated work. Here is how Newport describes each space in his book, based on an interview with Dewane:

The Gallery

The first room you enter when coming off the street, is called the gallery. In Dewane’s plan, this room would contain examples of deep work produced in the building. It’s meant to inspire users of the machine, creating a ‘culture of healthy stress and peer pressure.’

The Salon