[wrs]

When I got the opportunity to build out an office for my own startup, I had it designed with different environments: an open office in the front, a big conference room, a few medium size rooms (for solo focus, meetings, or temporary workgroups), a café/meeting area in the back, and a nap room in the quietest corner (with a couch). All the meeting rooms had a big screen TV to connect to meeting rooms in our other office.

So on any given day, you could pick the appropriate environment to work in, while still being within casual reach of everybody else for those impromptu conversations. and of course people could have lunch together in the café.

I thought the temporary workgroup offices were a great idea. A few people working on a new feature could move in there for a couple of weeks to get focused time together, and have daylong conversations without bugging everybody else.