[fish2000]

Funny that – I often imagine that a nicely productive compromise would be a scheme like the SCDP office on “Mad Men“: mostly private offices, but with a pseudo-open “Creative Lounge“ that facilitates collaboration but retains basic human stuff like doors, for some sense of sonic isolation.

That particular plan is far from perfect – they have often used the lack of isolation (e.g. people peeping on neighbors through ceiling-level windows) as a plot device – but I still like the actual looks of it, based on actual experience with the open-plan-induced drudgery discussed in the article.

[spb]

> like the SCDP office on “Mad Men“: mostly private offices, but with a pseudo-open “Creative Lounge“ that facilitates collaboration but retains basic human stuff like doors, for some sense of sonic isolation.

Except SCDP's creative lounge doesn't have doors, see the floor plan: http://www.jordanorlando.com/other/scdp/

[liveoneggs]

small (permanent) war rooms for workgroups and private offices for management/shared offices for drones (2-3/office) is a great setup, imho.

I worked at a place that did big war rooms per project and had tons of empty "home" cubes where you went for an hour or two per day to do non-primary work. I think a fixed-time system in the groups would be best.