I also like your ideas about introverts.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Enjoyed reading your message here in response to the NO OFFICE NO CUBICLE article in WSJ.

Having completed university degrees both in architecture and interior design, working as an architect and interior designer for nearly 20 years and for the past 28 years as a creative workplace consultant I found it interesting and yet strange.

The quiet classroom with everyone working independently and the quiet libraries of the past have been fading away for decades.

Generation X, Y, Millenium have all been exposed to NOISY classrooms involving a great deal of team or group work and high levels of visual, audible, and tactile stimluation.

When I taught interior design students in the UGA Art Department I use to take them on tours of various types of offices in Atlanta ranging from those with mostly private offices to those with 6 ft or taller cubicle offices to those with much lower cubicle wall heights to totally open spaces.

We spent the day touring with me saying nothing, just letting them observe and experience.

The situation that would fit the WSJ’s article about NO OFFICES NO CUBICLES was the past Southern Bell building where they had floors of small cublicles with 6 ft high walls. Each time Marti Galvin, interior designer from the Southern Bell Tower (UGA Graduate) took my students on a tour of a mix of floors in the SBT almost all of the cubicles were completely empty because the assigned employees spent most of their time on the road.

On the other extreme were the design offices (architectural, interior, graphics or industrial/product) all had some variation of short wall cubicles and the noise levels varied from moment to moment whether people were working alone or working with others in the work area.

From 1966 to 1979 I worked with 9 different architectural firms from beginning architect right out of school to job captain to project architect to associate. Their workspaces ranged from open drafting/design areas to Heman Miller 5 ft high seas of cubicles.

It will be interesting to see extensive long-time studies about productivity in totally officeless offices.

About 15 years ago there was a book published title THE CREATIVE COMPANY it was about one of the most famous, successful ad agency’s brand new LONDON office. It would fit the WSJ office description.

Only private enclosed spaces were used for meetings (interior or with clients). The rest of the space had work surfaces and internet and electrical connect. Everyone worked on their own laptops and worked wherever they could when they came.

Being of my generation, the private office (if you earned it or were given it) generation for managers and top project people I would think that people need “their space” that they could personalize.

I am going stop here because the last 50 years of working and studying about the design of workspaces as an architect and an interior designer has provided me books worth of stories justifying both perspectives or approaches.

Last thing that tells me that this will have limited success is that the personaliies of people, their behavior patterns, DISC profiles, thinking styles all impact the type of workspace or conditions they prefer.

The funny thing for me when I read the WSJ article when it came out along with a couple others within a day or two was the fact that Susan Cain’s book QUIET about the surpression of Introverts in our classrooms and workplaces has become a best seller and she has had several articles published in substantial publications.

30 to 50% of people working together are varying forms or degrees of introverts…..

Introverts generally do not work well in noisy, officeless workplaces.