The Open Floor Plan

They took down the walls and called it collaboration.

What they meant: real estate is expensive and cubicles waste space. If everyone’s at a table, you can fit forty people where thirty used to sit.

The open floor plan isn’t about collaboration. It’s about density. And the people who designed it have offices. With doors. That close.

Every study says open floor plans reduce collaboration and increase stress. Every company that reads those studies builds another open floor plan. Because the studies measure human outcomes and the decision measures square footage per dollar.