Today’s most innovative software developers, technology-forward commercial real estate brokerages and other office users aren’t exactly breaking new ground with their wide-open office layouts, where the walls have tumbled and collaboration is like the word of the day from Pee-wee’s Playhouse.

Instead, these thought leaders are employing an old play from an old playbook. They’re copying the interior design that interior designers have utilized for years.

Architects and the professors that teach the craft of the draft have long enjoyed large, open studios where they can banter back and forth about their work, commenting on each other’s design accomplishments and failures. Poke your head into ADD Inc.’s Seaport Boston offices, or Northeastern University’s studio at the MBTA’s Ruggles commuter station, or any number of architecture firms, and you’ll see the collaboration in action.

The kinds of offices we’re talking about could be echo chambers if left empty. They often comprise one or two wide open spaces with desks or tables that, at the most, have cubicles a seated employee can see over into his or her neighbor’s cubicle.

Often, the spaces resemble a trading floor, sometimes hectic, sometimes measured in its activity. Along its edges or at the ends of the rooms are shared conference rooms, beside which smaller private rooms can offer a mostly soundproof space for personal phone calls or meditation. These kinds of spaces have very few private offices, if any, even for the company’s executive team. And many times those conference rooms and the desks provided are empty since mobile technology allows workers to do their jobs at home or on the road.  

Infrastructure Savings

There are measurable economic reasons for an office tenant to want an open floor plan. First is the infrastructure cost savings. Every time you close off a room in a space that increases the need for air circulation in the room, requiring additional equipment and cost to operate. It’s considerably less costly overall to have 20 employees in one open, trading floor kind of setting than closing 20 people into offices, said Colleen Arria, associate principal interior designer for ADD Inc.

Most of the space that then opens up by eliminating management’s personal offices is reclaimed as public or socializing space, like for a café, a relaxation lounge or an office that employees can reserve for an hour or two of focused, interruption-free work time.

But there’s more to it than just real estate.

“There’s also a feeling that when you’re in an open office it fosters a more positive work culture because you’re actually seeing these other people” that you supposedly work with, Arria told Banker & Tradesman in a recent interview. “One sounds and looks like an old library, versus an open environment where you’re seeing and hearing people, where there’s a buzz. We’ve seen a much more positive environment result for clients, despite the initial fear of it.

That fear is common among clients that are accustomed to providing private spaces for top leaders and essentially closed-off cubicles for employees. That hesitation from a company’s real estate decision makers is understandable, especially in light of another observation Arria has made over 12 years of designing space for tenants.

There’s the cultural shift, but it’s also “especially a generational shift,” she says. “It’s usually the older generations that have been there forever who are very resistant to an open office. We’re finding younger employees really have less of an issue and see the benefits of easy collaboration and gaining that variety of social and shared spaces.”

And it’s not just office users that are breaking down the walls. Arria said she also sees the shift in academic clients, where the line between a job and the academic environment are becoming more blurred.  

But one of the most striking examples of such open office space is the relatively new Boston home of commercial real estate brokerage CBRE’s multi-housing group at 101 Arch St. The space opened last December, with the requisite open trading floor aspect and shared offices that can be reserved.

CBRE recently moved its global corporate headquarters into the top two floors at 400 South Hope St. in Los Angeles, with the new office representing one of the company’s first “Workplace360” offices in the U.S. The firm has such offices in Europe. Workplace360 is CBRE’s “alternate workplace strategy initiative,” according to the firm’s website. That office space design “maximizes employee collaboration and productivity through technology, space utilization, sustainability, mobility and enhanced flexibility.”

But the very first CBRE office in the U.S. to be thrown into the experiment was the Boston multi-housing group. And it wasn’t exactly the smoothest of transitions.

“There was certainly some hesitation” at the outset, Donovan offered. Indeed, it has taken about a year for employees to really get on board and begin utilizing the shared conference rooms and other more social aspects of the space.

“It took a while to get used to it,” said Erin Link, an underwriter in the Boston CBRE office. “But there’s a lot more collaboration now. People are a lot more accessible. But they know if you’re in [a private office] to not come in.”

Nonprofit advisor Bridgespan Group will be one of the newest firms to transform its office space culture in Boston. The firm plans to move from Boston’s Boylston Street to offices atop the Copley Place mall, according to Joe Sciolla, managing principal of commercial brokerage Cresa. Bridgespan will go from 20,000 square feet of office space on several floors to about 30,000 square feet on just one floor. There will be no assigned seats or cubicles, with employees working in one part of office for a time, then moving to another as needed. The company will pay about $2 million to renovate the space, Sciolla said.

Email: jcronin@thewarrengroup.com