Designing the Optimal Workspace

In case you haven’t noticed, remote work has taken a hit recently.

Last month, President Trump rescinded all remote work for federal employees. He’s not alone. Big companies are doing the same thing, like Amazon Meta, Google and Dell are demanding all workers be in the office 5 days a week.

Dell is an interesting case. They initially allowed employees to go remote, but told them they would never be promoted. The employees were mostly fine with it and stayed remote. Then Dell decided to shelve the entire remote work plan and lay 12,500 workers. Harsh stuff. It’s quiet layoffs, plain and simple.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan is the latest critic of Remote work. He was caught on a call describing how much he really, really hates when his employees work from home. Although, it doesn’t seem like remote work has hurt the bank’s profits.

@barrons

EXCLUSIVE: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon offered up candid, lengthy thoughts about remote work, bureaucracy, and inefficiency during an interna... See more

Trends and the Workspace

The battle over remote work reveals a truth about our relationship with workspaces, control matters.

While CEOs and managers fight to bring workers back to corporate offices, they're missing a crucial insight into why many employees prefer working from home. One of the most often overlooked benefits of working from home is the ability to design your own workspace or go somewhere that has figured out the ideal workspace. Some people put in a lot of work

You can experiment, adjust, and optimize until you find what works best for you. This level of personalization is something most office workers never experience, they're at the mercy of whatever workplace design trend their company has embraced. That means being at the mercy of trends.

From the 1960s to the 2000s it was fashionable thing decades ago was cubicles, to give workers privacy and personalization, unfortunately it devolved into "cube farms" that became synonymous with soul-crushing office work

Then in the 2000s-2010s turned into open air offices, pitched as promoting collaboration and creativity. Companies like Google and Facebook made it the tech industry standard. While some people enjoy it, Some of the results show it is not ideal: 27% more sick days, 14% lower cognitive performance, 70% less face-to-face interaction.

Today things are a bit chaotic. Some companies shrank their footprints with hotel desks, where employees reserve space day-by-day, trading personal territory for flexibility. Others embraced "neighborhood" concepts, creating team-based zones that blend open collaboration areas with private nooks and meeting pods. Others just went back to open office plans.

In this chaos, I became curious about whether there are universal principles of workplace design that transcend personal preference? Beyond the subjective debates of open vs. closed offices, what elements of workplace design have been proven to help people work better?

My Personal Observations

Some of the universal rules you can kind of intuitively feel. You can figure it out by tinkering. Here my thoughts:

1) Depth

Depth is underrated. Consider our evolutionary heritage, we developed in vast landscapes with expansive views of plains and forests. This depth of field provided visual comfort and reduced stress. Yet modern offices often ignore this basic human need. We've created an unnatural environment where we face walls and stare into flat screens all day. This lack of visual depth can create subtle but persistent psychological discomfort. Face your desk to the room or to a window and see if you can feel a difference.

2) Ceiling Height Matters

Space above affects us more profoundly than space around us. This isn't just speculation, you can experience it yourself. Walk into a room with high ceilings (11+ feet), and you'll likely feel a shift in your thinking. These spaces seem to unlock more abstract, creative thought patterns. Contrast this with lower ceilings (8-9 feet). Here, the closer overhead plane seems to focus our attention, making the space feel more intimate. These cozier environments often prove better for detail-oriented tasks. The lower ceiling helps contain and direct our concentration.

3) Multiple Monitors

Even when they're not actively in use, having multiple monitors improves my work flow. It's as if the mere presence of additional screen space expands mental capacity. There is research that shows this.

@thefinanceinfo

Rory Sutherland talks about working from home #business #economics #wfh #psychology #economy

A Pattern Language

But I wanted to dig deeper. Find patterns. So I consulted my favorite book on design.

It led me to revisit my favorite book on architectural theory: Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language."

@archimarathon

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If you haven't encountered it, it’s a 900-page masterwork from the 1970s that attempts to figure out the fundamental patterns behind successful design. Everyting from entire cities down to roads, to neighborhoods, to individual rooms.

It's not a book you read straight through. Instead, it lives on my nightstand, where I occasionally dip into before bed. It’s nice though. It has pictures, the writing is direct and digestible. He may not be fashionable today but his ideas transformed how I think about built spaces.

What makes it particularly valuable is his scientific approach. He tested his ideas, drawing from both his research and historical examples. Alexander and his team conducted meticulous studies, observing how people interact with their work environments and documenting the effects of various spatial arrangements.

He writes about 13 variables. You can experiment with these yourself and see how you feel. I did this as well. I think they all work pretty well and there is something to be said about these being very true across all domains.

The 13 Variables of the Workspace

1) A Wall Behind You

Both scientific research and ancient design traditions agree that you want a solid wall behind your workspace. In feng shui, they call this the "commanding position,"

@dearmodern

Feng Shui basics, the command position, so now you know! #fengshui

I think this is true. When we sit with our backs exposed, part of our mind stays alert, continuously monitoring for potential threats we can't see. A wall behind us eliminates this subconscious vigilance. It creates what environmental psychologists call a "refuge.”

Try it out, I did. It works. Move yourself from an exposed desk to one against a wall, and see if you can notice your posture change within hours. Your movements may become more deliberate with focus sharper.

2) Wall on One Side

The argument here is that the side wall engages with your peripheral vision. Your peripheral vision is like a radar system that's always running in the background. Without a side wall, your brain is processing a full 180-degree sweep of activity, that's a lot of data to continuously filter.

Every movement, every person walking by, every flicker of activity demands at least a fraction of your attention. A wall to one side effectively cuts your surveillance zone in half. It's like reducing your radar from a full semicircle to a manageable quarter-circle.

I tried this one and I haven’t decided whether I like it or not. It felt a little too boxed in for me.

3) Depth.

We already covered that.

4. Sufficient Space

To put this in perspective, your ideal workspace should at least fit twice into a standard parking spot, is just slightly larger than a king-size bed's footprint, and occupies about the same area as a typical bathroom.

Sixty square feet provides just enough room to push back from your desk without hitting a wall and turn your chair freely without constantly checking for clearance. It allows you to keep essential work items within arm's reach while maintaining enough breathing room to prevent that claustrophobic feeling of walls closing in.

Today's open offices and hot-desking arrangements often ignore this basic requirement, squeezing workers into spaces half this size or smaller.

5. Fifty Percent Enclosure by Windows

This insight explains why so many office designs feel wrong. Traditional cubicles, with their high walls on three or four sides, create a claustrophobic cocoon that exceeds 75% enclosure. Open offices swing too far in the opposite direction, offering less than 50% enclosure and leaving workers feeling exposed.

But the classic corner office? With its combination of solid and window walls, it nails that 50% sweet spot perfectly. No wonder it's been the aspirational workspace for generations - it's not just about status, it's about satisfying a deep psychological need for balanced enclosure.

6) View of the Outside

This finding about windows is perhaps Alexander's most statistically significant discovery about workspaces. That's extraordinarily strong evidence that a view outside isn't just a nice perk, but a fundamental human need.

Of course it is.

No amount of interior spaciousness can compensate for that connection to the outside world. This might explain why windowless offices feel oppressive even when they're large, and why basement offices are particularly challenging for worker wellbeing.

@ericrhill

how do you cope with working in a windowless office? I feel like I haven't seen the sun in ages... #officelife #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp

7) How Close Should Other People Be?

Look at today's open offices. Desks are squeezed into 4-6 foot spans, and hot-desking arrangements push people even closer. When you're sitting closer than 8 feet from your colleagues, their conversations aren't background noise, they're unavoidable cognitive intrusions.

This acoustic requirement becomes even more interesting when combined with Alexander's 60-square-foot space minimum. Together, they paint a picture of why modern offices feel so cramped: we're not just violating one spatial need, but two.

8) Working Around People

The French philosopher Sartre famously wrote, hell is other people. Well he is wrong. Hell is never being around people. Being isolated. Humans are a community animal.

I don’t mind working alone every once in a while but it gets lonely quick.

The insight about feeling like "a cog in a huge machine" when aware of too many people is particularly relevant to modern open offices, where workers might be exposed to dozens of people at once.

Conversely, the finding that awareness of fewer than two people leads to isolation explains why pure remote work can feel lonely, and why even home workers often seek out coffee shops or co-working spaces.

@hubs.life

I spend most days in silence #officesounds #asmrsounds #ninetofivejob #foryoupage

9) Noise Type

The principle that contrasting sounds are more disruptive than similar sounds makes intuitive sense. When you're typing an important email and hear other people typing, your brain might filter it as "background work noise." But a sudden sales call forces your attention to shift because it's processing language and meaning.

This principle of acoustic compatibility might be one of the most overlooked aspects of workplace design. While businesses focus on visual aesthetics and spatial efficiency, they often ignore how different types of work create different soundscapes.

10) A Person Directly Facing You

Having someone directly facing you while working creates a peculiar form of stress. Your brain is hardwired to process faces in your line of sight, an evolutionary trait that's now become a workplace liability.

Each time you look up, you're forced into a micro-social interaction: Do you make eye contact? Acknowledge them? Pretend you didn't see them?

Face-to-face positioning historically meant either confrontation or intimate conversation. Neither fits the neutral, focused environment we need for work.

11) Face in Different Directions

Our bodies weren't designed to face one direction all day. Yet most modern offices lock us into a single orientation, staring at screens like factory workers on an assembly line. This fixed positioning ignores a basic human need for variety in our physical orientation.

Here’s a few suggestions that helped me in my setup:

• A standing desk with a monitor arm that allows you to adjust both height and angle throughout the day

• An L-shaped arrangement that lets you pivot between different work zones without rearranging furniture

12) The Presence Principle

Alexander's research revealed an unexpected finding: we don't actually need to see our coworkers to feel connected to them. What matters more is knowing they're there, whether we hear their voices down the hall, notice their coat hanging by their desk, or just sense their presence behind a partition.

This might explain why some people can work comfortably in spaces where they don't directly see coworkers but can hear them nearby or know they're just around a corner..

The distinction becomes even more relevant in our age of digital work, where "awareness" of colleagues might come through Slack status indicators or regular Zoom check-ins rather than direct visual contact.

13) One Other Person to Talk To