Why Open Plan No Longer Works for Office Space in Washington, D.C.

Open-plan offices used to be the quintessential workplace in the pre and post-war periods with their free-flowing arrangement of desks and appliances. However, this office is proving less effective today, reports Jonathan Brown of The Independent. New research shows that the absence of barriers in the office was affecting workers' ability to focus on the job at hand. This poses a risk for jobs that need the utmost focus: programming, accounting, and clerical among others. Open-plan offices arrange desks and work areas in random positions, allowing for quick access just in case someone needs help with something. While some open-plan offices use partitions, they don't use them as much as other types of offices. One of the most notable examples of open-plan offices is the Pentagon, which adopted it for clerical work shortly after its construction. The typical Washington, D.C. office space can be an open-plan office, given that the city houses duties that require constant contact.

http://www.metroffice.com/2013/09/why-open-plan-no-longer-works-for-office-space-in-washington-d-c/