Over the years, office layouts have changed from cubicle-heavy to open floor plans. Now, amid return-to-office efforts, office design is once again undergoing a shift. We toured freshly redesigned workplaces in New York and interviewed employees, company executives, scholars and designers to understand what the new prevailing corporate aesthetic says about how we view work and our relationship to it. (Read More: The Envy Office: Can Instagrammable Design Lure Young Workers Back?)
We identified three prominent office archetypes from recent decades, including the cubicle farm, the tech utopia and today’s Envy Office. Many of the new offices, while optimized for Instagram and sociability, are lacking in privacy. But what if you could pick features from any era of office design to create the perfect one for you? Below, a quiz to help you decide how much fun you need to get the job done.
