I think I could handle a 2-3 person office fine, but I bet that fairly small shared offices on a common hallway would work for you too.
I think my fantasy ideal situation is probably like groups of 4-6 small private offices clustered in a L-shape around a shared small conference room. Next to other such groups on a corridor (or even sometimes inter-connected). Would surely be incredibly expensive office space. Oh, let's give each private office a window while we're at it then. :)
Writing this reminded me of Christopher Alexander, I bet there's a pattern for this in A Pattern Language. Looking... #146 Flexible Office Space touches it a bit.
I think there's probably way more to this than 'open office' vs 'individual offices', tons of diversity within each, well less in 'open office'. But open offices with 8 people vs 20 people vs 100 people are going to be very different, also the square feet per person, and the layout and furniture.
Putting more than one person in an office defeats the purpose. Anyone who prefers open can have it, but compromising by putting multiple people in an office together saves very little rent over one person offices, but costs way more in productivity.
How much rent does it save? I can't find any numbers.
I would guess that a 2-person office could be 3/4ths the size of two one-person offices assuming half an office is the non-desk area and that non-desk area can be shared in the middle.
The amount of common area shouldn't need to change; assuming that half of the office is composed of common areas, a 2-person office format could be a savings of 10-15%. It's hard for me to say if that's worth pursuing. But again, I'm interested in firmer numbers if you've access to them.
When we did the math (over 20 years ago), the difference between cubes and private offices was about $500 a year per person (At roughly $20 per square foot). Our average developer cost was close to $100K a year, so a 1% increase in productivity would have paid for it.
The cost difference between one person and two person offices is so trivial to never be worth considering. The real problem is when you are getting an allowance from your landlord for build-out as part of your lease. In that case the landlord is going to fight very hard for you to build two person offices (or open space) because they'll perceive it as far easier to re-let if you leave.
I think my fantasy ideal situation is probably like groups of 4-6 small private offices clustered in a L-shape around a shared small conference room. Next to other such groups on a corridor (or even sometimes inter-connected). Would surely be incredibly expensive office space. Oh, let's give each private office a window while we're at it then. :)
Writing this reminded me of Christopher Alexander, I bet there's a pattern for this in A Pattern Language. Looking... #146 Flexible Office Space touches it a bit.
I think there's probably way more to this than 'open office' vs 'individual offices', tons of diversity within each, well less in 'open office'. But open offices with 8 people vs 20 people vs 100 people are going to be very different, also the square feet per person, and the layout and furniture.