I'm a bit confused trying to apply your analogy to offices; I doubt you meant that we should install grass on the floor and nothing else :) one possible interpretation is to start with just a big empty space, and let people buy or bring in whatever furniture they want, but that seems pretty problematic w.r.t. logistics, people picking things which will last / are affordable ("I work best in this CLS AMG with leather massage seats parked in the corner").
Could you please explain your idea in more detail?
I would hope that someone smarter and more knowledgeable than myself on the subject would come up with something actually good. Barring that, yes, I thought about starting with a large empty space and some sort of supply of furnishings with general guidelines about who gets what and how much. Perhaps there could be an area with "samples" of things that people could try out and decide what was a good fit for them as an individual.
I worked in a cubicle farm for five years. The company added space after I was hired because they were growing. Then the recession hit and some of that new space remained empty and unused. They began converting desks that had never been used into meeting spaces. Meanwhile, teams were generally each assigned the same amount of space yet had varying numbers of members. So I saw both some good and creative adaptations and some poor general practices.
Some years ago, when I was a homeschooling mom taking college classes online and every member of the household had their own computer, my very introverted husband had the most privacy for his desk area, our youngest son had the second most -- again, he was quite introverted -- our older son, less introverted than his father and brother had the third most private desk area and my office space was in the most heavily trafficked part of the apartment. I was the only extrovert and my duties and mom and wife required me to be available to other people at pretty much all times. The arrangement that evolved fit our individual personalities and our working situations. We were all happy with our respective desk arrangements. Surely the corporate world would benefit from making sure people were individually comfortable with their work spaces and when you multiply the increased productivity by hundreds of employees, this should matter to someone?
The book "Peopleware" has a similar idea, in that you offer all kinds of enviroments, and people get to pick what fits their personality and team needs.
Altought starting from raw material and space, allocating some of them for people, some for tasks, and letting teams roam freely also looks promissing. It will require a lot of redesigning, but that may even be a good thing.
On the other hand, having a real grass floor in the office, if it could be kept healthy, would be kind of awesome. You'd have to let a lot more light in. The air would probably be fresher. You couldn't use those cheap-ass rolling chairs. IDK, I might like to try it.
Could you please explain your idea in more detail?