I wish someone who works at Pixar could comment in this thread. They've had private offices ever since the steve jobs building, and often you hear that private, customized offices is one of the things that they love about their workplace.
The Steve Jobs building is designed to increase chance of random encounters between people to stimulate collaboration, but these encounters happen in the hallways and the designated collaborative spaces, rather than in people's private offices.
> As a current Pixar employee, the open office trend has unfortunately spread to our admittedly beautiful campus. You have to be fairly senior to get an office around here, lowlifes like me get stuck in shared open hallways and the like.
The Steve Jobs building is designed to increase chance of random encounters between people to stimulate collaboration, but these encounters happen in the hallways and the designated collaborative spaces, rather than in people's private offices.
Some pictures: https://officesnapshots.com/2007/07/16/pixar-hq/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX9OV43o4Ac
Edit: Private offices were first introduced since the Steve Jobs building