If open plan offices actually worked, all academic facilities would install dozens of TVs each showing a different cable TV channel and volume turned up to distracting level in each study tank. Oh wait, places where people have to actually think are pin-drop silent? Really? You mean most calculus homework isn't done at frat keggers?
The root of the problem is a management primate dominance fad; the mere grunt laborers beneath me don't think; I'm of a superior social class who can think; therefore who cares if the losers can't think. If they were the cool kids like us, they'd have offices with doors where they can think, like me. Besides I don't want my underlings thinking, then one of them might end up outmaneuvering me and taking over. Gotta keep them down.
Quite a bit of calculus homework is done at the frat house, the coffee shop, or other such places. Many people work best in situations other than total isolation and quiet.
I'm not sure about the dominance thing either - most open office plans I've seen have no offices for anyone. At my last job the incoming CTO inherited the desk of a freelancer who left the week before.
That is true, but unusual, based on research. However, those people are compatible with quiet offices because they can blast headphones, or talk at the coffee maker, or hang out in people offices/cubes and bug them. So quiet areas are not designed for loud people but are totally "loud people compatible". On the other hand quiet people (the majority) dropped into a loud open plan, are not compatible.
I've never seen or worked in an open plan that doesn't have private areas for the cool kids and bosses either formally or informally. Perhaps a site like that exists. They are apparently rare.
Background noise and activity isn't all alike. In a coffee shop it's irrelevant: strangers moving about and talking about things that don't concern you. That's easier to tune out than things than the noise and activity in an open plan office where it's people you know moving about and talking about things that may be relevant to you.
Also, people are different -- some are better able to tune out background noise -- and the same person is different on different days and while doing different tasks.
Yes, very much so. This is why in grad school, I did a lot of work at a bustling coffee shop rather than in our open-plan office space. I had a much easier time concentrating at the coffee shop; there was more activity, but none of it was relevant to me.
The root of the problem is a management primate dominance fad; the mere grunt laborers beneath me don't think; I'm of a superior social class who can think; therefore who cares if the losers can't think. If they were the cool kids like us, they'd have offices with doors where they can think, like me. Besides I don't want my underlings thinking, then one of them might end up outmaneuvering me and taking over. Gotta keep them down.