Someplace Like Home: Leveraging The Science Of Hominess In Free Address Environment

When your seat isn’t yours and your space has no walls, how do you create a “home base” at the office?

Open-plan seating has long been a polarizing fixture in U.S. offices, valued for its efficiency and flexibility while criticized for its negative impact on employee comfort and well-being. The recent surge in unassigned and free-address seating (where employees do not have a permanently assigned desk), accelerated by the shift to hybrid work and the desire to reduce office square footage, only amplifies these challenges. In 2024, only 40 percent of offices in U.S., Canada, and Latin America had a 1:1 or lower employee-to-desk ratio, down from 56 percent in the previous year (CBRE Research, 2024). 

Without a private and permanent workspace, employees may experience increased stress, distractions, and burnout. To tackle this challenge, Perkins Eastman was awarded a ONEder Grant to explore how workspaces can maintain the benefits of flexible design—like collaboration and choice—while reducing the cognitive strain on employees. 

Our Approach

Through Perkins Eastman’s work with organizations worldwide, we have witnessed these challenges firsthand. Many of our corporate clients have downsized their offices and moved to shared seating in recent years, leading us to wonder: how does losing a “home base” impact the employee experience? 

In our initial research, we conducted a survey and found that 86 percent of respondents considered it important to feel at home at work, with physical comfort being the top factor. With so-called “agile” workspaces increasing in popularity, addressing this insight felt more urgent than ever. 

Our team at Perkins Eastman and Kansas State University conducted a mixed-method study to explore the challenges of achieving “hominess”—what makes a space feel like home—in open-plan, free-address office environments. Our research combined direct observations of behavior and workplace design, user experience diaries, and survey feedback from knowledge workers to better understand what “hominess” means to them. Our field research spanned four sites: a tech company, an architecture firm, a co-working café, and a public library.  

Key Insights

Through our observations we identified a number of tensions inherent to open-plan, free-address work environments:

Autonomy vs. Conformity: While employees can choose to sit where they feel most comfortable or productive, behavioral norms and guidelines can limit personal expression and restrict feelings of autonomy.

Freedom to Choose vs. Time to Settle:  The freedom to select a spot is valuable, but the process of adjusting to it can hinder immediate productivity or comfort.

Collaboration vs. Privacy: Open-plan spaces are designed to foster collaboration, but the lack of physical barriers can make it hard for employees to engage in focused and sensitive work.

Temporality vs. Identity: In free-address environments, employees can temporarily “claim” a space, but the time-dependent nature limits the ability to personalize it.  

Our survey analysis found that satisfaction with one’s workspace was most strongly linked to physical comfort, privacy, and personal identity in the space—more so than the type of seating arrangement. In fact, when workers feel reflected in their space, experience physical comfort, and can maintain a sense of privacy—all of which contribute to a sense of hominess—unassigned seating can lead to higher satisfaction than working from home. These insights suggest significant opportunities for targeted design and policy interventions to enhance workplace satisfaction. 

Creating a “Homified” Workspace

We identified four key strategies to create a workspace that feels like home in open-plan, free-address environments:  

Comfort: Prioritize physical and environmental comfort with ergonomic furniture, appropriate lighting, and temperature control to help employees focus and feel at ease throughout the day.

Familiarity: Incorporate biophilic elements, space to display photos or mementos, and textures with sensory appeal to create warmth and make the space feel more welcoming.

Trust: Workers need to trust the space will meet their needs. This may be accomplished through features like intuitive wayfinding, dependable amenities, comfortable furnishings, and reliable technology—all of which promote a sense of stability and confidence.

Ownership: Even in free-address environments, employees should feel empowered to choose, claim, and personalize their workspace. This cultivates a sense of attachment and enhances their overall engagement with the space. 

These findings provide critical insight into the development of an affordable solution that prioritizes comfort, familiarity, trust, and ownership, helping workers to feel more at home in open-plan, free-address offices. 

Meet the Research Team