The area in the middle is a common area for the group. It can have a table or two and chairs so people can hang out there, or even bring their laptops out and work there, when they are feeling social.
The bottom and middle side rooms are private offices. They should have doors that close and be reasonably insulated from sound, so that a worker can work without disturbance when they want to. Ideally, the wall wall facing the central area should have a big window (with drapes or blinds!) so that the person in the office can see if anything interesting is going on in the central area. Each office should have its own light switch capable of turning off all lights in that office.
The top two rooms can be bigger offices, or conference rooms, or break rooms for breaks that might be too noisy in the central area.
The gap in the bottom wall is the connection to the hallway.
With this environment, you can easily work in private, no distraction mode (go into your office, close the door, and close the blinds, and you can even play some music on speakers without disturbing others if that helps you work), or in full social mode (take your laptop to the middle area), or in between (work in your office, but leave the door and window open, so you can keep an ear and eye on what's going on in the social area.
Note that if you have two groups working on different things, but that have a manager or senior engineer working with both, you can extend this concept and put the two groups side by side, with a large office (or more) in the middle connecting to both:
When we were searching for space this was our preferred choice. We wanted a large single floor space with offices on the perimeter. Each office would have a glass wall to see the open space. This way, as you said, people can see what is going on. Searching for office space is hard, so we ended up where we are and made the best of it. We still get the offices on the perimeter and the glass wall, but separated by multiple floors. Maybe we just put Dropcams everywhere so people can see when lunch is ready :)
A layout I've worked in, and that I'd happily work in again, is this:
The area in the middle is a common area for the group. It can have a table or two and chairs so people can hang out there, or even bring their laptops out and work there, when they are feeling social.The bottom and middle side rooms are private offices. They should have doors that close and be reasonably insulated from sound, so that a worker can work without disturbance when they want to. Ideally, the wall wall facing the central area should have a big window (with drapes or blinds!) so that the person in the office can see if anything interesting is going on in the central area. Each office should have its own light switch capable of turning off all lights in that office.
The top two rooms can be bigger offices, or conference rooms, or break rooms for breaks that might be too noisy in the central area. The gap in the bottom wall is the connection to the hallway.
With this environment, you can easily work in private, no distraction mode (go into your office, close the door, and close the blinds, and you can even play some music on speakers without disturbing others if that helps you work), or in full social mode (take your laptop to the middle area), or in between (work in your office, but leave the door and window open, so you can keep an ear and eye on what's going on in the social area.
Note that if you have two groups working on different things, but that have a manager or senior engineer working with both, you can extend this concept and put the two groups side by side, with a large office (or more) in the middle connecting to both: