The recapturing of some of this is one of the best things about my job, not because my job is anything really special in that regard, but because I'd spent so much time contracting (alone in a room by myself) or in grad school (same.)

Having an office, and a culture where people would 'drop by' sometimes, either for real work reasons, tenuous work reasons, or purely social, has been a godsend.

Now I'm thinking about how to consciously engineer this given our environmental constraints...

I miss this as well! Stanford still has this and calls it the open door policy

I really hope something like Campus Housing works out. They had a great idea but didnt execute. With the right group of people I'd be super down to live in something like a dorm again.