I expect this to be different now, and possibly more dependent on screen space than on physical desk space.
I think you'll often see workers getting this situation when they really need to be productive by commandeering a conference room and shutting the door. But, it makes sense to provide it for teams in general, in my opinion.
There have been a couple big projects where we flew in the remote people just to get the whole team in a room together. So it's not only the workers that know this; management does as well or they wouldn't approve the travel budget.
Still, I'm personally happier with more desk space. We still use paper all the time. Tufte points out in one of his books that humans are better at spatial comparisons than time-based comparisons, hence his fetish for data density, and mine for lots of screen and desk real estate.
For a while my company was mixing tech support/customer relations and engineers in the same 4-person office -- that doesn't work too well.
When switching project it is important to switch offices as well. (Doesn't Valve do that with their desks-on-wheels?)
Scaffolding was old stock from a local scaffolders (I wanted the distressed industrial look, just given 'em a ring).
Fittings are from ebay (there are standard sizes and joints), the legs are spinners (if you turn the handles the desk moves up and down).
The top panel is 28mm structural birch ply (structural ply may have surface blemishes and patches rather than finishing ply so if that matters get finishing ply but since I wanted the industrial look and it's way cheaper to boot), routed with a 5mm edge and covered in 4 coats of heat resistant wax (makes it water proof without ruining the color).
Original panel was 8ft x 4ft so I took a strip of the long side for the shelf (if you work out your dimensions most timber places will make the cuts for you).
Through holes are 60mm and there are 3 on the back (UK plugs are massive).
http://i.imgur.com/YzfWv5E.jpg in construction, two cross beams are for the shelf which sits on them, the middle upright is because even 28mm play will sag.
Total height range is ~85cm (I'm quite tall and normal desks are a tad too low) to ~140cm.
Would work nice on a smaller desk though :).
As for sturdiness, it's weight and rigidity make it a very stable desk.
I've already had two people ask me to make them one (with a nice margin on top), I think a lot of people are tired of crappy fall apart desks.
Open-plan was workable. Some sound pollution from other teams, but easy access to my team was good.
Individual cubes make no sense to me at all. All the sound pollution of open-plan, with none of the easy access to teammates. I hate it.
Numbers don't lie.
The major takeaways I have from reading about this when I started in tech entrepreneurship are:
1) Knowledge workers need 30 square feet of desk to get optimal efficiency
2) They need 100 square feet of space
3) cubicles are as good as an office if the walls are over 8 feet high (!)
4) small teams tend to want to talk at the same time, and be quiet at the same time.
These together round up into recommended 400 or so square foot offices with doors that close and house teams of four people, all working on the same thing at the same time.
If teams are 2 or 3, they should have a smaller space. That's enough space for desks, a couch, a whiteboard area, etc.
I have found over the years that this tracks fairly closely with my own preferences. I really want to be able to talk and interrupt a team-mate when we're working if we're working on the same thing. We also often are hacking away and need silence, but instant access to whoever is in the know about a certain bit of code is undeniably great, and provided we aren't breaking each-other out of flow, is fine.
This system works really well when it's a small team and the team is working on the same stuff. It breaks down when there are multiple things happening or more than four or so people: interruptions abound, killing productivity.
I think you'll often see workers getting this situation when they really need to be productive by commandeering a conference room and shutting the door. But, it makes sense to provide it for teams in general, in my opinion.