Space is never neutral: it enables or inhibits. A wall put in the wrong place isolates people who should be collaborating; removed where it's needed, it exposes people who need to concentrate. The decision on how many partitions to place, where, and of what type, is not an execution detail – it is the design gesture that shapes people's behaviour.
The split decides what's possible
A closed area makes deep concentration and the confidentiality of conversations possible. An open area enables team visibility and spontaneous exchange. Mobile partitions make it possible to reconfigure the floor as peaks and organisational changes occur. Every division choice has a direct effect on the work settings the space can host: you cannot design an effective acoustic box without defining the degree of isolation; you cannot lay out a collaboration area without deciding how much noise is acceptable around it.
Open or closed depends on the activities
The question «open or closed?» asked in the abstract has no useful answer. The answer comes from data on how that specific team, in that specific company, actually works. With interviews and surveys we reconstruct the typical day of each department – how many hours of concentration, how many meetings and of what format, how much individual work on site and how much off site. That map reveals which activities need acoustic and visual protection, and which instead benefit from proximity and visibility. It's usage data that guides the mix.
Flexibility and reversibility as a requirement
Needs change: teams grow, hybrid working models evolve, new departments appear. That's why the flexibility of partitions – mobile, demountable, reconfigurable – is a functional requirement even before it is a technical feature. A layout designed with reversible partitions lets you correct the split over time without redoing the whole floor. The first step is always to measure the needs that are expressed and the ones that are latent; the second is to choose solutions that let you adjust course.