In a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, philosopher Franz Kafka lamented, “time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres.” Much attention has been focused recently on the current state of office design. Research by Kim and de Dear (2013) on the negative effects of open-plan offices, for example, suggests increasing numbers of modern workers may well empathize with Kafka’s sentiments. It seems that many modern workplaces may not be delivering claimed worker productivity and well-being benefits.