Comment by bluGill
3 days ago
I've seen them, but they were rare already by late 1990s when I started work. I recall my dad having on in the 1970s, and I remember when I started they were tearing some out to put in cubes. Back then they told me offices were cheaper than cube (cube walls need to be stronger than regular walls because they cannot tie into the ceiling for support thus increasing costs), but they believed in the cube plan and so were willing to pay that price.
Cube walls are one off expense, while office square footage is a monthly expense, so if you can fit more people in the same size office by putting up some cubes it makes sense (so long as you ignore the lost productivity).
An office or a cube takes up similar amounts of floor space - you have a lot of options for both. My current building is an open office plan which gives everybody more square footage than any cube or office walls plan I've seen. Building walls are a one-off expense just like installing cubes.