You hit the gym every morning or evening if you care a bit about your health. And then you come to the office where you want to settle and work

@kicheko, not everyone goes to gym everyday because they are very much involved in their work and they spend most of the time in office itself. So if we move stuff out of reach then it will indirectly help.

Anand, -Re: this is very good move by Designers to move stuff out of reach. This will definitely make employees walk more.

i beg to differ on that. I've never seen the justification in forcing employees to walk more. Some people cite exercise but i disagree with that. You hit the gym every morning or evening if you care a bit about your health. And then you come to the office where you want to settle and work . The next thing you learn is that the phone shall be ringing at least once every ten minutes and you shall be standing up to go pick it up.

Lands' End, when it was an independent company, had no reserved parking spaces. None. Not even for the CEO. 

They finally made an exception for one employee: A catalog copywriter who was in his 90s and still working. 

I'm not sure he was in his 90s. But he was very, very old, and he was the only employee to have a reserved parking space, close to the building. 

I've never worked in an open space. When I was at CRN, we all had offices. I was freelance from home for 12 years, and have worked remotely for the past two years as a full-time employee of a couple of companies. One thing I know would bother me is making phone calls with colleagues around; I don't like making business phone calls if anyone is in my home office. Sure, I guess I'd get over it eventually, but I don't like background noise when I'm on the phone and this would be a real annoyance. How have others dealt with it?

You could, perhaps, make small, cost-less changes at your office: Maybe move the coffee pot from one spot to another if there's an empty office area or nook that you can use to encourage colleagues to walk a little further. I know health experts always encourage us to use the stairs -- but too often office stairways are far away, and really unattractive, dimly lit, and to be honest, kinda creepy!

So instead of creating this really convenient office space where everything is at your fingers, designers are now consciously moving stuff out of reach.

@Alison, this is very good move by Designers to move stuff out of reach. This will definitely make employees walk more. Unfortunately my office is designed by old designers and I dont see such initiatives but yes I have observed such designs in other companies where I went to attend some training.

I value the ability to configure my workspace however I see fit. 

You reminded me of my laptop desk. It has wheels and feet similar to those of a computer chair, and has airlift as well so I could adjust the height. Then, the desk itself has two levels. The first is the base which is attached to the rest of the "chassis." The second level is around three inches above the base, and it could be used as the desktop or it could be folded out so that the base will be the desktop. It's like a transformer desk. It's helped me a lot, especially in coming up with the right ergonomic position.

Here's the setup I'd like for my business:

1. Brick and mortar office - There'd only be two people (at most) working there, specifically the ones tasked to receive clients and coordinate projects. The space will only be small, with two desks, a receiving area, a meeting room, and a common work area. The common work area is for those who want to work in the office once in a while, but not permanently. There'd be foldable laptop desks and lockers for anyone who's in.
2. Virtual office - The rest of the team will often work online. But this area requires planning, too; what will the ideal virtual workspace look like? Automattic uses their P2-themed site for work, while others use SharePoint as their virtual office. I think there should be architects in this space too. The main challenge is creating those common areas where collaboration could happen, plus allowing interaction to be more "personal," i.e. audio- and video-enabled.

This probably won't come about until after a few years, but it does seem to be ideal for me. The design of the physical office, in the end, will be easier to deal with than the design of the virtual workspace.

I think monility has made some new inroads to traditional methodologies of office operations. It has 2 side like others but the chances of making things positive very much higher on it.

In the traditional office there was more private space (offices, especially offices with doors that close off the employee and often with tables for small meetings right in somebody's office) and less public space.

Studies are showing that the most effective organizations are creating more public spaces were people can collaborate.  Not just meeting rooms, but rooms or open areas with white boards and furniture that is conducive to people bringing laptops and mobile devices and sharing and projecting screens. 

The private space may be remote or it may be smaller closed offices - but the public space is where the real collaborative and creative work gets done.