Yeah, I wonder how much of the disdain for open offices is more of a company culture issue rather a problem with open offices.

What causes people to whisper in libraries but talk loudly and disturb others in an open office plan?

Perhaps some segmentation of open office plans would also be interesting -- a "loud" zone, a semi-quiet zone and a silent zone. I don't know how workable this would be for teams unless you had hot-desking, which is something else people seem to hate, but still. Engineers who need to work on a difficult problem for a while can use the silent zone, while groups who need lots of communication and the perennial extroverts are free to use the louder spaces.