we've actually had the opposite, insofar as we are leverging remote technologies to enhance mentoring and training where meatspace critically falls flat.

Things like (a) using remote screen sharing for facilitating pair programming (much better received than sitting next to each other), (b) slack threads for persistent (searchable) on-the-fly collaboration and documentation, (c) focus on async communication which focuses sync (e.g, zoom meetings) to be more impactful, vs meatspace meetings which often devolve into creation of cliques, time-wasting, etc.

I wonder if what you may be optimizing for, via meatspace, is actually socialization, vs productivity. I agree there is a role for meatspace, but I don't think that necessarily entails degradation in mentoring and knowledge-sharing, vs other benefits to socialization (e.g., morale, transmission of culture, etc).