People tend to enjoy private alcoves with a view on the action, which is kinda best of both worlds. Christopher Alexander describes that pattern in _A Pattern Language_.
In fact, what really gets on my nerves is that we used to have our support people sitting three-to-an-office, and now they sit in a cube farm. It was much better isolating them with people of a similar function (both so that they aren't disturbing other people being on the phone all day, and so that there is less risk of some idiot saying something loudly that it would be impolitic for a customer to hear.)
It's one of my life's goals to build my own house using that book as a rough guide. I'm sure I'll write about it when it eventually happens.
We have a large-ish, well-lit open space, surrounded by several conference rooms. The open space is oriented in the overall space such that it's farthest from the door to minimize traffic. We're going to let each team (4-8 people) build out their own workspaces in the open area. They will organize the furniture, control how they physically interface with the rest of the space and other teams, etc. They'll have enough types of furniture to build walls, alcoves, desks, conference tables, social spaces, etc. As projects and teams change, adjustments can be made immediately.
I must say it's an exciting yet terrifying prospect, particularly because as with many existing spaces, it's not always possible to follow the prescriptive advice 100%. Additionally, almost no one has ever worked in an office space that is like the Alexander describes, which makes it somewhat of a leap of faith (in Peopleware we trust) that it will all work out.
If anyone else out there has already gone through this process, I'd love to hear how it's worked out for you.
This is the web page that got me into his work [http://zeta.math.utsa.edu/~yxk833/Chris.furniture.html].