If everyone must work from the office, why is the office so ugly?

When I think back to my school days, I see a burst of white light, like I’m in the afterlife sequence of a movie. Today, I’m greeted by that same blinding flash of white when I step into my office. After the lockdown ended in 2023, we returned to work from the office, filled with renewed enthusiasm for in-person conversations and Zoom-free meetings. But nowhere did it state that an open-plan office needs to have a grey carpet/wooden flooring, cuboid light fixtures and black computer chairs. And yet, if you look up ‘open-plan office ’, you'll be surprised by how homogenised Big Office is.