A recent study of employees in Denmark found that people who work in open spaces take significantly more sick leave. The biggest problem with the open office is simply noise. In another study by the Cornell University psychologists Gary Evans and Dana Johnson, clerical workers who were exposed to open-office noise for three hours became less motivated and less creative. The open office was invented in Germany, in the nineteen-fifties, to facilitate communication and idea flow but recent evidence suggests that the opposite is true.