Meet Me in My Office, in Men’s Underwear on 5

For 10 years beginning in 1945, the architect George Nelson served as the design director at Herman Miller, the iconic furniture producer, where he came to believe that the modern office should resemble “a daytime living room.’’ The geography of the conventional white-collar workplace bred stress and distraction, the thinking went, and as a result, hindered creativity and collaboration. It would take decades and significant advances in technology for corporate ideology to catch up with Nelson’s vision. And then, at some point in the 21st century, it surpassed what he had imagined, in strange ways.