One small place I worked made walls out of pairs of tall bookcases. The "cubicles" were along the perimeter of a large room, separated by the pairs of bookcases

One small place I worked made walls out of pairs of tall bookcases. The "cubicles" were along the perimeter of a large room, separated by the pairs of bookcases. Each cubicle was bounded by sets of bookcases and one wall, with one side open to the center of the room. A little more spending would have obtained traditional cubicle walls to close off the open side, but it worked pretty well in practice. On the other side of the room were a whiteboard and a conference table, and lunch was typically eaten at that conference table. That said there were only like 5 desks in that room, and I'm not sure how well it would scale.