On Boston's North Shore, nurses entrusted with the care of premature babies designed their hospital's nursery, right down to the location of oxygen and other outlets at the head of each crib.

One of Cornerstone Research's top executives in Boston escorted employees on the low rung of his legal analysts to view stylish office partitions selected by a designer to please them.

The critically acclaimed headquarters of Genzyme Corp. in Cambridge is an extreme example of employee-centered design. Architects at Stuttgart, Germany-based Behnisch, Behnisch & Partner ensured that all employees, even document processors, have a view of the Charles River, Kendall Square, or the light-infused glass atrium at the building's core.

"Imagine you're a plant, and you need light," said Behnisch architect Martin Werminghausen. "Humans are not that different."

Employee-driven design is moving into workplaces where so-called knowledge industries compete for prized employees, whether biotechnology researchers or high-fashion sneaker designers. A pleasing office is one more attraction.

"Senior management is realizing that they need to understand and observe and question and poise themselves to be the most competitive they can," said Elizabeth Lowrey Clapp, director of interior architecture for Elkus/Manfredi Architects, which designed Cornerstone's new office in the Back Bay section of Boston.

Employers for decades have plopped the rank-and-file into cubicles, an entrenched tradition that sparked a Dilbertian rebellion. Then came the Internet boom and offices inhabited by young wizards and outfitted with playrooms. When the economy fizzled, basketball hoops and foosball games were carted away.

But vestiges of that office culture are resurfacing in new ways. With the old, top-down managerial style no longer in vogue, a democratic workplace is reflected in the interior space.

"If you want something out of" employees, said R. Vickie Alani, a senior associate principal at Add Inc., a Cambridge interior design firm, "you have to give them something too."

The creator of the Dilbert cartoon character, Scott Adams, does not see an employee-design trend taking off, though. The original intention of cubicles, he said, was to mold them to each individual's needs, a different configuration for a left-hander or more storage for a packrat. But "management realized if you made them all the same it'd be a lot cheaper," Adams said. "The entire idea went bad."

Typically, employers that are relocating do little more than survey employees about their work before moving them into a new office. Given the chance, everyone wants a big corner office, which is impossible.

Money is the constraint, particularly in Boston and other cities where commercial rents are at a premium.

Steelcase Inc. and Herman Miller Inc., which put decades of thought into furniture design, do a fine job for most offices, said Douglas Noonan, real estate director for Reebok International, which consolidated 1,250 employees in a new Canton headquarters in 2000.

"You can take advantage of that information," he said.

Reebok did consult with its 40 or so shoe designers when planning their workplace. Executives had an impression that creative people need easy access to each other, to "brainstorm." Designers set them straight: They need quiet to concentrate.

After much discussion, they agreed on a "pinwheel" design, with clusters of three work stations forming a circle around a center pole. The spaces have room for large tabletops where they can spread their work or pile their shoes. Separating each of the three designers are eight-foot walls higher than is typical in cubicles for privacy.

"They were treated with the respect that their position and function within the company deserved," Noonan said.

At the suggestion of Beverly Hospital's architect, nurses threw themselves into creating the Special Care Nursery to replace a cramped one they called "the cave." A couple of nurses, including Lisa Pelonzi, who manages the nursery, met every week with architects and then consulted the staff. All the nurses regularly toured the circular floor plan as it was being constructed. "What made this project so successful is the architect, contractors, project managers and nursing staff all worked together," Pelonzi said.

A key decision was moving the nurses' station from the middle of the nursery to near the main door, allowing medical staff to speak freely about a case without alarming parents. Staff also asked for, and got, a room with a television, bed, and shower for stressed-out parents to retreat from babies with jaundice, sepsis, respiratory, or other problems.

Nurses obsessed over the unit's 12 baby bays. It was critical to demarcate one side of the crib for nurses' work, the other side for parents. "In the old unit, we were constantly in each other's space," said Mary Beth Cormier, a registered nurse, as she swiftly inserted a feeding tube down the nose of a 4-pound baby named Adam. In the new unit, they are "not constantly bothering each other."

Nurses deliberated over a model of the bays, arranging and rearranging it. Their medical-supply cart for diapers and feeding supplies, they determined, must have one deep drawer for linens, three five-inch drawers and a table on top for working. They compromised on height high enough for tall nurses, low enough for short nurses. And each bay has its own thermometer, diaper scale to gauge fluid intake and refrigerator for formula. In the cave, they shared.

Nurses' input was vital, said nursing director Paula Cronin, because the design allows them to focus on their priority: the babies.

One can stand on the ground floor of Genzyme's headquarters and look up through the glass atrium to the sky. Employees dot the glass walls enclosing each floor, sitting in break rooms with their coffee or meeting in "pods" with two modern red chairs. Architect Werminghausen said the getaways create a "neighborhood" feel on each floor. Employees can control the temperature in their immediate area, with separate thermostats placed in each office or thermostats shared by small groups.

Debbie Gunkel, legal assistant to Genzyme's intellectual-property attorneys on the 10th floor, worked hard on their office design. She and other employees who would work throughout the company met infrequently with architects at first. But as the building took shape, Genzyme's project managers invited them to see mock office setups sold by various furniture companies and pick out their favorite conference and office chairs, file cabinets, and bookcases.

Gunkel and a second legal assistant, for example, requested that waist-high cabinets be interspersed among the tall file cabinets and book cases, making it easier to array heavy files or law books on the low countertop to review them, said the petite Gunkel, plunking a heavy patent book on the counter to make her point.

"They wanted to know, is this workable, is this comfortable?" said Gunkel. Once the furniture selections were narrowed, individual employees each picked their own chair and storage cabinet.

In helping to design the offices, she was constantly asking co-workers, "What do you need?"

"It was a lot of work," Gunkel said, "but you felt it was a great opportunity."

Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company