My last year of work, I was primarily travelling / WFH employee.
When I went in to the office, such as for a 2 hour meeting and I would work there for the day because my commute was 90 minutes.. it SUCKED that there were no open desks that I could use, and yet, the office was often only 1/3 full. It was a projectized business and people were working on projects, out sick, at all day meetings, on vacation.
We were not allowed to work in conference rooms because they were limited and frequently booked.
I had to draw on my former in-office relationships to get someone's personal permission to use their desk if they were out, and I had to switch desks often halfway through the day. And I had to search for a desk of someone I knew, and then email them / call them to ask if I could use it for the day.
The same thing happened for visits to other offices (we were a project business, often travelling to work to help other offices out near the client location).. End result is most of the company had an assigned desk that they were not in town to use, but could not find a free desk to set down at the temporary location.
It was madness.
I definitely think that everyone in the office should have an assigned spot. I liked one design, where people would be out of the office for 6-7 hours a day -- everyone had a 2ft x 3ft "cubby" / "carol" like in a library. Personal space, put up your photos,mug, have your own chair and reference books. It was quite tight, but everyone could sit at once, have full team meetings in one room, had a locked file drawer, etc.
If you wanted more space for a day in office, or visiting, you migrated to the other side of the room where there were large open work areas and desks, including shared tables for setting out large drawing sheets, a side area with workshop like desks for electronics testing, and even a handful of closed offices if you were going to be on the phone for the day or meeting confidentially. These were reset at the end of the day.
Lovely!