I don’t know if this is what you read, but this reminds me of Bell Labs:
ONE element of his approach was architectural. He personally helped design a building in Murray Hill, N.J., opened in 1941, where everyone would interact with one another. Some of the hallways in the building were designed to be so long that to look down their length was to see the end disappear at a vanishing point. Traveling the hall’s length without encountering a number of acquaintances, problems, diversions and ideas was almost impossible. A physicist on his way to lunch in the cafeteria was like a magnet rolling past iron filings.
I don’t know if this is what you read, but this reminds me of Bell Labs:
― New York Times
The thing I read was either about Bell Labs, Google, Pixar, or a lab at MIT. I may have seen multiple articles make this point.