Orfield Labs has been involved in office design since its inception. As a major building type for the company, the lab has completed over 40 million square feet of office space, providing consulting in acoustics, lighting, daylighting, thermal comfort, audio visual, and indoor air quality. With a particular emphasis on acoustical privacy and acoustical and visual perceptual comfort, Orfield began formally measuring all the perceptual aspects of buildings beginning in the 70s. Since, the firm has remained as the only lab in the country to be working across all the sensory disciplines.

In 1998, Orfield founded the Open Plan Working Group (OPWG), which was originally sponsored by Hayworth, Armstrong, Hunter Douglas, Phillips, Lutron, and others. For twelve years, the lab held international seminars on research regarding the office space; this was the first building type where Orfield demonstrated that extremely good design can be done in a normal budget with no additional cost.