(FORTUNE Small Business) – In business, workspace is destiny. From lobby to back office to plant floor, the places where we do our jobs influence how well we work--or don't.

Endless choices confront a company today when it decides to make or remake its space. How to keep yourself and your employees happy (and productive) in an era of long hours and high turnover? Should you sacrifice privacy and eliminate symbols of hierarchy to foster teamwork? On the grandest level, workspace design is about conveying a sense of mission to insiders as well as to visitors.

Certain basics should be part of the conventional wisdom by now. People whose forebears worked in William Blake's "dark Satanic mills" are, we know, happier and more productive working in natural light. But the deservedly maligned cubicle is still ubiquitous. And its democratized "open space" alternative is not always the answer.

All this makes workplace design hot. Most of the attention goes to big-budget players such as Alcoa, whose wavelike office building in Pittsburgh is made of aluminum and glass. The mahogany splendor is gone; even the CEO has just a tiny cubicle.

Behind the headlines, though, are smaller firms and the architects who work with them. Here are several that seem to have achieved the harmonic convergence of the practical, aesthetic, and philosophical. And, by the way, on modest budgets.

light

--Praxair is all about industrial brawn. The Des Moines company ships things like industrial gases inside heavy steel bottles and is heir to industry's long hierarchical tradition.

But the 120 employees who go through the doors today enter a space full of light and air. The space satisfies a guiding principle given to architect Cal Lewis: "We don't differentiate executives from office workers from manual laborers. We're all in this together."

The project got its start when Praxair decided to pull into one home all the company functions scattered in facilities around town. (It was then a small company; now it's part of Praxair Inc.) Everything would go into a plain-vanilla warehouse of about 58,000 square feet. With a budget of $44 per square foot, a lot of the building would have to be kept intact.

For Lewis, a partner in Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture, that was a perfect invitation. He kept a long existing wall in place but added translucent windows. Electrical conduits and ductwork were left exposed. Everywhere, gas tanks, like those the company ships, are used as architectural or decorative elements. Lewis kept the warehouse imagery throughout: no sound- absorbing tiles, no carpet, no plush furniture.

Today, visitors to the reception area are greeted with an awning of gleaming steel studs and a desk of bumpy metal plating. But nowhere do light, air, and industry come together in more happy alchemy than in the 28-foot-high circular conference room (another tank reference), clad in perforated steel that admits finely filtered light. The room has a majesty. It's also the spot where employees play a favorite game, throwing magnets up against the wall to see who can get them the highest.

--Ruth Owades knows that there isn't much joy in the jobs she offers: sitting at a phone for hours, taking order after order. But she doesn't believe that employees of her phone- and Web-order florist business, Calyx & Corolla, should be doomed to the usual fate of telemarketers. The typical call center, she says, is an airless basement where rows of cubicle walls isolate each worker, and the only view is the gray wall six inches in front of their noses. "How can [other bosses] expect them to give superb service?" says Owades, founder of the San Francisco company.

Instead, she agreed with her design firm, Studios Architecture, to put call desks at an angle, allowing employees to see one another. Surrounding them is a setting fit for a company dependent on photosynthesis. Sunlight pours in through the windows and through ceilings of corrugated fiberglass, the stuff of greenhouses. Flowers are displayed everywhere--a sensual break for employees and an inspiration for visitors. In their lunchroom, employees enjoy a view of San Francisco Bay as grand as any in town.

Studios Architecture had one other critical task: The space needs to expand and contract with the calendar. On Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and Christmas, the year-round staff of 50 swells by as many as 200 temporary helpers. The company found the flexibility it needed by converting a former warehouse. Says Owades: "Without spending a wad [she won't be more specific], we wanted to reflect all we stand for: good taste, simplicity. The building seems an appropriate extension."

color

--Can two tiny but very different companies share space? For Agitprop, a public relations firm named with tongue in cheek, and RocketScience, an ad firm whose name suggests underwhelming modesty, this was a real but inviting dilemma. PR people need quiet space for writing, thinking, and talking on the phone. Ad people tend to think out loud, in groups. In 1997, Amy Krakow, owner of Agitprop, had a tiny office near Carnegie Hall in New York City. "My conference room was a desk, and a wooden bench my reception area," she says. So she was interested, if cautious, when her friend Pat Peduto, of RocketScience, said he'd found rental space in SoHo, where the firms could bunk together.

Krakow agreed to let Peduto, an art director, design the office. Both were on tight budgets. Among her provisos: incorporate her old furniture. Peduto started with the idea that he wanted the space to have a "downtown" feel, using a lot of metal.

He was inventive, from the wood he added for warmth down to the smallest details, such as high school lockers used for storage. The office is a few blocks from Canal Street, home to one of the city's best flea markets. "I'd just walk down and see something to make a mail holder out of," says Peduto.

For the staff of six, he made workstations out of corrugated metal sheeting with walls high enough for comfort but low enough for workers to exchange conversation. Peduto's and Krakow's offices are at a diagonal for privacy, but the trapezoid layout prevents a feeling of claustrophobia. Instead of buying costly furniture, Peduto went to a kitchen-supply company and bought metal carts for use as computer tables and stainless steel aircraft cables for hanging important papers.

Two years later, the office has achieved the right "yin-yang" to make both companies happy, says Krakow (and at $11 a square foot, including furniture). "It's homey with an edge," she adds. "Like us."

--E pluribus unum. "From many, one" is the motto of the United States. It could also be the motto for Caribiner International, a public relations and events-planning firm in Dearborn, Mich. When Caribiner decided to consolidate two remote locations into a single space, it wanted to create both a dazzling space for clients and a sense of belonging for its 62 staff members, says Janice Legg, of the design and architecture firm, Gensler. But there was a third mandate: to give each department (sales, creative, and so forth) a distinct identity.

The answer, says Legg, was to create a series of "neighborhoods" surrounding a "village commons." Each neighborhood has a kind of front door inside the building, but the sense of identity is achieved mainly by appealing to the senses. The "kaleidoscope of textural experiences," as Legg puts it, starts with a gray tile road--sorry, Dorothy--running along a colonnade to each department. There the mood shifts. It starts with color, then architecture, then materials, and finally smaller elements, such as lighting, floor finishes, fabric, and patterns. The production offices, for example are blue. The creative department has more effusive lighting than does administration. (Total spent: $53 a square foot, furnished.)

The central commons is the symbolic heart of the organization, a space for casual meetings or entertaining clients. A floating, cantilevered counter directs visitors to the boardroom. And from the commons, they can see the wide range of color and form that composes the office in all its glory. From one, many.