This paper describes the concept of Cooperative Buildings and how they are intended to support creative activities in organizations. Based on personal experience (the author was member of the team who coined the term) and a literare review of the citations of seminal papers we describe the history of this approach and show in which ways it was adopted. Future knowledge work is not about tools but environments. In order to optimize creativity, innovation and quality of work it is essential to design complex and flexible architectures that can adapt to different and changing needs. In order to avoid redundant research on collaborative buildings, a key desideratum is a critical reflection of past developments, and evaluation of existing approaches in order to inform related design activities mistakes in the future. Readers from technological disciplines get informed about scenarios, tools, platforms, service architectures and applications in the context of cooperative buildings. Major requirements and R&D directions in this area will be lined out. Architects and designers of knowledge work environments get informed about the state of the art of cooperative buildings, the success and failures and how to use this knowledge for their design activities. Researchers of knowledge work get valuable insights about trends in future work environments, methodologies and further research desiderata.