I, too, strongly prefer having a personal desk. It is completely natural for a human to set up his environment according to their tastes and preferences, and I'm baffled that some office designers do not account for that.
Witness modernist architecture: "you shall all live and work in soulless concrete boxes, because I the brilliant architect have decreed that ornament is superfluous, and I can shape you into Properly Thinking People by manipulating your environment."