I have worked in a silent room, a cafe and an office. (In order of preference.)
A silent room is good, but sometimes it gets a little too much. You can hear the clock ticking; it's dead silent. However, you are alone so a lot of work gets slashed from your list.
With a cafe, you have the constant hub-bub of people entering or exiting the joint; and sometimes, you get a customer who wants to speak to the manager because the sugar in his/her coffee was off by 3.14 picogram.
An office? Yeah. But it depends on what sort of office. I have seen some really cool workplaces where you can sit on a beanbag or wherever you want to and work. So long you write, the place you work from doesn't matter. However, cubicles. NO.
But. The best "environment", at least for me, was in a natural sanctuary.
I had the great luck of going on a cruise to a natural wild-life reserve and we had a base camp near the wilderness entrance. Not too far from there, was a small water fall; and mother nature was kind enough to give us flat ground to sit. We set up a small work bench (not MySQL, mind you), some coffee and started working. We had a small solar reserve to power our appliances; the internet wasn't working too well in the beginning so it got a little frustrating but after a while, that was also solved.
It was by far the most serene, calm and beautiful "workplace" I have ever visited. The almost-faded sound of the waterfall mixed with the perfect scent of water on dry ground and the fine mist was just... compute error
We are planning another trip to the same reserve sometime in March; this time, I will be sure to post some pictures! :)