10 Trends That Are Changing the Future of Office Design

As employers experiment with new ways of working and brace for further change, designers and forecasters are grappling with what “return to the office” looks like in the physical realm. Workplace design hasn’t changed much since the late 1960s unleashed the office cubicle – an innovation its designer Robert Propst later granted could “create hellholes” – so architects and property developers are turning to data and science to envision the type of office people would be happy to leave their homes for.

On-demand layouts

The future office is a modular, adaptable space that can be reconfigured depending on needs and team size. This means a potentially smaller footprint and greater control for teams over their physical environment, says Max Navius of architecture, engineering and planning firm HDR. “There’s been a longstanding paradigm that rooms are mostly fixed and designed for permanence,” says the senior interior designer. “But conditions change. We talk a lot about ‘fixed to fluid’.” How these spaces adapt is where experts diverge. Navius brings up mobile whiteboards, freestanding screens, ceiling electrical points and furniture on castors.

Gemma Riberti, head of interiors at trends forecasting company WGSN, champions modularity, which “empowers people to shift furniture around and do what works for them”. Dan Sullivan, Kova’s vice president of R&D, sees it differently. “The idea of being able to evolve your space on a minute-tominute basis seems attractive but in practice, workers see it as a high-friction exercise. If they need to move a wall to have a meeting, they’ll go and sit outside.”

San-Francisco based Sullivan, the former head of design for Google R+D Lab for the Built Environment, is observing a shift to flexible, prefabricated partitions over metal or wood stud and drywall partitions so that, as workplace needs change over months or years, businesses can just move walls and change the finishes. “You don’t need to throw everything away. People seem to be really satisfied with that level of reconfigurability.”

Wellbeing and inclusion

Commercial buildings’ growing interest in designing for the neurodiverse – through reducing noise, sensitive lighting and high-backed seating – still has a long way to go, says Riberti. “But we are finally understanding that if you design for neurodiversity, you are designing for everyone.”

For the London-based forecaster, wellbeing extends beyond some potted plants. “People’s needs change over the day, from concentration to interaction; they can also change after a family phone call. Design has to encourage movement between spaces.”

She sees a return to personalisation – even in a hot-desking environment, where no photos hang, there are innovations that mean people can log into desks and chairs for presets – and the comeback of the office locker. “It’s the silly things like being able to leave a notebook when you come in two days.” Younger millennials and gen Z are less anchored to the physical place, she says, but want a sense of belonging nonetheless. “Companies will need to convey a welcoming feeling of ‘this is your workspace’, no matter how shared or sectioned.”

Tech-enabled modularity

According to EY’s Asia Pacific digital leader and partner, Will Duckworth, an evolution in office management platforms will happen alongside the rise of open-template offices. “There are loads of social reasons to return to the office but in terms of meaningful work, that means teams.” He says collaborative tools will advance to include scheduling teams. Hybrid workers on multiple projects would then come into the office at the most effective times, with spaces configured to suit team needs on any given day.

But companies aren’t going to give up the widened talent pool that a distributed workforce offers. Duckworth is also working with clients who are developing large LED wall panels that allow remote and onsite workers to sit “together” and turn to each other for a chat.

Designing with neuroscience

Perhaps the pandemic’s harsh glare on mental health explains architects’ widening embrace of neuroaesthetics, a science-based approach to the impact of visual and spatial stimuli on human beings. “When we enter a space, we have a biological and psychological response in our bodies,” says Kova’s Dan Sullivan, who uses neuroaesthetics to make design decisions to, for example, subdue areas for quiet work or activate collaborative spaces. He measures visual or acoustic distractions and the impact of colours, nature, light intensity and temperature; hard versus soft edges; enriched or austere surroundings; level of enclosure and vantage point. (On that last point: neuroscience supports the wisdom that you should never have your back to a room.)

The International Arts + Mind Lab at Maryland’s Johns Hopkins University is developing testing protocols for neuroaesthetics. “It’s not simple and it’s not all neurological,” says Sullivan of the emerging field. “It’s predicated on who we are as a person, whether or not we’ve had coffee, where we were born. But neuroaesthetics makes a valiant attempt to define these reactions through science.” He says tech companies have the appetite for risk and every motivation to use such strategies to build in micro-differentiations. “Providing the highest-quality focus space, the highest-level collaboration space, tends to give them a competitive advantage.”

A neighbourhood feel with a hotel aesthetic

The pandemic forced many to carve out a corner of home for work and many wanted to stay there. Still, Harvard-led research shows the ideal amount of time for hybrid workers to come into the office is up to 40 per cent of their hours – two or three days a week – and Amy Nadaskay, strategic advisor to owners of branded properties, quotes her company Monogram’s research that’s found people who never come in feel they lose an ability to socialise and collaborate.

London futurist Riberti says there’s much discussion about viewing the office as a neighbourhood, with hubs and various ways to meet. “You design spaces that give people a reason to come in,” she says. “The cost of living has an impact – commuting is expensive and colleagues are discussing making their lunch versus buying it.” She’s seeing continuing attention to finishes, art and the upholstery of everything, even storage. “There’s a lot more investment into making people feel like they’re in a space that cares about itself and therefore cares about them.”

Better air

From the earliest iterations, the Australian founders of TaskPod believed cleanliness would be top-of-mind for individuals working inside their one- and four-person office cubes. Each pod – there are 15 in Australian shopping centres, transport hubs and airports – has up to three high-speed fans continuously turning. The startup partnered with VBreathe to include a HEPA filter and sanitising mechanism. “Ventilation is important,” says TaskPod co-founder Tyson Gundersen. “And hygiene.”

Yet “there’s no standard of indoor air quality in Australia whatsoever,” says physicist and aerosol scientist Lidia Morawska. The director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality & Health at Queensland University of Technology is advocating for national indoor air quality (IAQ) standards, just as drinking water is regulated. Professor Morawska says she’s encountering “huge interest” from building engineers in monitoring offices’ IAQ; while buildings would require multiple sensors embedded inside their operating systems, the price of a single sensor is in the tens of dollars at most. “But like in any sector, voluntary approaches on important matters of public health don’t work; it has to be mandated.”

The “retailification” of co-working spaces

Will Kinnear, founder/director of flexible workspace consultancy Hewn, says he’s watching the same “flight to quality” in the co-working sector, too. “This is not an office anymore or real estate. This is service and hospitality.” Balder Tol, WeWork’s general manager for Australia and South-East Asia, similarly talks about needing to “blur the line between ‘corporate’ and hospitality” and focus on providing “commute-worthy” office spaces.

Co-working has had some rollercoaster years, from the lows of WeWork’s failed IPO to the reinvigoration of the industry as businesses jumped on short-term leases for newly hybrid – and sometimes fluctuating – workforces. Kinnear, who is based in the United Kingdom, has an eye on what he calls the “retailification” of the sector, saying people will choose from a spread of brands in the way shoppers in his town opt for Harrods or Primark. But unlike the heavy branding that accompanied WeWork’s emergence as a spectacular cultural moment, “people will be drawn towards a brand but not necessarily the signage. They’ll go to the space they feel represents them.” In the UK, he notes, flexible workspace provider x+why has strong environmental credentials through B-Corp certification.

Kinnear has toured some “wacky” co-working spaces in recent years; he’s seen slides, a garden shed and a darkened “Narnia” room with fake snow. “These have their place,” he says. “You have to listen to the occupiers. When you look at retail, top-end works and bottom-end works. Middle tiers get squeezed so you must offer something different.”

Data-driven design

Sensors, smart furniture and facility analysis are being used to study offices in real time. At the extreme end of data-driven design – beyond devices monitoring noise, light and temperature – are cameras that track staff over time to identify which locations they most use and like, and optimise spaces accordingly. For HDR (which does not track employees), “D3” is about quickly testing “what-ifs” with data analytics and simulations. “Adjacency, timetable, occupancy metrics,” lists Navius. “You convert that into a lightweight 3D interactive digital model to visualise how spaces could be distributed and allocated, better utilised or reorganised in relation to current and future needs.”

The shared office building

HDR’s sustainability leader, Simon Dormer, believes that in the future, we’ll re-examine the office floor plan through the lens of needs outside the building’s original use. “During the pandemic, parts of the residential space became commercial space, in the form of the at-home office,” he says. “This could be reversed, subject to regulatory approval, with remote working freeing up commercial space to become residential.” Sydney-based Monogram founder Nadaskay works with landlords to also think about available “non-office” space in the building – the rooftops, basements and entries (where, she points out “there’s so much same-same – a decent café operator and a vanilla lobby”). She asks instead: “How can you use those spaces to foster collaboration in the city, to have day-night use so the city becomes more vibrant?” Wherever CBDs are struggling, she says, the office building has a larger role to play.

The next steps in sustainability

A KPMG survey released this year found that one in five respondents, across all age groups, had turned down a job because the organisation’s ESG strategy did not meet their expectations. KPMG calls this “climate quitting”.

Embodied carbon, the emissions from manufacturing, construction, maintenance and demolition, can account for up to 75 per cent of a building’s carbon footprint. (The buildings and construction sector contributes 37 per cent of all carbon emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.) Some owners are looking at ways to reuse and repurpose existing buildings and their furnishings. In the ANZ London office, most of the chairs, tables and desks for collaborative work have been remanufactured with used metal parts and a new powder coating; the seating’s reupholstery uses recycled materials.

HDR’s Dormer says his firm’s short-term focus includes biophilic design (connecting the built environment with nature) and “design for disassembly”, which starts with furniture and fittings that are more durable, easier to fix or are under product stewardship – the provider is responsible for taking them back for reprocessing. From there, “materials will be increasingly Cradle to Cradle Certified, meaning they’re safe, circular and responsibly made”.

Dormer says we’re likely to see a rise in the use of mass timber and an increase in products as a service, such as lighting. This model moves away from ownership to leasing, which compels the manufacture of longer-lasting products.

SEE ALSO: The 5 Rules to Follow for a Successful Post-COVID Office