Rethinking Design: The Evolution of the Office
- Carl Brown
A study by ISG, carried out in September 2024, found that those groups known as Millennials and Generation Z – in effect, people born between the early 1980s and 2010 – suered the most from home working, with 32% saying that productivity had fallen and 62% citing poor home working conditions. The survey also found that employees would like to spend three days in the office to optimise productivity rather than the 2.5 days a week anticipated by employers.
Inside the office of the future
So, what does the office of the future look like? Dan Drogman, co-founder of office tech specialist Smart Spaces, says the real estate industry has had to embrace smart technology because of covid-19.
Drogman adds: “Air quality is generating a lot of interest, as indoor air quality is understood to play an important role in fighting the spread of airborne diseases in buildings. Smart building technology can help proactively monitor the levels of contaminants present in the built environment and manage the air flows and fresh air ratio in a building.”
Beate Mellwig, workplace practice leader at HOK’s London studio, says: “It is important to investigate ventilation and filtration systems and determine what works best for the building. Spaces intended for groups can include carbon dioxide sensors in order for ventilation increases along with occupancy and carbon dioxide levels.”
Nigel Miller, managing director of Cordless, author of the report, sees compelling reasons to invest in tech: “Choosing to incorporate technology into the way we build and design offices will help us solve some of the most challenging questions our industry faces: around health but also on sustainability.”
A recent report from the British Council for Offices which highlighted that it is the integration of these technologies These are the sorts of findings that Iain Parker, one of the partners at London QS Alinea – which has
made its name working on towers in the capital, including 22 Bishopsgate – says mean the demise of the office has been overplayed. Offices, he adds, will continue to attract and retain talent, helping to build a company culture that no amount of Zoom or Teams calls can replicate.
“After 9/11, everyone speculated that it would be the end of tall buildings. It didn’t happen. Designs were adapted, as were operational procedures around things like security, but the world has continued to
build tall buildings at a significant pace. I believe the same concept will be true of offices.”
But things will change, that much people do agree on. Whether it be more naturally ventilated buildings, a reduction in occupation densities, more automation in communal areas and socially distanced desking and meeting rooms, what the office looked like before covid-19 will undoubtedly be different once the pandemic is over.
Developer British Land is one of the biggest in the London office market. It was behind arguably the most celebrated landmark tower of recent years, the Leadenhall Building, better known as the Cheesegrater, designed by the practice of Richard Rogers – whose 1970s Lloyd’s building the Cheesegrater sits opposite and which was handed the highest architectural protection, a grade I listing, nine years ago.
British Land is also redeveloping the 1980s Broadgate complex further north up Bishopsgate. Higher up still, where the City bleeds into Shoreditch, tower cranes have been up since the summer at a mixed-use site called Norton Folgate, designed by Stirling Prize winner Allford Hall Monaghan Morris.
Its head of development, Nigel Webb, says the £300m scheme, due to be carried out by Skanska, is slated for completion in 2023. “It’s one of our priority next phase projects,” he says, adding the rm pressed on with the Cheesegrater when the City was gripped by another global crisis – the financial implosion that threatened to sink the world economy more than a decade ago.
Webb says the gloss has been taken o the working-from-home honeymoon as the unexpectedly warm and sunny spring, followed by a largely balmy summer, gave way to the traditional wind, rain and dark nights of autumn. Winter has barely started and suddenly the prospect of more months working from a kitchen table, a bedroom or a spare room – if people are lucky – does not seem quite so appealing, especially when the curtains are being drawn in the afternoon.
“The longer this goes on, the keener people are to get back to the workplace. People miss that social interaction over autumn and winter,” he adds. “You can’t build a culture over Teams. [Firms] are trading o a culture built up in the workplace. We’re trading o the fact that we know each other and collaborate – 500 people can’t just meet each other over a functional process like Teams.”
For larger companies, certainly, the office is one part of its sales pitch to would-be employees. Given the choice of working on an out-of-town industrial estate or a well-appointed modern office, most would choose the latter.
Felicity Lindsay, a London-based real estate law specialist at Canadian law rm Gowling WLG, says: “Larger companies especially still derive a significant level of brand equity in the market from their office buildings. Those offices also provide a sense of belonging and community to employees, which in turn leads to increased engagement levels.”
Barry Jessup, a director with First Base, the mixed-use specialist co-founded by Stuart Lipton’s son Elliot nearly 20 years ago, agrees and says offices remain a destination for many “performing a crucial role as a place of collaboration, idea creation and learning”. He adds: “Occupiers recognise that the space they keep is a direct reflection of their brand and crucial in retaining talent.”
British Land says it is looking at smart technology such as touch-free access systems for Norton Folgate and purification systems for the air-conditioning. And yet, for all the niceties of working in a smart office – as opposed to a bedroom or kitchen table – and for all the hi-tech changes that will no doubt be ushered in by covid-19, there is one big problem that developers cannot quite as easily overcome: the commute.
“The biggest challenge is that people have enjoyed the extra time and not spending extra money on fares and being crammed on trains,” British Land’s Webb concedes. Jessup adds: “None of us likes to commute and we all want a working environment that blurs seamlessly with our personal lives.”
Webb says the working day will move more into shift patterns, with the traditional nine-to-five day being overtaken by staggered starts. “That was becoming a trend. What covid has done is accelerate those trends and put a greater emphasis on working from home.” Being able to cater for flexible working, then, is what occupiers will want from their offices.
Elliott Sparsis, the vice-president of real estate at Convene, a US-based workplace provider with two offices in London, says: “We have seen big names such as Google, Twitter, BP, Schroders, PwC and Standard Chartered taking active steps or publicly state their intentions to offer their employees more flexibility over how and where they work in the long term.”
He adds: “We believe there will be three places to work: the traditional central HQ, home and a third space, with all three operating seamlessly and technology being at the forefront of this transition, ensuring that rms can blend in-person and digital working.”
Getting in and out, up and down
Vertical transportation is a vital service in almost any office and in taller buildings in particular.
The initial solution involved altering management procedures rather than installations, as changes need apply only while social distancing is required and significant alterations are expensive. These have included adjusting controls to reflect reduced traffic, grouping floors into zones served by specific lifts, reducing the time doors stay open to let passengers board and controlling queues in lobbies.
Physical changes to systems have included increased mechanical ventilation to dilute airborne contaminants, vents in lift shafts and installing air-treatment systems to reduce contaminants and sterilise lift-car surfaces. Control systems with touchless operation have also been introduced.
Design features for new systems are now the priority. Ensuring adequate space to maintain social distancing in any new pandemic is leading to a reconsideration of the size of reception areas and lift lobbies, as developers weigh up the costs and benefits of providing larger spaces. Key design recommendations for new office buildings include:
- Selecting wide, shallow lift-car configurations in preference to narrow, deep cars. This allows faster loading and unloading and easier social distancing
- Ensuring minimum lift lobby dimensions are provided.
- Selecting doors at least 110cm wide to allow easier access and exit.
- Installing mechanical ventilation fans in all cars and fresh-air ventilation to all lift shafts.
Information compiled from a briefing note for the British Council for Offices, August 2020. And the Deloitte survey, while not good reading for them, makes it clear that offices will still remain key
for companies.
If one area of the UK has come to represent the traditional central office HQ more than most, then it is the Square Mile in London. The recently completed 22 Bishopsgate has added another 1.3 million ft² to the market, but when will it be filled?
A midweek trip into the Square Mile during the second lockdown resembled the City on a Sunday. If not quite dead, the area was eerily quiet, with office workers being easily outnumbered by construction workers.
Moss says the City needs to diversify – although he adds that the City cluster, the clump of towers including the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater and 22 Bishopsgate, will not be joined by residential blocks any time soon. Moss wants to see a greater emphasis on retail, leisure and culture, adding that is why the City approved Foster + Partners’ Tulip tower tourist attraction.
Still building
Ambitious plans for the redevelopment of 70 Gracechurch Street were sent in by Hong Kong rm Tenacity in the autumn. The rm’s chairman is confident that the City remains a desirable place to work Hong Kong rm Tenacity is planning two towers of more than 30 storeys each at Gracechurch Street, close to the Walkie Talkie on Fenchurch Street. Its plans for 55 and 70 Gracechurch were sent in over the summer and autumn – some months into the pandemic.
The rm’s chairman is bullish about the continuing importance of the City as a place to work. Patrick Wong says: “English is not going to be replaced as the international language of business anytime soon. “The British legal system will continue to remain the most trusted anywhere in the world. It is hard to escape the fact that the UK is an intellectual powerbase.”
British Land’s Webb says the whole of the City is “on a journey, it’s working its way through a different set of uses. It’s becoming a softer environment and it will move to a seven-day economy, where at the moment it’s still five days a week.”
Alinea’s Parker adds: “The City will have to reinvent itself somewhat, attracting a slightly different demographic of workers including more tech companies and other sectors such as healthcare and life sciences.”
At some stage in the future, Moss and his colleagues at the Corporation of London will be running the rule over more towers planned for their borough. British Land is behind a scheme drawn up by Danish practice 3XN at 2 Finsbury Avenue at Broadgate while Hong Kong developer Tenacity has recently submitted plans for two 30-plus storey towers at 55 and 70 Gracechurch Street at the southern end of Bishopsgate, designed by Fletcher Priest and KPF respectively.
Morgan Sindall’s chief executive, John Morgan, says that it will be two or three years before the long-term future of the office is decided. “I’m sure we’re not going to have a situation where people sit in offices five days a week,” he adds. “The idea of sitting in a row of desks is unlikely to survive. Offices will have to be really nice to attract people back in.”
Right now, though, no one can say for sure how things will be. “We haven’t,” McNamara cautions, “found what the new product is yet.”