The Future of Workspace Design

Over the last few decades, we have seen violent pendulum swings in office design philosophy. We went from hierarchical layouts, through cubicles, to open-plan offices and seemingly back to the “flexible offices” we see nowadays. At first sight, that is what flex offices appear to be: a reaction to the under-delivering open office promise. When you look closer though, the modern flexible office is much more a reaction to changes in work processes. This is nothing new: the workspaces have always co-evolved with work processes. Different now is just how radically these processes are changing. Workspace designers better keep up!

New working ways, new working space

Before diving into the phenomena that shape the modern office, let us look at an example. Note the use of design, plants and work areas with varying degrees of openness. You can let the animation play, or navigate the space yourself:

We are facing many disruptive changes to our ways of working, but three phenomena stand out. The office of the future must be in sync with:

Modern Collaboration Modern work processes are highly complex. Employees are increasingly dependent on eachother, and collaboration is key to success. Knowledge workers also want the office to be a place where they can network. Does this mean that the open office advocates were right after all? Not really: knowledge workers spend over 50% of their time on tasks requiring individual focus according to a recent study by Gensler. Spaces that minimize interruptions must therefore also be added to modern offices. Open areas are not always the most enabling environments for team meetings either. The key is to carefully study the tasks and team structures of a company, and base workspace design decision around that. The optimal office often includes areas with varying degrees of openness, so the employees can choose the appropriate space for the task at hand.

Flex Working Thanks to technology, the workspace is no longer limited to the office either. Any desktop or mobile device can now be a direct line to your colleagues, so the world is our office. In line with these developments, flex working seems here to stay too. Whether by choice or by necessity: many employees spend part of their working hours outside the physical office. Consequently, it is crucial to understand to use patterns of a space: what is the office actually used for, by whom and when? Space sharing, hotdesking and hotelling may have a bad reputation, but they are a reality that workspace designers have to work with. With working life increasingly invading our homes, it is up to workspace designers to make the office feel a bit more like home.

Millennial’s expectations Knowledge workers themselves are more mobile too. Companies must use all tools available to them to attract and retain the best talent. Designing appealing, green and versatile spaces really makes a difference in the application and employment experience according to Recruiting.com. This is exactly why “making employees your customers” tops the list of Spacetor’s top 5 Workplace trends for 2017.

Recipe for future-proof workspace design

The challenges are greater than ever. Gone are the days that you could count the number of senior positions, make that many private offices, add a meeting room, and fill the rest of the space with cubicles. The open office movement gave interior designers a welcome dose of artistic freedom, but in the end failed to meet the needs of the workforce.

To design a future-proof flexible office, you need much more than good spatial planning and a bag of creativity. You need:

• to understand the nature of the work, and the purpose of the space in ever more flexible work processes
• to closely collaborate with the people that will use the space, and quickly iterate designs
• to intuitively understand the implications of each iteration: where to go for individual concentration, where for inspiration and where for collaboration?

Archilogic is the go-to tool for designing the workspaces of the future: we build interactive 3D designs from floor plans in 24 hours. Then the iteration starts: use intuitive editors to tweak the models, or go a step further and create your very own 3d apps using 3d.io.