How Workplace Design can determine the success of Return-to-office strategies

Many companies are discussing AI tools. You talk about a change in the logic of work. What is the difference?

Shahin Farahzadi: If AI enables me to write my emails 30 per cent faster but I then go on to have exactly the same meetings, I have not created a new world of work. It becomes interesting when we ask ourselves what we are going to do with the time we get back. Which tasks will still be needed at all? Which decisions can be made earlier? Which teams really need to come together in person? And what do we want people to come into the office for in future? At that point, we are no longer talking about a new tool. We are talking about organisational change. And that has consequences for architecture. If work changes, we cannot simply retain the old floor plan and add another digital tool somewhere.

As routines, analyses and even decision-making proposals become increasingly automated, what tasks will keep the office relevant in the future?

Shahin Farahzadi: Today, an office has to make the commute worthwhile. If I can concentrate better at home, I do not need a desk in the city where I do exactly the same thing with more distractions. I come into the office because things happen there that are less likely to happen at home. I meet people, come across things by chance, we discuss ideas, discard them, sketch things together, laugh, perhaps even argue occasionally – and ultimately arrive at an idea that none of us had before. The office is no longer taken for granted and, as a result, is becoming more important. At LEPEL & LEPEL, we have been talking about building relationships for many years. I believe that, in future, we will need to understand this even more literally. The office is no longer the place where work is monitored. It is the place where relationships, culture and shared ideas emerge.

You say that the office is becoming more strategic. How can you recognise a strategic office and one that is still based on old ways of thinking?

Gerda Karal: For us, a good office does not begin with the furniture plan. If the first question is how many desks we can fit per square metre, we may be optimising the wrong thing from the outset. First, we want to understand how a company actually works. Where are good decisions made? Where do people meet? Who needs quiet? Which teams need to encounter each other more often? How should the company feel to employees and visitors? Only then does this translate into space. For us, a strategic office is corporate strategy made tangible through the built environment. At its best, you can sense how an organisation thinks and how it wants people to interact as a community.

Which spatial qualities will become more important in future: concentration, creativity, interaction or something else entirely?

Gerda Karal: All of them, really. What will matter more is an office’s ability to support transitions between these different states. We like to think of it more as a good city than as a conventional office space. A city has lively squares, quiet streets, places to meet, places to eat, places to retreat to and sometimes unexpected corners that have not been completely predetermined. Why should a good workplace be any less diverse? There is also something that is easily forgotten amid all the technology: we experience spaces through our bodies. Light, acoustics, materials, temperature, smells and movement all shape how we feel and how we work. The more digital our work becomes, the more interesting we therefore find spaces that feel genuinely real.

Many companies already have existing office space. What can they do today to gradually prepare their workplaces for this new reality?

Shahin Farahzadi: First of all, do not rip everything out. We would start by observing. Which spaces really work? Which meeting rooms are constantly full? Where does nobody ever sit? Where do people remain standing and talking for another 20 minutes after a meeting, even though the space was never designed for that purpose? There is an incredible amount of information in these observations. You can then intervene very selectively and experiment. Perhaps a space needs fewer fixed workstations and one really good project room. Perhaps there are not enough places to retreat to. Perhaps a large conference area is actually being used for entirely the wrong purpose. We like the idea of prototyping: try out a change, observe what happens, learn from it and then develop it further. An office does not need to be finished today for the next 20 years. It should still be adaptable in 20 years’ time.

Which misconception about the future office do you think will surprise us most in five years’ time?

Gerda Karal: That the office of the future has to look futuristic. I actually believe the opposite. In five years’ time, we may see less visible technology than we do today, because truly good technology will eventually disappear into the background. At the same time, materiality, atmosphere, food, interaction, nature, movement and genuine human connection will become more important. The office of the future does not have to look like a spaceship. It may even look more human than the office of today.

Thank you for talking to us.