Is this what the office of 2025 will look like?
In the past decade, offices have already begun to evolve from the dreary cubicles of workplaces past. But it’s only just begun, and the next ten years will see even more dramatic changes.
The last thing the office of the future will look like is an office. A hotel, maybe. Perhaps an art gallery or a nice restaurant with gardens. But not like an office. Definitely not.
This is the conclusion some readers have drawn from the blue-sky thinking by MoreySmith, one of Europe’s leading design and architecture practices. The consultancy has unveiled a Workplace Futures Report(1) in partnership with The Future Laboratory, revealing what offices could look like by 2025.
The report identifies the three main social and demographic trends that will mean the workplace of tomorrow looks more like a home or hotel, than like the white-collar factory of today.
The first of these trends is data-based. Under pressure from wearable devices that record and analyse our daily routines and life patterns, workplaces will integrate with our personal technology to track our emotions and productivity.
Simultaneously, as working lives grow longer, a wider spread of age groups will be represented in the workplace – from starters in their 20s, to parents in their 30s and 40s and veterans in their 60s and 70s. Each group will need different kinds of spaces.
Third, and finally, sits the ubiquitous screen-based technology of our age. In the future, workplace design will aim to filter out digital distraction so that productivity grows without leaving workers feeling deprived of their devices.
The combined effect will be offices “that are no longer a bland desk in a dumb, indifferent building”, the report says. Instead they will become multi-generational live-work-eat-sleep hubs for men and women of all ages.
The report also predicts three ways that the modern workplace will adapt and evolve to reflect these trends.
The sentient workplace is probably the closest to becoming a part of today’s everyday workplace reality. While offices were once passive, hostile places that forced workers to adapt to fit into them, the workplace of tomorrow will work the other way around. It will adapt itself to its occupants’ needs, and will be designed and built to incorporate thousands of sensors that interact with workers’ wearable devices and smartphones. “The result,” predicts the report, “will be a playground for personalisation, forming atmospheric bubbles around individual workers.” This is already happening at Deloitte’s Edge building in Amsterdam, where an app controls parking, daily desk allocation, locker access and food ordering. Deloitte believes this has led to 60 per cent fewer absentees, a fourfold increase in job applications and a substantial increase in talent retention.
By the mid to late 2020s the hospitality workplace will also be a routine part of our working life, MoreySmith claims. Instead of the heavily patrolled entrance and strictly staff-only feel of today’s offices, the hospitality workplace will mix public and private spaces in a happy, relaxed blend. Workplaces will include public restaurants and cafes, rooftop terraces, art galleries, barber shops, nail bars, and even hotels, as the workplace enters the sharing economy.New office amenities will matter, providing variety and release from routine. In Dublin, both California-based software house Workday and San Francisco-based Dropbox have already introduced well-equipped music rooms. The Dropbox music suite is a cross between a recording studio and a smoky jazz club – not what you normally find in an office block.
Continue reading https://www.regus.co.uk/work-uk/is-this-what-the-office-of-2025-will-look-like/
Sources:
(1) http://www.worktechacademy.com/content/uploads/2018/02/The-Future-of-the-Workplace-Report-Morey-Smith-and-The-Future-Laboratory.pdf
(2) https://www.bisnow.com/dublin/news/office/funky-89352
(3) http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/6099/4819