Shaping the Modern Office: Panel Discussions With Top Designers Reveal Today’s Trends

Although ubiquitous email is only two decades old and the iPhone launched a mere seven years ago, mobile working has already rewritten the playbook of office design. In fact, the transformation is so complete that its signatures—unassigned seating, bench tables, floor plans favoring chance interactions—already seem like old hat.

Do the 21st-century offices that dazzle on magazine covers really improve productivity? Should they be replicated throughout business categories and office cultures without question? This past summer and fall, Architizer and Allsteel examined these questions in four cities with a quartet of discussions, entitled “Designing for the Pace of Change.”

True to the series’ name, panelists surveyed the dramatic alterations to the office landscape, but did not accept them as gospel. They also detailed why the workplace discipline must continue to evolve—or, as Allsteel Vice President of Design and Workplace Resources Jan Johnson told the Chicago audience, “Good luck predicting the future. Resiliency, being flexible, and changeable is key.” Architizer has summarized this and other conclusions from those four events here, and we invite you to glimpse the office of the now and the near future at one of Allsteel’s nationwide Resource Centers.

Architizer CEO Marc Kushner moderates the Chicago panel discussion

Reflecting their host city’s digital DNA, San Francisco panelists examined the gadgetry underlying workplace transformation. Amy Hill, a Los Angeles-based workplace advisory manager for Allsteel, revealed that “a lot of people don’t know how to use the technology that helps them be mobile in the workplace. They are afraid to admit that and utilize change.” In turn, Michael Hirahara, who heads workplace operations for LinkedIn, said his company has staff for empowering these people, adding, “Employees aren’t going to embrace change if they aren’t brought into the process.”

Indeed, office users should be engaged as a workplace undergoes physical change, too. Responding to Gensler Design Director Collin Burry’s statement that “Once things are placed in position, very rarely do they move around,” CBRE Senior Managing Director Georgia Collins said, “We need to teach people about the spaces available to them.”

San Francisco panelists (from left to right): Georgia Collins (Managing Director at CBRE), Michael Hirahara (Head of Workplace Operations at LinkedIn), Collin Burry (Design Director at Gensler), and Amy Hill (Workplace Advisory Manager at Allsteel)

Participants in the New York edition of “Designing for the Pace of Change” agreed that users require many kinds of support in the transition to a mobile workplace. Panelist Rachel Casanova, a Perkins+Will principal and director of its workplace practice, observed, “We need to bridge to our partners in HR and technology and management, to understand what people are dealing with.”

Casanova also expanded the notion of what it means to empower users, encouraging a shift from offering them guidance to passing them the steering wheel. “One thing we’ve heard about is the idea of non-precious space,” she reported. Because startups rarely resemble their founders’ original vision, “You give them enough of a white box that they can define the solution. That’s what made them the entrepreneurs they are. If we create something too permanent, they’ll inherently reject it.” Allsteel Senior Workplace Strategy Manager Eric Johnson concurred: “You create a framework and give permission for this chaos to happen.”

Attendees mingle at the New York Allsteel Resource Center, designed by Gensler

“What about the introvert?” asked John Mulling, a senior associate and design director based in Gensler’s New York office. For clients not equipped to sculpt and reshape an office at will, the architect has to embed intelligence into a space—the key to which is acknowledging different approaches to productivity—Mulling said. “We have to be thoughtful about how we plan,” he noted, referring to the process of creating ideal conditions for each mindset. “Don’t put open collaboration space in the middle of the workstation zone. You have to give people a place to get away from all of that.” Casanova then likened accommodating different workers to “this consumer economy in which we have what we want when we want it.” If a person has a diversity of choices at his disposal outside of the workplace, “there’s demand for this choice when they’re in the office,” she added.

Marc Kushner (far left) moderates the New York City discussion with panelists (left to right): Eric Johnson (Senior Workplace Strategy Manager at Allsteel), Tom Polucci (Director of Corporate Interiors at HOK), Rachel Casanova (Principal, Director of Workplace at Perkins+Will), and John Mulling (Senior Associate, Design Director at Gensler).

Tom Polucci encouraged variety in workplace design for the sake of demographics. “There is not a single generation that goes to work,” said this director of interior design for HOK’s New York office. “There are a plethora of individuals that make up an organization, and as designers we have to accommodate everyone.”

The “Designing for the Pace of Change” conversations in Chicago and Boston echoed the diversity sentiment. In the Windy City, CBRE Senior Project Manager Karen Purcell noted, “Everyone wants to be in an open office, but they want personal space too,” and Allsteel’s Johnson suggested that management who didn’t have an empathic, collaborative approach wouldn’t grasp these desires. Also in Chicago, Gensler Design Director Jim Prendergast added, “There’s a real thirst to understand what the options are.” At the following week’s panel, Sasaki Associates Principal Victor Vizgaitis noted that our needs change quickly—“Everyone has learned to work differently, down to their mood on a particular day”—while fellow Bostonian and ARC Founding Principal Arthur Cohen observed that workplaces needs to serve a variety of populations. “An enterprise isn’t made up of just one kind of person,” Cohen said.

Chicago panelists (from left to right): Jim Prendergast (Design Director at Gensler), Karen Purcell (Senior Project Manager at CBRE), Mark Hirons (Principal at CannonDesign), Jan Johnson (Vice President, Design & Workplace Resources at Allsteel) and Max Chopovsky (Founder, Chicago Creative Space)

Though there was agreement among the panelists at these two most recent discussions, they were divided on what would spur the emerging trends in workplace design. Refuting the association of millennials with “open” everything, Chicago-based Mark Hirons said, “With remote working and consultants always being on the road, millennials are thirsty for mentorship.” The CannonDesign design leader for corporate/commercial interiors translated this desire for structure to the physical realm, and concluded more generally, “You have to make the office a magnet.”

The Boston panelists took a stand for continued openness, on the other hand, and predicted that the sharing economy would inform workplace design more deeply. “In Europe, clients may find a building with conference space to use, rather than allotting for that [within their own office],” said Ted Finnerty, a Jones Lang LaSalle regional vice president. Also appearing at this panel discussion, Allsteel’s Hill contributed to the sentiment, extrapolating, “Let’s not make conference rooms owned by the finance department or HR. All meeting spaces can be shared amenities. Tell colleagues that when you’re out of the office, your team has permission to use your office as a conference room.”

Boston panelists (from left to right): Ted Finnerty (Vice President, Project and Development Services at Jones Lang LaSalle ), Victor Vizgaitis (Principal at Sasaki Associates), Daniel P. Anderson (Principal at Anderson Porter Design), Arthur Cohen (Principal at Architectural Resources Cambridge), Amy Hill (Workplace Advisory Manager at Allsteel), and Paul Rinaldi (Assistant Vice President at Boston University Planning & Design)

All four discussions shared at least one definitive conclusion, which is that the architect is not doing his or her job by rolling out a formulaic workplace design. Rather, the more sustainable solution is based on an in-depth engagement with the client and its office culture. If such research is a best practice—even a foregone conclusion—among architects, the final Boston edition of “Designing for the Pace of Change” included a last word from Anderson Porter Design Principal Daniel P. Anderson. The intense therapy that launches a design process needs to be conducted continuously, he said, perhaps beyond even the date of occupancy. “When change doesn’t happen as a singular event, but needs to happen gradually,” Anderson remarked. “That changes design.”