VR meetings, in-house therapists and serene garden rooms — welcome to the office of tomorrow

Joe Lennard, 30, from Kentish Town, could work from home — his company AccuRx, which makes medical software, is offering hybrid working for all employees. But since the office was redesigned, he’d rather come in every day.

“We now have a full kitchen and a huge reconfigurable table where everyone eats lunch together,” he explains. “Once a week our chief executive makes salads for everyone. On Friday the table gets changed into ping pong tables, or there might be someone doing a flower arranging workshop.” The office, in Shoreditch, also has an in-house therapist, meditation and parenting space, and booths for quiet work. “Working from my spare room doesn’t come close.”

If that doesn’t sound like the open-plan hellscape you remember, that’s because the office is undergoing a quiet revolution. The pandemic changed the way we work, namely, that we no longer have to sit at identical desks for eight hours a day. And while people are drifting back into offices — footfall in central London is growing, although remains 50 per cent down on pre-Covid times — companies are aware that they need to innovate what they’re offering in order to entice people on to a packed Tube.

“This is the moment when a lot of people are taking a step back and thinking, ‘Hang on, what’s the point of the office?’” says Dan Moscrop, founder of Them, a design agency based in Islington which works with clients including McKinsey and Sony Music. “What kind of space is going to make someone get out of bed earlier, get on the Tube and commute in order to mix with people who may or may not have Covid? A desk and a chair probably isn’t going to cut it any more — the office needs to be a destination in its own right.”

“Working from home only reinforced the importance of good office design,” agrees James Christian, co-founder at Project Office, which designed AccuRx’s new workspace. “If you’re only in the office three days a week, what you do away from your desk is as important, if not more, than what you do at it.”

So, what’s the plan? Moscrop says that the biggest priority for office designers now is a space that can morph to fit the hybrid working model. “Companies are removing a lot of desking, in some cases 70 per cent of desk space is going, and in its place we’re seeing flexible working areas which can be dismantled and rearranged depending on how many people are collaborating. Meeting room walls can move and be written on. We’ll also see a lot more spaces for socialising. The focus is on areas that will spark camaraderie and watercooler moments — the things you can’t get at home.”

“The office has to work harder than ever to create company culture — it’s no longer just a place to come and get some work done,” says Stefanie Sebald, head of design at Kitt which has designed offices for Oatly and Capital on Tap. “Innovative companies are catering to individual personality types rather than designing a one-size-fits-all sea of work stations. We’ll build a library or some soundproofed bubbles for those who are more introverted or want to do deep work alone, and also huddle booths and alcoves designed for two people to work on one screen. We’re also seeing requests for more outdoor spaces which have lounge chairs with built-in desks or quiet garden rooms.”

More outdoor spaces aren’t just about ventilation and employee wellbeing though, they’re also key to the other big office trend — sustainability. “I’m hearing about more office vegetable patches and herb gardens,” says Moscrop. “There might be composting on the roof or bee hives, and bike racks and showers to encourage employees to cycle to work.”

Sensor technology is also being used to make offices more energy efficient. “Smart offices can now make data-driven decisions,” says Pippa Boothman at Disruptive Technologies, which has produced smart sensors for the NHS and The Royal Opera House. “Why are we heating rooms with no one in them? Is there a window open that shouldn’t be? Is the fridge the right temperature?”

Although concerns about surveillance at work are valid (could a desk sensor betray your extra long lunch break?) Boothman says it won’t be long before employees enter an office and choose where to work that day based on noise level, air quality, busyness or bathroom cleanliness. “We all have great tech in our homes now,” she says. “If your office is less savvy than your living room, why should you bother going in?”

Technology might have also solved the perennial bug bear: the battle over office temperature. Google has built a prototype desk that adjusts to an employee’s personal preferences with a swipe of an identity card. It calibrates the height and tilt of the monitor, and even adjusts the nearby temperature with an air diffuser that controls the direction or amount of air blowing on you.

But if you’re still pining after your cosy bed-desk at home, you’ll be pleased to hear that many office designers are being asked to recreate a more relaxed, home-like environment at work. “The difference between the pre and post-pandemic office is the difference between a hotel and a home,” says Ryan Anderson, VP of global research at Herman Miller. “Hotels are largely given over to rooms for individuals, whereas home is thought of as a place for use over years, hosting lots of different activities.” To that end, office furnishings are getting softer and so is the lighting. After all, overhead strip lights don’t do anyone any favours on video calls.

On that note, a video conferencing room in the basement with a patchy connection now feels very 2019. Today’s virtual meeting rooms need to adapt to a blend of remote and office workers. Google’s Campfire meeting rooms have in-person attendees sit in a circle interspersed with large vertical displays showing those dialling in. At Microsoft, meeting rooms have high-definition cameras with automatic tracking ability, overhead microphones and evenly-distributed speakers to make it feel like people are in the room.

Some companies are even trialling holograms and VR meetings, and perhaps it won’t be long before we’re all beavering away at our desks in the metaverse. “Already we’re seeing companies such as Axel Springer, KLM and Deutsche Telekom using VR for effective remote collaboration, and it will soon become the standard, not the exception,” says Jussi Havu, head of 3D collaboration platform Glue. “The bottom line is that we’re not going back to the same office life that existed before the pandemic.”