The Post-COVID Office –– Architecture Critic Morgan
Saturday, December 12, 2020
Nothing will be normal ever again. Despite our national yearning for a return to normalcy, the coronavirus pandemic has changed how we live, how we work, and where we work. What, for example, will the post-COVID office be like?
The pandemic has helped us to see that the long evolution to gigantic and often remote office buildings was the abnormal. The Internet and related technology has made working outside of the corporate environment highly doable and perhaps preferable.
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I am an architectural historian, not an economist. But it doesn't take a business degree to understand that people are teleworking a lot longer than anyone expected. Occupancy rates in cities across the county are down by almost ten percent. Companies that are paying rent on office spaces are hurting, while landlords are dealing with defaulting renters and are unable to pay their own mortgages. On the other hand, employers are seeing that they can cut overhead and conduct business in previously unimaginable ways.
The office isn't going away. There is still a desire to have one. According to he Gensler Work from Home Survey, "There's no way to predict what the future workplace will be, but we know most people want to go back to the office." Although they "want the workplace to be different from the one they left behind."
In 2018, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported "more than 90 million workers spent time in an employer-maintained workplace." Even so, the reasonable outlook is to see the future of work as flexible and adaptable. Simply put, work will happen at home, in a coffee shop, and in other places a lot more frequently than before. Still, a lot of Americans crave the community–the sense of congregation–of working in an office.
Before we consider alternatives, how do we insure the safety of workers returning to traditional offices? The American Institute of Architects has issued guidelines in a report entitled, Reopening America: Strategies for Safe Offices. Those interested in the extensive and specific recommendations, from entries and elevators to restrooms and break rooms, can find the AIA paper here:
The AIA notes that before the pandemic workstations had decreased in size, while collaboration and meeting spaces had grown. “Expanding use of existing and new technologies, such as touch-free systems, task automation, conferencing and collaboration software, and electronic communications,” can mitigate some of the contact issues. As much of this will be short-term, the AIA's recommendations stress the critical role that design has to play: architects working with engineers, public health experts, and facility managers need to create a holistic approach to re-occupying offices.
Beyond the technical details of making re-occupied offices safe, we are wrestling with uncertainty about what are work places will be like (although for many who have worked at Starbucks, Café l'Artisan, or at Seven Stars Bakery might happily embrace a coffee shop office forever). Like our thriving sidewalk culture, Providence has some real advantages going for it, namely is size, scale, and walkability. In 2019, the National Board of Realtors noted, "twice as many millennials purchased homes in small cities, while a survey conducted by the National Trust for Historic Preservation revealed that millennials are gravitating to small cities with historic, walkable neighborhoods, where they are "able to find low-cost work space to start businesses."
Other than making our existing offices safe, we need to do some radical and creative rethinking, such as the kind that uncovered and reshaped the Providence River. We need to employ a new kind of development, and discard the build it as cheaply as possible and sell for as much as you can mantra. The new model needs to have developers and buyers all working together before and during construction, a co-designing approach that will allow for such unexpected demands as those imposed by COVID-19.
We cannot accurately predict how we will respond to these challenges, but we can stress elements that ought to be integral to future planning.
Instead of just a small business or two on the ground level of a building, we need to effect mixed use, including office space; ideally a quarter of all space in residential projects must be allocated for work. And we should continue to stress the positive changes we have already begun to embrace: fewer cars and more bicycles, the rehabilitation of existing buildings rather than new construction, green design, narrower streets and wider sidewalks, and office possibilities that are neither tall buildings or suburban office parks.But the real key is flexibility. We need to encourage working spaces in buildings built for other purposes, as well as for being closer to home, forging connections and dissipating isolation. Imaginative thinking won't stop the current hemorrhaging in office real estate. But it might help us better plan for an uncertain future.
William Morgan, who has occupied offices at Princeton University, the University of Louisville, and Roger Williams University, now works from home.