Office Space Redesigns, Experiments After COVID – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

The coronavirus has already changed the way we work. Now it is also changing physical space.

Many companies make adjustments to their offices to make employees feel more secure when they return to their personal work, such as: B. improving air circulation systems or moving desks further apart. Others are dispensing with desks and building more conference rooms to accommodate employees who still work remotely but come to meetings.

Architects and designers say this is a time of experimentation and reflection for employers. Steelcase, an office furniture maker based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, says its research shows that half of global companies are planning major office remodeling this year.

“This year, perhaps more fundamentally than ever, made you think, ‘Hey, why are we going into an office?’” Said Natalie Engels, design principal in San Jose, California, at Gensler, an architecture firm.

Not every company makes changes, and Engels emphasizes that it is not necessary. She urges customers to remember what worked well – and what didn’t – before the pandemic.

What office life will look like after the pandemic is still open. But real estate experts have no doubt that there will be a surge in empty commercial properties. In many cities, developers say some of the buildings can be remodeled to deal with the affordable housing crisis. The practice is called “adaptive reuse” and has been used before to revitalize urban cores in one break-in. Now some legislators are preparing laws that would make it easy for a building that has lost its purpose to find new life.

However, designers say many companies are looking for new ways to make office workers feel safe and busy, especially as staff shortages make it difficult to hire.

Last year, this prompted the food and pharmaceutical company Ajinomoto to redesign the design of its new North American headquarters outside of Chicago.

Ajinomoto employees returned for personal work in May in a building with wider hallways and glass panels between the cabins to give them more space and try to feel more secure. To improve mental health, the company transformed a planned work area into a spa-like “relaxation room” with loungers and soft music. In the event that customers do not want to travel, a test kitchen is wired for virtual presentations. And a cleaning team comes by twice a day and leaves post-it notes to show what has been disinfected.

“It may be an exaggeration, but it may offer comfort to those sensitive to returning to a personal work environment,” said Ryan Smith, executive vice president of Ajinomoto North America. Smith estimates that 40% of the new headquarters design has changed due to COVID.

Shobha Surya, Associate Manager for Projects and Sales at Ajinomoto, loves the space.

“The office gives you a work-life balance,” she said. “You are more concentrated here and have no distractions.”

Surya said she is also excited to work with her colleagues again.

She is not alone. Surveys show that office workers tend to miss socializing and collaborating with colleagues the most, said Lise Newman, Workplace Practice Director at SmithGroup architecture firm. Companies try to foster this relationship by creating more social centers for their employees. Some imitate coffee houses with wooden floors, booths and pendant lights.

“Companies are trying to make it feel like this is a cool club that people want to come to,” Newman said.

Steelcase has divided one of its lobbies into cozy meeting rooms of various sizes, which are separated from one another by planted partitions. Mobile video monitors can be retracted so that remote workers can also be involved in discussions.

But after a year of working from home, some employees crave privacy, so Steelcase added more glass-enclosed cubicles for private conversations and cocoon-like cubicles with small sliding doors.

Mark Bryan, a senior interior designer at M + A Architects from Columbus, Ohio, expects a more fluid office culture with different workplaces on any given day in the future. Introverts can choose a small, private room; Extroverts, a table in the office café.

Some office changes reflect a new commitment to hybrid work. Valiant Technologies, which provides technical support and other services to companies, lets its employees work mostly from home, but lets them reserve a desk for the days they want to come to the office. The New York company has removed rows of desks and made more space between the remaining ones. Employees leave keyboards, mice, and headsets in lockers.

Megan Quick, a sales rep at Valiant, said she appreciates the company that allows her to get back into office life this month.

“We need a lot of time to reorient ourselves,” she said. “It gives me a feeling of security when I let us set the pace for the return.”

Not every design change will last. When Steelcase started bringing back some workers last summer, they pushed the tables in the cafeteria wide apart, allowing only one person per table. It made the room so depressing that no one wanted to sit there, said Jim Keane, CEO of Steelcase.

“An important lesson is that it has to be safe, but also inspiring,” he said. “People will actually expect more from offices in the future.”

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