Workspaces for Dreamteams: Office Space Layout and Interior Design in the Post-COVIDEra

The modern office aesthetic was born in New York City in the second half of the Twentieth Century. And will be reinvented here again for the 21st. Thing is, NYC still encompasses the zeitgeist -- all of the pressures that everyone else is feeling: fear of the virus, exconomic insecurity, madening home-working environment — we're doing that, but more so. New York “New Offices” will need to account for all of the trends, pressures, constraints that 2020 has wrought, and solive it for 2021.

Layout/Floorplans/Space-plans. 
There are lots of words for it. But they all signal the same thing: perhaps the most important consideration when considering office space is the kind of organization you'd like to run. Some considerations before even undertaking a design project, or bouncing around design ideas are understanding the true stakeholders and their priorities. Some basic questions to answer for yourself at the start of the design process. 

• Who is this space for? Employees, yes. But who else? Are clients coming by? Press? Potential recruits? This is probably the most important question to answer, internally, and should drive everything else about the project.

• What's your budget? Don’t know how much stuff costs? We wrote a post to help you think about and plan your budget. And a google doc for budgeting here.

• What vibe are we going for?

  • Cool? For those looking to lure young recruits, this still counts. Young people meet their friends and network in offices and prioritize coolness over the rest. If you’re trying to lure the under-35 talent, this will always be critical.

  • Professional? Refined? If you’re in professional services, and your clients visit your office (law firms, financial sector) you’ll want to signal wealth, good taste, and an overall elevated aesthetic. Trustworthiness signals

  • Luxurious? See above, with extra finance.

  • Comfortable? Efficient? Are you answering the call of your team that is losing their minds working at home? Then this space is for them, and should be designed as such.

• And finally, how do you think you’ll want your space organized?

  • Open Office:
    Co-Working type, open-plan offices have been all the rage up until a Pangolin rubbed up against a bat, or whatever, somewhere across the globe. Praised for their capacity to foster collaboration, their true advantage was, of course, their cost-effective offering for historically expensive cities like New York and San Francisco. Moving a team from a traditional office model to an open plan could cut rent expenditures by as much as 50% every year. Not to mention the saving of NOT building independent, private offices in the first place. Putting up studs and sheetrock and tape costs more money than many CFOs seem to expect. And not putting them up, is an option most of them opted for whenever previously given the choice. 

Dynamic Yield NYC HQ.
Designed By Mammoth Projects

The truth is, the open-office is a great solution for a certain kind of company. It's not that it's suddenly a disaster, but its previously prescriptive use/and overuse of this layout maybe was. If you're a young team, looking to save on construction costs and to encourage collaboration, the open office may still be your best bet. 

A Return to the Cubicle?
The media has been vilifying co-working as a model that has "broken-down" in a pandemic. And even though it has, I'd argue that a traditional, cubicle farm would have broken down just the same. At the height of the pandemic, I refused to go to my own private office too. The risk wasn't the person who would sit next to me. But the risk was the commute, the getting of one's lunch, the bumping into people. 

What's true is that for all of it's efficiencies, open plans were difficult places to focus in. And now that the slate has been cleared, it's a good time to revisit the merit of this system of working. Spaces that are ideal of collaborations are problematic for concentration, and visa-versa. Companies looking to maximize both will need to embrace that fact and prioritize efficiency via a private office/21st-century-cubicle-model or invent a new one: a hybrid-office.

Hybrid-Model:
Many -- at least in journalism-- have signaled that perhaps the post-Covid office will be a combination of time spent at the "office-office" and the "home-office". This model seeks to be rid ourselves of hours spent commuting each week by allowing part time work in one's own home, while also allowing for some time to be spent at a shared office space for the sake of collaboration, socializing, and -- presumably -- productivity. For companies wishing to make this model work -- financially -- they will need to make use a system that had started to gain traction within office interior design in the few years before Covid -- "hotelling". 

Hotelling a system of communal spaces that are shared among employees. In terms of style, these can be a combination of private offices, benching, and standalone desks sprinkled with communal 

Indeed, for those wishing to mitigate their office footprint, both in favor of their employees' preferences, morale, and their own bottom line, many companies have chosen to subsidize -- at least some portion -- of their employee's home office space. Typical corporate home office subsidies have been reported between $500-$1,000. Meanwhile, a company moving to a new office in New York City should budget $8-10K per employee on construction costs of a buildout, and roughly the same in rent, every year. 

Office Design Trends:
I plan on putting together a full post on Design Trends As I expect them to manifest themselves in 2021-2022, and will add it here, when it's ready. But generally, I think that the direction of office design will be the anti-

Practical Considerations:
Light Fixtures.: Natural Light vs. Artificial Light. Of all of the investments you can make in your team, I believe light is the most critical. Its ephemeral nature makes it a difficult sell to a CFO, but the quality and enjoyability of a space rests squarely in light quality. The investment is substatial

Storage, Built-in Shelving, Bookshelves. Most of the storage that we build in offices falls into two categories: confidential and decorative. The former primarily for accountants, the latter primarily for lounges and entryways. 

Office Furniture and ergonomics - desk chairs. Standing desks have become the norm in most offices, and there is no shortage of companies making quality products. 

Post-Covid:
According to the Economist, "Jack Dorsey, the head of Twitter, says the company’s staff can work from home 'forever' but Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, says home-working is 'a pure negative'". 

In 2020, the Atlantic (alone) reported the following: Never Go Back To The Office: The coronavirus killed corporate culture. Get used to working from home (May 2020), but also Generation Work-From-Home May Never Recover: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices(Oct 2020), and maybe that's why they predicted that Walls are Back: The End of  Open Plan Everything (July 2020).

Size Matters: The Small Office 
Small offices have an advantage in often not having the real estate to build out the truly expensive components office spaces: kitchens, bathrooms, etc. Their tasks are mostly focused on furniture, decor, and branding. 

Aesthetics:
With a few exceptions, your brand is your color palette. Period. Or at least the beginning of one. If you're Coca-Cola, you're starting with Red. And if you are Coke's decorator, you're spending the rest of your time figuring out how to make that red not completely appalling in 3d, at the scale of Coca-Cola's Corporate Headquarters. Good design tells a story. The nature of stories can be varied: who you are, where you come from, where you're going, it's all valid. But who you are has to sit at the epicenter of that narrative if it is to be believed.  

Office Inspiration:
I am a firm believer that your brand should be your own inspiration. And did a full post about that here. You can like other stuff -- minimalism, maximalism, midcentury, Danish, whatever. And that can all be incorporated. But build the brand into the walls. It can be as bold or subtle as you like, but your vision for the space should come from the messaging that the rest of your brand is sharing -- with customers, employees, stakeholders. Find a designer who has done that successfully for someone else, and hire them to do that for you. 

We're a New York City-based design studio and have worked with some of New York's greatest teams like  Andela, Anomaly, Seatgeek, Nuts.com. You can check out our work here.

If you'd like to discuss your office project, please drop us a line HERE.