Hybrid Work: The Future of Office Spaces

As hybrid work becomes the new norm, architects and real-estate developers are pioneering new concepts aimed at workers who are splitting their time between home and office. These innovations are set to become mainstream in the years to come, and they are reshaping the office buildings of tomorrow. The latest changes in building architecture and design are more than temporary, reflexive responses to the pandemic, architects, developers, and facilities managers say.

The return of employees to office buildings remains sluggish, reflecting new remote and hybrid workplace strategies. Workers’ office use on average is around 50% of prepandemic levels in 10 major U.S. cities monitored by Kastle Systems, which tracks security swipes into buildings. Employee engagement—a measure of how involved and enthusiastic workers are about their work and workplace—slipped in 2022 for a second consecutive year, according to a survey Gallup released in January.

To make the office a destination, with coordinated on-site days for collaboration, architects are increasing access to the outdoors, even in skyscrapers. More office buildings will include “touchdown” spots where visiting employees can log in and work. At Deutsche Bank’s new Americas headquarters in New York City, designed by architecture giant Gensler, trading floors include lockers for hybrid employees, to help avoid lugging equipment back and forth.

Office design is being rethought, and offices are going to look a lot more like living rooms (if your living room has high-end décor). In a trend dubbed “resimercial,” short for residential commercial, some office designers are going for an at-home vibe with fewer desks and more couches, armchairs, stools, and bistro tables—even fireplaces. The goal is to make offices less corporate-looking and more welcoming to employees who have become accustomed to working in the comfort of their homes.

Lounge-like areas that in the past would have been reserved for executives will be available to all employees in the future. The office headquarters Gensler designed for Marriott International Inc. in Bethesda, MD, features a communal space on the 21st floor with a fireplace, cabinets with an inset TV screen, sofas, and seating at a high-top island where employees can work or meet with colleagues—with beverages at hand.

New office designs will be more flexible and will reflect the lessons learned from pandemic remote work. The office of tomorrow will have more open environments that accommodate varied working preferences. These will include a mix of areas for individual focused work, private meetings, and collaboration—often within steps of each other rather than on different floors as in the past. Meeting rooms will be “less boardroom-style.” Instead, they will be adaptable areas that can be changed to suit the specific needs of a meeting.

To accommodate hybrid gatherings, meeting rooms will increasingly be equipped with immersive technology that allows those on video conference to feel as though they’re in the room. The new Marriott headquarters in Bethesda has an atrium-style area with a staircase that connects three floors. It could accommodate a thousand-person town hall, doing what a traditional auditorium would have done in the past, says Jordan Goldstein, co-firm managing principal at Gensler. “We’re seeing, in all the projects we have on the board, the need to think about how space can be flexible to bring people together in different ways—spaces that can convert, and be something that is comfortable as it is but then could easily handle greater capacity,” he says.

In conclusion, hybrid work is changing the offices of the future in many ways. Architects and real-estate developers are pioneering concepts aimed at workers who will permanently split their time between home and office. The innovations mentioned above are expected to become mainstream in the years to come, and they are reshaping the office buildings of tomorrow.