How Office Design Has to Change in a Postpandemic Workplace

Over the past four years, a contentious conversation has played out in the world of design: What is the future of work, and what should it actually look like?

The conversation, once a place of common ground, takes as self-evident our desire not to return to where we were before the pandemic, but to move forward in showcasing a new visual expression of what work can be.

In many ways, that means a wholesale rethinking of how an office looks. As functions change, so must form. But as anybody who has cursed or praised their workspace knows all too well, design has the potential to be an optimistic act, where invention and ideas have the power to change our lives for the better.

Rarely have we needed that optimism more than we do now in our post pandemic workplace. In our quest, designers have embraced three universal truths about the reinvented workplace: the widespread adoption of hybrid work models; the importance of well-being in the workplace; and the increased desire to make the workplace meaningful. These three priorities have prompted designers to undertake a fresh journey in conceptualising and designing workspaces crafted for a new era.

The Cubes, shown at the Menlo Park, Calif., offices of Facebook parent Meta Platforms, are that company’s way to solve the noisy office. PHOTO: CAROLYN FONG FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The new hybrid workplace

There was a time when the design of an office was simple and straightforward. Everyone had a desk, meetings occurred in conference rooms, and social moments were allocated to corner water coolers, small footprint kitchens and a copy room.

Over the past few decades, the design of the workplace has seen a tremendous evolution beyond the simple and toward the diverse, with workplaces introducing such elements as game rooms, meditation spaces, all-hands assembly halls, screening rooms, full catering kitchens, coffee bars, podcast studios, gyms—just to name a few!

But in many ways, those changes are minor compared with what must happen now. Workers’ expectations changed during the pandemic. They got used to many of the pleasures of a home environment—and they want some of those pleasures transferred to the workplace; the separation between what work looks like and what home looks like can’t be as stark as it once was. The generational differences also became more apparent, as new workers began their careers working from home, making their expectations of the workplace often different from previous generations’.

In addition, home has become a place for “solitary” work time, which means the office becomes a place that has to be more conducive to collaboration and less a place to get away by oneself.

What exactly might that look like? In some cases, desks are being replaced with lounge- configured soft seating and warmer temperature lighting; conference rooms are being removed from their enclosures and being brought out into the open; and private offices are being made bookable, so that more people can access them when they need focus days in the office.

It may appear that these simple changes wouldn’t have a large visual impact on the built environment, but they do. Bringing conferencing into the open, offices are visually shifting to a more active and dynamic space where collaboration and activity are front and centre. And where clients lean toward more social and soft seating, the overall vibe quickly moves from a familiar office to more of a buzzy cafe where coming together occurs across a coffee table in lieu of a conference table. It can make all the difference.

Amazon’s new office space in Midtown Manhattan is a former Lord & Taylor flagship store. The conversion was designed by architecture firm WRNS Studio. PHOTO: THALIA JUAREZ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The new Amazon office space focuses on social spaces that promote collaboration and interaction, with ample access to natural light. PHOTO: THALIA JUAREZ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Workplace wellness

During the post pandemic recovery period, our clients expressed heightened concern for the safety of their staff. People want to feel protected and healthy when returning to work. That means investing in the mechanical systems and ventilation strategies that clean and move the air within a space, and in materials that remove or reduce airborne toxins and harmful materials from daily touch.

The most visible tie to wellness comes from a renewed desire to connect to nature. That can be a view outdoors, outdoor terraces or designing opportunities to bring nature indoors with lush and verdant interior landscapes. Whether it be the visual connection to, or the direct ability to touch and engage with landscape, the impact on the visual environment is tremendous.

To complement this natural touch, we are also seeing an investment in the use of natural daylighting in spaces through more-intelligent lighting controls and a reduction of artificial lighting in favour of natural daylighting.

It’s more than work

Work and life were distinct in the past, but in the past decade, offices have expanded to include more aspects of daily life. The post pandemic office accelerated that expansion. Today, office design aims to blur these boundaries by inviting everyday experiences into the workspace. This is perhaps the most important, and it’s a notion we call “life-ing.”

We are seeing a concerted shift toward making the work environment far more participatory with the outside world due to two critical factors—an abundance of space and a need for energy in the workplace. For companies moving toward hybrid, the overall reduction in staff population comes with it a feeling of emptiness in the office. If it feels empty, productivity and absenteeism increase.

In an effort to fill that void, we challenge our clients: Bring the community and the public into, at minimum, 10% of their footprint through programming that defines new purpose for the workplace. Where once an organisation’s workspace was purely focused on its own work, these spaces now invite events, community and ways of coming together into their workplaces without a desk in sight.

For our client Spotify’s Content Campus in the Los Angeles Arts District, we designed a space that is a collection of music and podcast facilities that connects artists with what they need to launch their careers—including listening rooms, recording studios and a screening room. We also included a 900-person music venue for live performances that is easily configured to open up to the surrounding neighbourhood.

A recording studio control booth in Spotify’s Los Angeles office, which was designed by RIOS. PHOTO: EMANUEL HAHN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The most interesting part throughout these production spaces are the workplaces for
Spotify’s employees. They are scattered between these active spaces and adorned with traditional, but bookable, desks. Open and flexible collaboration areas are woven through the space, made up of lounge seating, high-top tables and comfortable nooks, various sized conference rooms, game rooms and coffee lounges.

Creativity is further fueled by vibrant, full-height artist murals, and soft music plays across the full space. The mixing of the traditional and familiar work environments with the artists’ spaces creates a visual atmosphere that celebrates the overlap of functions to make the overall experience much more than a traditional office space.

Community programming

At our own headquarters in Los Angeles, we have challenged ourselves to use our abundance of newfound space with opportunities to change the visual fabric of our office through new community-driven programming.

For example, our space once defined as our “all hands” now flexes as community space for our neighbours by serving as a polling place, community events, and as a shared co-working site for clients, collaborators and neighbourhood researchers. What makes this adjustment successful is the anticipation of the unexpected: Seeing the community step inside our doors and develop new connections that you wouldn’t ordinarily find in the workplace disrupts the day-to-day with renewed and visible energy.

Surprise, disruption and renewed energy are the hallmarks of what the next five years could bring, as designers take advantage of a remarkable opportunity to shift away from how work has been defined over the past decades.

As workplace design evolves, we know that the experience of work is more meaningful when we broaden the circle of influence and are connected to who we are—both at work and in life. We all see the reward from opening the doors and embracing the outside world inside the office. In the decades to come, I hope to look back on this moment as the moment the workplace, once again, became irresistible.

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.