Italian luxury brand Gucci is set to launch a hub in Tuscany promoting more durable and less wasteful fashion, as it joins efforts by the sector to meet comingEuropean regulations requiring companies to limit their impact on the environment.

The so-called circular hub will be a research-and-development centre to study ways to improve circularity, including through better durability and recyclability of products, as well as minimising waste and pollution from production to end of life. It will boost transformation in the Italian fashion industry’s production models, said Gucci in a joint release with French parent Kering.

Kering said the hub should promote the use of fewer natural resources and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. While it didn’t detail how much it expects the hub to benefit the environment, the company did say it would cut the emissions from managing waste generated by Gucci’s leather-goods production by up to 60%.

Kering expects the hub to act as a forerunner for new models that it anticipates will be made obligatory by European regulations in the coming years. Last year, the European Union set out a plan to reduce the environmental damage of the apparel industry, which contributes as much as 8% of total greenhouse-gas emissions, according to United Nations estimates.

All makers of clothes and accessories would be subject to the new measures, even if the higher quality of luxury products and the brands’ typically more local and integrated supply chains tend to make them less environmentally damaging than the products manufactured by fast-fashion companies.

Clothing should be “long-lived and recyclable, and to a great extent made of recycled fibres,” the EU said in its proposed plan. It said labelling should make it easier for consumers to gauge the impact of what they buy.

Legislation in the EU will be formulated to enforce the new measures over the coming years, but some countries are moving ahead on their own. France has introduced a law obliging clothing producers and retailers in France to make clear to consumers the environmental impact of their products, including the amount of recycled material, the use of renewable energy in their production and their recyclability. The regulation applies to larger companies that had annual revenue above €50 million, equivalent to roughly $53 million, as of the beginning of this year and will be applied to smaller players from next year.

Companies are also working to comply with potential supply-chain regulations that could require larger firms operating in the EU to identify, prevent and remedy risks to human rights and the environment in their supply chains, such as minimum age requirements, worker safety, pollution and biodiversity loss.

Some fashion and consumer-goods companies have turned to new technology to help gather data on their supply chains and track material, though transparency remains tough to achieve in many cases. But luxury-goods companies such as Kering have an advantage over brands that sell to more general consumers, analysts at financial services company Jefferies said in a research note this week.

“Luxury brands generally have strong and transparent supply chains and an opportunity to better communicate sourcing quality,” they said.

On the other hand, high-end brands also come under more scrutiny, said Luca Solca, a luxury-goods analyst at brokerage Bernstein.

“Luxury brands have the burden to stand for our better selves, as they embody people’s aspirations and ideals,” Mr. Solca said. “In this respect it is on them to stand up to scrutiny when it comes to respecting the environment and society.”

Waste is a particularly tricky proposition for luxury brands, which have traditionally incinerated unsold stock to avoid discounting their products or diluting their brand image. The EU’s plan envisages requiring retailers to disclose how they deal with unsold textiles and even contemplates a possible ban on destroying unsold or returned clothes.

That would pose a problem for brands that don’t recycle or resell much of their leftover stock. In 2018, U.K. luxury fashion house Burberry said it would stop burning unsold inventory amid pressure from environmental groups, but some peers continue the practice.

“Product destruction can cause consumer backlash if reported in the press, [while] off-price sales are detrimental to brand equity,” Jefferies said. “Thus recycling is the preferable option, yet is an additional cost.”

However, some companies are starting to see the durable nature of luxury products as a life-cycle management opportunity. Kering-owned fashion house Bottega Veneta recently introduced a lifetime warranty on its handbags and the wider industry is increasingly open to allowing resale via secondhand luxury platforms.

Gucci’s circularity hub in Tuscany will involve all Kering facilities in the region, including Gucci’s production sites, raw materials suppliers and finished product producers. The hub’s activities will later be extended to Kering’s other brands, before opening to the wider fashion sector.

“The fashion industry needs to accelerate and launch serious actions to catalyse deep change, rethinking the way we produce and use resources as well,” Kering Chief Sustainability Officer Marie-Claire Daveu said.

Airbnb properties have a grading problem, hosts and guests say: Most U.S. rentals earn near the top rating of five stars.

Hosts are facing more competition for bookings because Airbnb has added more properties for rent, and as a result hosts say their ratings matter more to set them apart. Some hosts are experiencing what they’ve named an “Airbnbust,” or a drop-off in bookings due to the jump in short-term rental properties.

Adding to the pressure is the Airbnb algorithm that determines which “three-bedroom-with-a-pool-and-fire pit” comes up during a guest’s search. Superhosts who have an overall average of at least 4.8 stars—among other factors—typically earn more than regular hosts. The Airbnb algorithm factors in many criteria, including availability, price, responsiveness of host, number of cancellations by the host, as well as superhost status when ordering search results. Also, hosts who receive repeated ratings of one to three stars are told to improve or risk being delisted.

The average rating for homes in the U.S. on Airbnb, excluding room rentals, was 4.74 stars in 2022, with nearly identical or identical averages in 2021 and 2019, according to market research firm AirDNA.

With most listings ranking above 4.5 stars, guests say they can have trouble discerning what separates a 4.6-star property from a 4.8-star property. Others admit to leaving a positive review so as not to harm the host—or receive a negative review of their performance as a guest in turn.

Recently, at an Atlanta Airbnb currently rated 4.67, the doorknob on an automatic door to the bedroom got jammed, trapping Ashanti Carey inside. The 25-year-old lawyer from Kansas City, Mo., was visiting Atlanta with her mom and sister, who had to pull on the door from the outside to free her. She left after one night.

The host issued a partial refund, Ms. Carey says. Ms. Carey says she didn’t want to leave a five-star review due to getting locked in a bedroom, and because the property was dirty and dated. But she also didn’t want to damage the host’s livelihood.

She left four stars and a vague reference to her experience, mentioning she only stayed one of three nights “due to some issues with the property.” The house could be a good fit if the host made improvements, she wrote in her review.

“I felt somewhat pressured to not necessarily be forthright,” she says, adding that she is more skeptical of reviews now.

Airbnb says its reviews aren’t inflated. The company believes most guests leave ratings and reviews that authentically reflect their experiences, a spokeswoman said in an email. The company says it removes hosts who consistently earn poor ratings and don’t show signs of improvement, which is why most available listings are highly rated.

U.S. short-term rental availability hit a peak in 2022, according to AirDNA. Airbnb said in an earnings call that it added more than 900,000 listings globally in 2022, a 16% increase from the previous year, excluding listings in China.

More than 120 million reviews were left between hosts and guests on Airbnb between Oct. 1, 2021 and Sept. 30, 2022, the company says.

Airbnb guests rate rentals on factors including cleanliness, location and communication from the host. Some hosts are taking it upon themselves to ask guests for high ratings, both directly, which runs afoul of the platform’s rules, and by posting signs in their rentals.

Airbnb’s rules state: “Members of the Airbnb community may not coerce, intimidate, extort, threaten, incentivise or manipulate another person in an attempt to influence a review.”

Erin Kirkpatrick started renting out her two-bedroom apartment in downtown Burlington, Vt., this past fall. After more than 30 guests, she earned superhost status with a 5.0 rating.

Then, earlier this year, one guest said Ms. Kirkpatrick was very accommodating and the unit was “immaculate” — and left four stars for the overall rating. A second four-star overall rating dropped Ms. Kirkpatrick’s overall rating from 4.98 to 4.91, which alarmed the superhost, she said, because she needs an overall average of at least 4.8 stars to keep the status.

Ms. Kirkpatrick said she wondered what, if anything, she could have done differently. She says she’s now more conscious of her pricing so that guests feel that they’re getting a good value. She says she won’t charge $500 a night during an upcoming college graduation weekend despite demand, so her guests who do book feel they’re getting a good value. She makes sure to keep snacks, water and seltzer in the unit well stocked.

Her two most recent guests rated her apartment five stars for the overall experience.

Online reviews proliferate, and some other travel sites such as Yelp and Tripadvisor focus on stamping out fake reviews from people who have never visited a hotel or eaten at the restaurant that they rave about or trash.

Airbnb says it works to make the review system as fair as possible, including only allowing reviews between hosts and guests with confirmed bookings and requiring reviews within 14 days of checkout so they are timely. At Airbnb’s smaller rival Vrbo, top hosts have at least a 4.3 overall rating, the company says, and the average rating globally is 4.6 stars out of 5.

People who leave ratings on sites where they themselves are also rated, as with services including ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft and Vrbo, are generally more likely to leave positive reviews, researchers say.

“It’s very different when you’re dealing with a big, faceless corporation like an airline versus an individual human,” says Camilla Vásquez, a professor of linguistics at the University of South Florida who has been studying online review systems for over a decade.

As short-term rentals have exploded, travelers have increasingly made direct comparisons to hotels, where the number of stars signifies the quality of the property, hosts say.

Airbnb says it provides guests with definitions of the overall star rating and individual category star ratings. For the overall rating, a five-star stay is defined as great, a four star stay is good, and three stars is OK.

Still, many hosts say the rating system isn’t clear enough to guests or to hosts.

Caitlin Bates, who rents out her property outside of Sedona, Ariz., on Airbnb, made a refrigerator magnet to guide her guests. Five stars means the guest enjoyed their stay and any issues were addressed. Four stars means the experience was just “ok” and issues weren’t addressed. The dreaded one star equals a “horrific experience.” The magnet says hosts with less than 4.7 stars are at risk of being delisted, something Ms. Bates says she heard from other Airbnb hosts. She sells the magnet on Etsy for prices starting at $10.95 and estimates she has sold at least 300.

Ms. Bates has an average rating of 4.94.

Airbnb says it doesn’t automatically remove hosts with averages under 4.7 stars. Listings might be removed if there are severe or repeated instances of not meeting quality standards, a spokeswoman said. Ms. Bates’s magnets aren’t endorsed by Airbnb or an accurate reflection of the company’s review system or policies, the spokeswoman said.

Airbnb hosts who receive multiple low ratings—one to three stars—may receive an automated email from the company. The subject line: “Improve your ratings to keep your listings active.” Listings receiving a rating between one and three stars are at higher risk of being suspended, which means the property will be removed from search for five days, according to the email. The emails also provide resources and tips to hosts to help them improve, Airbnb says.

Some guests choose to give low ratings in the hopes of getting freebies such as a refund, hosts say. It is against Airbnb policy for guests to leave negative reviews to punish hosts for enforcing the property’s rules.

Airbnb says it generally doesn’t mediate disputes over the truth of reviews. The company encourages hosts and guests to post responses to reviews within 30 days as the main form of recourse for what they see as unfair reviews. People can report reviews that violate Airbnb’s policy, and the company will investigate whether to remove them.

A recent Airbnb rental that was rated 4.8 stars had ratty furniture and he could hear noise from a bar down the street, says Baird Kleinsmith, a 40-year-old from Durango, Colo. In another, rated 4.6, there were water stains on the walls and the apartment was beat up, he says.

So he gave them bad reviews, including rating one a 1 star. In the past, Mr. Kleinsmith, who rents from Airbnb about 10 times a year, seldom left ratings under four stars because he didn’t want to harm the host, he says. “As a guest, I want to know from prior guests what was good and what was bad about the property,” says the owner of multiple self-storage facilities.

“So I’ve changed my approach.”

Want to try a four-day workweek? Put this on the boss’s desk.

A large majority of U.K. companies participating in a test of a four-day workweek said they would stick with it after logging sharp drops in worker turnover and absenteeism while largely maintaining productivity during the six-month study.

In one of the largest trials of a four-day week to date, 61 British businesses ranging from banks to fast-food restaurants to marketing agencies gave their 2,900 workers a paid day off a week to see whether they could get just as much done while working less, but more effectively. More than 90% said they would continue testing the shorter week, while 18 planned to make it permanent, according to a new report from the study’s organisers.

The idea of working less than the conventional 40 hours over five days a week has been discussed for decades. The concept has gained new momentum recently as employers and employees seek new and better ways to work. The Covid-19 era ushered in broader acceptance of remote and hybrid work arrangements. Now, some employers, as well as policy makers, are exploring whether a shorter workweek can improve employee well-being and loyalty.

“At the beginning, this was about pandemic burnout for a lot of employers. Now it’s more of a retention and recruitment issue for many of them,” said Juliet Schor, an economist and sociologist at Boston College. Her team helped conduct the study with the nonprofit advocacy group 4 Day Week Global; U.K.-based think tank Autonomy, which focuses on issues including the future of work and climate change; and researchers at Cambridge University.

Global tests

Companies in the U.S. and Canada recently concluded a smaller pilot of a four-day week led by the U.K. study organisers, and similar trials are in the works in Australia, Brazil and elsewhere. Consumer-goods company Unilever PLC recently tested the concept in its New Zealand offices, while Spain’s government plans to pay companies to experiment with a four-day week. In a study in Iceland involving more than 2,500 employees across industries, researchers found most workers maintained or improved their productivity and reported reduced stress.

Widespread adoption faces a number of obstacles. Most companies that have experimented with a four-day week are small employers. Many larger companies haven’t embraced the concept. And at some companies trying four-day weeks, some workers have reported struggling to get everything done in that time.

In the U.K. study, which ran from June through November, most employees didn’t work more intensively, researchers say. Rather, they and their bosses sought to make work days more efficient with hacks such as cutting back on meetings and ensuring employees had more time to focus on completing tasks.

On a scale of 0 (very negative) to 10 (very positive), employers on average scored their productivity and performance over the six months at 7.5. A survey conducted halfway through the trial found 46% of companies said their business productivity had remained about the same, while 34% reported a slight improvement and 15% a significant improvement.

Meanwhile, 39% of employees said they were less stressed than before the pilot program started; about half reported no change. Nearly half observed improvement in mental health, and 37% also noted an improvement in physical health.

Zapping meetings

Claire Daniels, chief executive of Trio Media, a 13-employee digital-marketing agency based in Leeds, England, said she joined the trial to see whether a more effectively structured week could improve her business’s productivity. Before starting, she and her staff tracked and analyzed their workweek and concluded 20% of it was wasted in unessential meetings, business travel and other inefficiencies.

“So immediately, we knew we weren’t having to cram extra work in the four days,” she said.

Staggering everyone on Monday-Thursday and Tuesday-Friday schedules—with each employee having a partner to cover the day they were off—Ms. Daniels said she and her staff stopped holding marathon daily team meetings. And in longer meetings involving clients and multiple presentations, employees would drop in for portions and leave again, depending on how necessary their attendance was.

The hardest part, she said, was for staff to make sure they didn’t slip back into old work mind-sets or habits. On the whole, productivity was the same, or slightly improved, and revenue rose 47% compared with the year-earlier period, she said.

Ms. Daniels said she wants to continue the trial another six months before making a permanent change, “but I don’t see us going back to a typical five-days-a-week model.”

Workplaces that look like your living room; flexible, multi-use spaces; outdoor terraces. Today’s new hybrid work styles are reshaping the office buildings of tomorrow.

Leading architects and real-estate developers are pioneering concepts aimed at workers who are splitting their time between home and office, and they predict these innovations will become mainstream in the years to come.

The rethinking of office design comes as 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 pre-pandemic 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.

Making the office a destination, with coordinated on-site days for collaboration, could go a long way in making workers feel more engaged, says Jim Harter, chief scientist for the workplace management practice at Gallup.

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, says Annie Draper, a director who specializes in flexible office spaces at Hines, a global real-estate developer based in Houston. 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.

The latest changes in building architecture and design are more than temporary, reflexive responses to the pandemic, architects, developers and facilities managers say. Here’s a look at some of the trends that will transform the next generation of office buildings.

At Home at the Office

Your office is going to look a lot more like your living room (that is, if your living room has high-end decor). 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.

The residential touches long used by gaming and tech companies will be showing up more broadly, says Talia Olson, interior designer at JPC Architects LLC in Bellevue, Wash. A recent client who wanted a complete office redo showed images that looked residential, with sofas, pillows, area rugs and lots of plants, Ms. Olson says. “A lot of this is getting people back into the office after we’ve been working from home for some time,” she says. “So why not design a space that has that feeling?”

Texas Tower, a 47-story office tower in downtown Houston by Hines that opened in December 2021, has a living-room feel in amenity areas furnished with sofas, armchairs, ottomans and coffee tables. Tenants include Hines, international law firm Vinson & Elkins LLP, and Cheniere Energy.

Lounge-like areas that in the past would have been reserved for executives will be available to all employees in the future, designers say. At the office headquarters Gensler designed for Marriott International Inc. in Bethesda, Md., opened in September 2022, a communal space on the 21st floor features a fireplace and cabinets with an inset TV screen. Nearby are sofas and seating at a high-top island where employees can work or meet with colleagues—with beverages at hand.

A Flexible Approach

New office designs reflect another lesson from pandemic remote work: Be flexible.

The office of tomorrow will have more open environments that accommodate varied working preferences, says Brett Williams, senior managing director, asset services leadership at commercial real-estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. 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,” Mr. Williams says. Instead, they will be adaptable areas that can be changed to suit the specific needs of a meeting. To accommodate hybrid gatherings, they will increasingly be equipped with immersive technology that allows those on videoconference to feel as though they’re in the room, office planners say.

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.

Equipment and instrumentation company NI Corp. (formerly National Instruments) is renovating its Austin headquarters to create a mix of large traditional conference rooms, small conference rooms, focus rooms and bookable areas of various sizes. Furniture is on casters to boost flexibility.

“What we discovered in designing this workplace of the future is that we need a workplace that has choices for all these work styles,” says Scott Strzinek, NI Corp.’s senior director of global facilities. The company had employees test the changes, designed by Gensler, in a portion of its building before going ahead with a renovation of 450,000 square feet, to be completed in 2024. NI Corp., which has 70 offices in 25 countries, plans to roll out the designs to other locations over the next few years.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Outdoor terraces, greenery and access to natural light and windows are a major feature in plans for new buildings. While Covid concerns spurred some of the open-air ideas, they are also aimed at replicating what many employees enjoyed when working from home.

“A huge priority for us is to add outdoor space with new developments vertically throughout and as many floors as possible, whether it’s a skyscraper or a shorter stack,” says Whitney Burns, global client strategy lead at developer Hines.

In the past if there was a terrace in the building, it was only for that one lucky company. “We want to make it more accessible for all tenants,” Ms. Burns says.

Architects see a move away from lining the perimeters of buildings with offices, a change that would allow more employees access to windows. One building Hines is developing will have “air porches” aimed to give a balcony feel in the absence of an actual deck. These areas, next to windows, are divided from the rest of the office with glass walls. The windows can open for fresh air, and the porches can be decorated with plants and lounge chairs.

At Lever House, a landmark 1951 office building on New York City’s Park Avenue, the third floor that historically would be leased to a tenant is being turned into an amenity floor for the entire building, featuring a 13,540-square-foot outdoor area with chairs and tables. “Now everyone in the building will be able to enjoy that outdoor space,” says Ben Friedland, vice chairman of CBRE Group Inc., which represents the building’s landlord. Use of the amenity floor—which also includes indoor co-working areas, conference rooms, dining rooms and a bar—is included in the rent. There are charges for food and beverages and to reserve conference rooms.

Some buildings will bring the outdoors inside. The London office of global design and consultancy Arcadis, opened in 2021, includes an airy “garden room” with natural light and plants. It is also a no-laptop zone, says Nilesh Parmar, the company’s business area director of places for North America. “This provides an area where people can relax, decompress and either enjoy time with their work colleagues or have a less formal business meeting.”

A Quiet Place

The libraries appearing in new office buildings have less to do with books and more with the “Quiet Please” sign.

“This idea of a need for more privacy is really driving a number of different space types that we may not have seen in the office before, because everyone works differently,” says Janet Pogue McLaurin, global director of workplace research and a principal at Gensler.

“To focus on my work” was the top reason employees said they wanted to come into the office in a Gensler survey of 2,000 employees in the U.S. conducted between June and August of last year, with 48% expressing that sentiment. This marked a shift from the previous year’s survey, where respondents placed greater importance on working in person with teams and colleagues.

“We have to create more spaces for people to do concentrated work, and that’s starting to drive quiet zones in an office, like those you might see on Amtrak [trains],” she says. “They may be tech-free zones or they may just be areas where everybody knows not to take a phone call.”

These efforts are also aimed at introverts and other workers who thrived working alone or in quiet surroundings during the pandemic and wondered if productivity would suffer in the return to the office. In addition to libraries and other no-noise zones, individual soundproof booths will be must-haves for office buildings, architects and developers say.

The London office of McCann advertising agency, completed in 2021, has an 800-square-foot library as well as designated quiet rooms where employees can retreat and recharge. Gensler, which designed the library, created an etiquette guide that stipulates no food and no group meetings. It has a large communal table, reference books and plush carpet that helps damp sound.

Hines plans to incorporate “head-down” areas in newer buildings that include rows of egg-shaped chairs that face outward away from the office. They provide visual privacy and noise blocking, says Ms. Burns of Hines. “When you’re sitting there, you feel like you have a private space.”