Gensler’s Ian Zapata explores how the Third Place and the choices it offers will impact the future of work and the workplace.
The third place, the social environment that is neither home nor work, has emerged as one of the most influential environments in workplace design. It’s not hard to imagine why. When workers are given more autonomy where they work, nearly half will choose to spend a significant amount of their time outside the office, where they have more autonomy and are more comfortable. These places are not where many people live all the time. Home may not be the ideal environment to be productive, or you crave a change of scenery or even an escape from isolation.
This gap is filled by third places such as coworking lounges, coffeehouses and even the occasional vacation spot. This third space is neither a home nor a workplace, but a social environment as an important place for local people to gather. These places provide individuals with a sense of belonging, social interaction, and a relaxed atmosphere outside of their original obligations.
In this context, the abundance of better options is driving office occupancy and negatively impacting central business districts. Making the office the destination of choice is a major challenge for today’s workplace designers.
A workplace is an investment that impacts a company’s productivity, culture and reputation, designed for people while its function has always been to support business objectives.
Companies invest in the workplace to increase productivity, reduce costs, foster innovation, and as part of their strategies for attracting and retaining talent. In today’s environment, this becomes an investment in serendipitous discovery, mentoring and team building. Unexpected encounters between colleagues are a key factor in innovation, productivity and problem-solving, and collective workplaces tend to excel.
The workplace is an investment that impacts a company’s productivity, culture and reputation
A collective workplace is a workplace where people from the same organization come together directly. The traditional term office is not preferred here. Because it’s packed with useless baggage about what a dedicated workplace should be like. Its purpose is to rethink that paradigm.
In designing corporate campuses for the tech industry, the ambitious metric of “collisions per minute” emerged to try to account for the rate of unplanned encounters that occur in the workplace. This could perhaps be used to measure a workplace’s ability to facilitate information sharing and facilitate collaboration, an important consideration when considering workplace efficiency.
more research 2,000 U.S. office workers shows that while workers value collective workspaces, they also want more diverse spaces and experiences to better support their work and create a place where they want to be. increase. Functionality is key, especially with her hybrid approach to workflows and focus on the workplace experience. In fact, worker research shows that the ideal mix of experiences encourages hybrid workers to return to in-person environments more often.
An experiential workplace is a work environment designed to provide employees with meaningful and engaging experiences that go beyond traditional tasks and responsibilities. An environment focused on employee engagement, happiness and growth by creating opportunities for employees to learn new skills, develop talents and collaborate with colleagues.
The experiential workplace strives to offer the best of all working environments while offering choices and replicating the qualities of people’s favorite places.
The mix of experiences people most want varies by industry and generation. For example, younger generations clearly prefer experiences that incorporate hospitality, while older employees prefer experiences that combine business-like and hospitality experiences. Certain space typologies tend to consistently rank highly as part of the ideal mix. These include coffee house and work cafe settings, clubhouses with informal spaces to connect and build community, and business-like corporate spaces.
Other experiences people value include ’boutique hotels’ that offer hospitable, amenity-filled spaces, conference centers perfect for face-to-face group work sessions, and library-like spaces for quiet work. . It’s no coincidence that many of these spaces reflect his #3 popularity.Most Wanted Business Addresses, Business Addresses Benefiting from Flight to Quality, They often offer third place type amenities, or something close to them.
A great place to live is also a great place to work.
A final point about proximity and implied walkability allows us to tie the fate of the workplace to the fate of the central business district. A single well-equipped office in a desolate location would struggle to make up for the commute. Vibrant neighborhoods with character, walkability, great choice, and safety are places people want to go for leisure and to go after work. A great place to live is also a great place to work. This insight led to a sense of urgency about the need for revitalized streets that could share building amenities with the wider community.
This means that some office buildings may need to be converted to other uses to ensure financial viability and diversify the use of single-use districts. . A well-designed third place and the options it offers can not only play a prominent role in reimagining the workplace, but also prominently in the transformation from central business district to central social district. ..
