Office 3.0

Welcome to offices of the future, where the onus is no longer just on having a desk and a computer but on promoting face-to-face interaction and inspiring new ideas.

Desk image

With the latest technology, most of us can prepare documents, communicate with clients and collaborate with colleagues from homes, cafes or even trains. Will that make offices redundant? On the contrary, they are more important than ever – as long as they can adapt to our changing demands, argues Carlo Ratti, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Senseable City Lab and co-founder of Carlo Ratti Associati architecture studio.

“In such cases, the only reason for going to offices is to interact in a physical space with other people,” he says. “We can interact online over the Internet on Skype or through video conferencing, but this tends to involve a pre-determined group of people focusing on a particular purpose. When interacting in person, there is greater bandwidth: you can come into contact with more people and exchange new ideas, which can change careers or outcomes.”

The rise of co-working spaces – whose user numbers have tripled over two years to 1.74 million, and are forecast to reach 5.1 million by 2022 – is testament to the appetite for human interaction, with the providers increasingly offering training, networking and socialising programmes.

Co-working infographic
Windows image

Ratti’s own architectural practice, meanwhile, is redesigning offices in Europe and the US to promote interaction. One of these is the headquarters of the Agnelli Foundation, a social sciences research institute in Turin, where he added a protruding glass body to open the century-old villa to the city, as well as creating places to work and meet in the garden. A smartphone app enables occupants to interact with co-workers, book meeting rooms and regulate environmental settings with an unprecedented degree of personalisation. In short, the building offers energy savings, human interaction and a more pleasant working environment.

Similar considerations on a larger scale are at play in The Edge, the new office of global accountancy and consultancy firm Deloitte in Amsterdam. Its large atrium, criss-crossed with bridges, creates a series of social environments in which people can meet and talk to each other to foster new patterns of working. Conversely, there are just 1,000 desks to share between 2,500 staff – an acknowledgement of the fact that at any given time, many of them will be working at clients’ offices, at home or on the road.

The Edge generates more energy than it uses, thanks to the largest array of solar panels for any European office building as well as a subterranean aquifer thermal energy storage system that functions like a battery to warm and cool the building. Embracing the Internet of Things (IoT), some 28,000 sensors in the building monitor occupancy, movement, lighting, humidity and temperature.

Such green features are key as the world battles to protect the environment: buildings consume nearly a third of the world’s energy and generate a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Panel on Climate Change. 

“The Edge has proved an effective attraction for staff recruits. And they enjoy being able to use the app to influence their working environments in line with their needs and desires – something that research has shown increases activity,” says Ron Bakker, The Edge’s architect.

Sustainability and sociability are becoming the key requirements for office buildings of today and tomorrow, with companies increasingly willing to invest to ensure they have the right environment. 

“By integrating digital technologies seamlessly within the physical space, we can forge better relationships between people and with the building they inhabit, ultimately fostering interaction and creativity,” Ratti says. “This is what we call Office 3.0. It’s a vision that overcomes the limitations of the pre-Internet spaces as well as the alienating isolation of tele-working.”

smart office The Edge

About

Mega

Mega seeks to energise and enrich the debate over how to create a better-functioning economy and society.

Megatrends are the powerful socio-economic, environmental and technological forces that shape our planet. The digitisation of the economy, the rapid expansion of cities and the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources are just some of the structural trends transforming the way countries are governed, companies are run and people live their lives.

Photo of Mega