Working from Home

As quickly as it began, 2020 comes to a close.

For the amount of time we have spent living and working at home, isolated by the reach of the invisible enemy that is Covid-19, looking back, it barely feels like much. Indeed, working from home has been a welcome change to the monotony and rigidity of office jobs - being able to dictate the time, space, and pace of one's work is a big leap in autonomy that has been passed over from most office roles for far too long.

As we slowly assimilate into the regimen of work from the confines of our nests, it is only to be expected that the idea of permanence of working at offices will eventually become obsolete.

It is timely then, that one should begin to ponder on what gives our office spaces their unique identities.

What Makes An Office Space, A Office Space

As it has been for years, office spaces were for people to show up in the mornings for work, where the act of being physically present equated to being in the act of working.

In the present, where it has been proven that work can be done from literally almost anywhere, what is the value of our office spaces?

Well, for some, the office space is also a productive zone. The distractions of home far separated from one’s minds, and in the company of likeminded colleagues, collaboration towards a collective objective is at the maximum efficacy. As much as it is enjoyable to work from home, I think that for the increased interactivity and collaboration it provides. the office space is an irreplaceable facet of corporate employment. While supplemented today by the online medium of Zoom and the like, there are still merits to conducting discussions physically.

It has been found that people often have more difficulty paying attention in online meetings. Physical venues also enable us to have more dynamic conversations, as we are able to assess the mood in a given setting, and to read the non-verbal cues of our audience. Technology is fast on its way to being able to bridge the gap in differences of the two - think ultra-fast 5G networks with no latency loss, or the use of virtual worlds to mimic physical cues in interactions. However, until technology bridges the gap in differences between the two, there will still be a functional use for physical work spaces in this day and age.

The office space is also an avenue for people to grow their network and build relationships. In the absence of these readily available opportunities for interaction, the relational distance between colleagues at the workplace increases, and it becomes harder to initiate common topics of conversation. Team building, and the fostering of a corporate culture often take a back seat while everyone is busy adapting to running operations within the new normal.

The New-Age Office Space

Perhaps then, office spaces of the future should be designed to provide specific functionalities for which only physical office spaces are able to meet as of today.

From above, some examples of such needs include:

- The increased need for meeting rooms as the primary resource of the office.

- The function of the office space as a venue to foster corporate culture

- The inclusion of technologies that can help to promote seamless collaboration.

For office spaces all around the world, change is sure to come.

And should work from home become the new cultural norm, it would be interesting to also consider these aspects in the design of new office spaces for this day and age.