TENANT CHOICE
Nothing has disrupted traditional workplace design quite like the co-working phenomenon. Even as global titan and ‘workplace solutions’ provider WeWork stumbled into the New Year, the demand for office space that accommodates multiple tenants at the one time in the one place continues to grow exponentially. It’s a sign of the times that this is the way most of us want to work now. Fuelled by a changing workforce characterised by the views and ideals of Millennials and Generation Z, today’s workplaces are all about flexibility, diversity and community.
The days of single-use spaces are numbered. And according to the Gensler Research Institute’s Gensler Design Forecast (2019):
integrated workplaces are the new standard. This report finds that single-use venues are being replaced by hybrid destinations, with mixed-use environments symptomatic of a broad blurring of boundaries between work and life. The corporate notion of shoehorning one tenant into an existing building doesn’t hold as much appeal as it once did and isn’t necessarily tenable in the current economic climate. Nor is it conducive to facilitating a newly desirable workplace culture based on flexibility or diversity. Could we therefore be witnessing the end of legacy attitudes around designing for an anchor tenant?
Certainly, architects and designers have shifted their workplace design agenda to embrace a more holistic point of view. As a result, outcomes better support engagement, value experience and foster productivity amongst workers. For James Grose, Sydney-based principal of BVN, this redirected focus informs the practice’s workplace portfolio, reflecting urbanity’s new crossover nature. “We once had places of doing, now we have places of being,” he states. “It’s not about silo-based activity anymore.”
Whereas the anchor tenant model promoted a sense of homogeneity, designing for a flexible workforce requires an approach not only sophisticated in concept, but nimble in aesthetic. However, it’s not without its fair share of obstacles. Making assumptions about how workers behave once inside a building and trying to create an environment that pre-empts those behaviours is a tricky proposition. As Grose explains, “The challenge is making decisions that are going to be robust enough to maintain an adaptable shell that can still shift, as it were, with the movement of each generation. So we have to create something that’s very flexible yet incredibly structured.” It’s a tactic that underscores the B:Hive co-working project in New Zealand, designed by BVN in association with Jasmax.