Ever since people first started working in modern offices just over a century ago, we’ve grown accustomed to the idea of a constantly evolving workplace. Trends in office design have tracked those in management thinking, social attitudes, technology, demographics, architecture, the economy and legislation. Yet for most of that elongated century, there were some underlying principles that remained pretty constant. This was true even in the revolutionary years at the turn of the Millennium as technology became more mobile, Internet access became ubiquitous and flexible working became commonplace. Even then, most people still worked in offices for relatively fixed periods and those that didn’t, including those that worked at home, did so in a time and place that aped the structures of the corporate HQ. Over the past ten years or so those structures have begun to crumble and fall and we are entering a new era.
Preparing ourselves for the era of the boundless office