The role of the office is shifting dramatically. As the lines between work life and home life blur and employers face steep competition for top talent, management teams are taking a new look at their offices. Forward-thinking management teams are engaging designers, architects, and data scientists to build workspaces that support today’s workers without driving them to distraction.
As designers respond to the needs of their clients, a new employee-focused design is emerging with office spaces that have areas for focused work and collaboration. Susan S. Szenasy, our Director of Design Innovation, sat down with a panel of design experts to talk about these issues. What follows is an edited transcript of a discussion that took place at the Boston offices of Haworth, a workplace furniture manufacturer. The panel included Frederick Towns, co-founder of the real-estate marketing platform Placester, Reetika Vijay, managing principal at Interior Architects, Boston, and Anjell Karibian, a workplace researcher.