During the coronavirus pandemic, few building types have been as scrutinized and debated as offices and healthcare facilities. Both have been forced to evolve, and there’s a substantial question as to what they’ll look like after the pandemic.

Global architecture firm Gensler is actively grappling with what this future will look like. With 50 offices around the world, Gensler is responsible for a significant number of the office and healthcare spaces being designed globally. The company has designed offices for companies such as Facebook, Etsy, and The Washington Post, and healthcare projects for organizations including Pfizer, Bayer Canada, and the sciences coworking hub LabCentral. How these buildings evolve through and maybe past the pandemic is already a focus for the company. As explained in the latest edition of its design trends forecast, released today, the company sees some big and overlapping changes coming to these two types of spaces.

THE FUTURE OF THE OFFICE

The hybrid model of part-time office work and part-time remote work is here to stay, according to Janet Pogue McLaurin, Gensler’s global workplace research leader. “We need to design workplaces where people want to be, because now they finally have some choice, and they’ve proven that you can work remotely,” she says.

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