What Will Offices Look Like After Covid? Wider Hallways, Fewer Desks, Healthier Solutions

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Mon Jun 28, 2021, 04:49 PM - Edit history (1)

'Offices after COVID: Wider hallways, fewer desks,' AP News, June 28, 2021.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The coronavirus already changed the way we work. Now it’s changing the physical space, too.

Many companies are making adjustments to their offices to help employees feel safer as they return to in-person work, like improving air circulation systems or moving desks further apart. Others are ditching desks and building more conference rooms to accommodate employees who still work remotely but come in for meetings.

Architects and designers say this is a time of experimentation and reflection for employers. Steelcase, an office furniture company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, says its research indicates half of global companies plan major redesigns to their office space this year.

“This year caused you to think, maybe even more fundamentally than you ever have before, ‘Hey, why do we go to an office?’” said Natalie Engels, a San Jose, California-based design principal at Gensler, an architecture firm. Not every company is making changes, and Engels stresses that they don’t have to. She tells clients to remember what worked well — and what didn’t — before the pandemic...

More,
https://apnews.com/article/what-will-offices-look-like-after-covid-3f2e4d4c5fe3882873a09b79abb5cb25
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Also: 'What Will Your Office Look Like After Lockdown? Vogue, June 15, 2021,
https://www.vogue.com/article/what-will-your-office-look-like-after-covid-19-lockdown

Holly Samuelson thinks elevator buttons will be the first to go. Second? Perhaps bathroom door handles. “Do you really need to touch a door handle to get in and out of an office bathroom?” she asks. A Harvard Graduate School of Design professor who specializes in buildings and public health, Samuelson's been thinking about the big, and small ways, office design will change post-COVID-19. The current questions she’s asking herself (other than the ones about bathroom handles) are: “What are multiple people touching every day that we don't need to have lots of people touching? Do people have access to hand-washing conveniently? Are the surfaces easily cleanable? Are there unnecessary nooks and crannies? How is the ventilation design? Are we unnecessarily bringing sick people and healthy people close into close proximity?”

Throughout history, crises have changed the way we build. The 1942 fire at Coconut Grove nightclub in Boston, for example, resulted in the implementation of the outward swinging door and visible exit signs. The Oklahoma City Bombing led to bollards outside high-security skyscrapers. September 11th resulted in more shatterproof glass and concrete-core structures. So it’s almost certain that the COVID-19 pandemic will change architecture as we know it—especially when it comes to highly trafficked office buildings.

In fact, it’s already starting. The American Institute of Architects recently released guidelines on what, exactly, co-working spaces should do to safely reopen. Some of their suggestions? Pathways dividing directional traffic, separate exits and entrances, and queuing areas, complete with rain/sun covers, outside of front doors so people can enter one at a time. That’s all meant to make getting into work safer. Inside the office itself, they suggest plastic sneeze guards, staggered desks, touchless key-card systems, and moveable partitions to divvy up open floor plans. (If elevator buttons have to be a thing, they suggest putting easy-to-clean transparent film over them.)

* One of the most important aspects that will need to change is an unseen aspect: ventilation. Typically, HVAC systems recirculate air around the floor to make sure everyone gets access to heat or air conditioning. That has a downside: “So we're taking my sneeze and we're pumping it back through the building multiple times,” Samuelson says simply. "It's not rocket science to move away from that to dedicated outdoor air systems.” A DOAS, she explains, takes outdoor air and exhausts it more quickly. Bonus: this method is also more eco-friendly...More at the Link above.

[tanyev]

1. Our office installed an extra 18" of clear plexiglass on top of all the cubicle walls.

How that’s supposed to help the 5 feet of unbroken air space above that, I don’t know. Nobody asked my opinion.