Name: THE FUTURE OF WORK IS HUMAN: DESIGNING OFFICE SPACE FOR CULTURE
Uploaded: 2025-05-20
Duration: 9 min 13 s

Forget gadgets and gimmicks—the most impactful workplaces are intentionally designed to reflect how employees actually like to work. They balance focus with connection, autonomy with community. They don’t just house culture —they create it. In this insider look from the co-CEO of one of the world’s leading architecture and design firms, discover how top companies are reimagining the workplace as hybrid, flexible, and fully in-office models evolve.  

THE FUTURE OF WORK IS HUMAN: DESIGNING OFFICE SPACE FOR CULTURE 

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So continuing on with the theme of workplace culture, our next guest believes that culture doesn't just materialize out of nowhere. It's something that is actively forms in the day to day experience that you have in your office and in your physical environment. A well-designed space doesn't just serve as a backdrop. It can help foster and develop positive culture. Elizabeth Brink, CEO of the global architecture and design firm Gensler, is with us. She joins us to talk about creating workplaces with a purpose in the ever changing world of work. So please welcome her to the stage. Thank you, Phil, and good morning everybody. It's really great to be here with you today. Um, as many of you know, there has been a lot of discussion about the future of work and the future of the workplace, and much of it honestly paints a pretty dystopian future. In fact, if you look at the images coming out of Hollywood, the future of workplace is pretty bleak. You'll start to see. The corridors, the disorienting maze of corridors in severance, you'll start to see the dramatic imbalance of power in succession, and you'll start to see the sterile and seemingly endless workstations in the Imperial Bureau of Standards from Star Wars. The common threads in all of these isolation, control, surveillance, and a general disregard for people's autonomy and well-being. But the real future of work, it's not dystopian at all. In fact, it's really genuinely human. It's not about designing better mandates or clever perks to convince people to come into the office. The challenge in front of us is to really create and design spaces that empower creativity and build belonging that support people and teams to do their best work, whatever that work looks like. At Gensler we've spent decades designing workplaces for many different sizes of organizations across locations across industries, and what we've seen is this organizational culture, deep organizational culture does not live in a mission statement. It lives in the people and in the behaviors and the places where they gather. So, instead of asking, how do we convince people to get into the office, maybe let's flip the question and start asking, how do we create places that people want to come into? Spaces and places that drive connection and spark innovation and reflect our shared values. Places that encourage colleagues to build relationships across the organization and connect with our purpose. Because the workplace is not just the mirror of your company culture, it is really a tool that can be the driver of that company culture. So knowing all of this, how do we actually create those physical spaces that create the feelings of connectedness and belonging that we're looking to drive? Well, I'll give you a hint. It is not with sterile white kitchenettes or controlled snacks, and it is not with mandated choreographed fun and merriment. What every great workplace needs at its core is a heart. Physically, that heart is the central place where people naturally gravitate to come together. The coffee bar that sparks impromptu brainstorms or the lounge where colleagues gather to chat, the canteen that flexes from a sort of buzzy lunch spot during the day to an event space at night. It's the place where people from different teams naturally run into each other and relationships across departments are built. Culturally, it's a space where your values become visible, where new hires get the feeling of your brand without being told what it is. It's where impromptu mentoring and coaching happens. And it's where people truly experience what it means to be a part of your organization. If your workplace doesn't invite collision, creativity, and connection, it's not a culture space, it's just a call center. You can't force culture and you can't force the heart of an office, but you can design the the conditions for it. You can create the places that attract people and draw them together from different teams that break down silos and give rise to serendipitous interactions. The heart of the office is a place that people choose to be in because it feels good to be there. It's about their choice. So knowing all of this, if we know these are the spaces we need to build, why have people been reluctant to come into the office? What we're learning is it's not just because they like their pets and wearing pajamas. The reality is that they're opting out of a place that feels imbalanced, a place that doesn't suit their real needs. So if the workplace makes it harder, not easier, to do their focused work, to collaborate, to feel inspired or connected, why would they come in? The best workplaces today are meaningful balanced ecosystems that offer performance and balance across the spaces. Deep focus spaces and collaborative zones, private nooks and vibrant commons, balancing out, seamless digital integration and thoughtful in-person touch points. Amenities that demonstrate their employee recognizes their humanity. And this could be everything from access to outdoor spaces to fitness facilities, to bike storage, to mother's rooms and prayer rooms and hydration stations, again, that recognize people's humanity. Something that our 2025 workplace survey has shown is that privacy for deep focus work is a top priority across generations, across locations, across industries. People want to be able to focus on their work, and they often have a hard time doing it at home because there are so many distractions. It's not that people want isolation, they just want choice. They want agency in how they engage with the work, with their work, and with others. And design can deliver that, providing that variety of balanced spaces, private spaces, small huddle rooms, common areas that are dedicated to quiet focus work, or lively communal spaces. So if your office still thinks balance means a number metric between conference rooms and cubicles, it's really time to evolve. We're also hearing a lot about the smart office. And what is a smart office really? It's much more than functional AV equipment, sensors and screens. Today's most innovative workplaces are using data not to surveil employees but to serve them. To deliver customized real-time insights, just like we're starting to expect from healthcare facilities. Not to track people, but to respond to them. With the right systems, you can truly understand how spaces are being used in real time, where people gravitate, what tools they prefer, what makes collaboration successful or frustrating. So just imagine being able to tie your employee survey data about engagement, about satisfaction to actual behavior in space, understanding how that tracks with where people are sitting, how they move, where they linger or spaces that they avoid. It's not theoretical. It's actually happening now. And the real opportunity is to use that data to create spaces that listen, that learn, and that adapt. There could be adapting with personalized lighting, with air quality adjustment, with acoustics that are tuned to stress levels and personal preferences, or even energy use goals. And even more so identifying predictive insights that could help leaders make portfolio decisions about their spaces at scale. So when workplace design is integrated with business planning, organizational strategy, and human experience, it becomes a true lever for smart transformation. So, what if the office was not a place that people felt an obligation to visit, but rather a place that they were compelled to engage with. What if anticipated needs sparked creativity and deepened connection in ways we haven't even imagined yet? What if your office became a living ecosystem, one that responded to your people, that evolved with your strategy, and amplified your culture every single day. The future of work is not about control or compliance. It's about creating meaning, and we have the opportunity and the responsibility right now to design for that very human future. Thank you.