Gilbert Emont
Director of the Palladio Institute
What has Covid-19 really changed in our relationship with offices?
This was already the direction of history, but we are seeing it even more strongly: the office is less and less an individual cell but a collection of spaces for work, meetings, events and the identity of the company. What we are seeing - and Palladio worked in particular on these issues 3 years ago - is a kind of dislocation of work. Some people are becoming self-employed, others are choosing to be service providers... This break with the single workplace shows that all the office space that was necessary for the company is now dislocated and scattered. We work from home, from a head office, in third places, in cafés, in mobility hubs... Covid-19 has brought about a considerable acceleration, sealing the triumph of the digital age!
How will the offices justify their raison d'être?
There's no point in taking your laptop from your living room, putting it in your rucksack and travelling two hours a day to bring it to a desk on the 13th floor of a tower block. On the contrary, it makes sense to meet others, to be part of the mass that 'pollinates', that creates collective intelligence and innovation, to exchange ideas in places that are neither a mineral tower nor your living room. For several years now, there has been a resurgence of interest in city-centre offices that are open to their neighbourhoods, where people can exchange ideas and enjoy each other's company. The fact that they are so well connected to each other makes them so attractive.
So metropolises are not in danger, as we sometimes read?
It's absurd to think that we'll suddenly return to rural life. Just logistically, it's impossible. We are in the urban era, the "urbanocene". We are in a world of networks and flows, and we need centres, hubs, where innovation and research can develop, made possible by the proximity between researchers and businesses. These hubs are the metropolises, and to be effective, the world needs them. The real issue is the balance between the centre and the periphery, and the balance between mobility and density. Because of the density of services it provides and its accessibility, the city centre will remain the ideal place for tertiary work.
How do you imagine the office of tomorrow?
As we can see, the future of offices lies in sharing: companies are designing shared buildings to accommodate other companies, restaurants open to the outside world, diversified service hubs... Why design an office building that simply 'stores' employees, in the age of digital technology and dematerialisation? Commercial property should be designed to accommodate flows of people and facilitate exchanges. With competition from the home and third places, the office building must be a place of identity, events and gatherings. It must be an interface with the society in which it operates.
