Working in your desk bubble - significant office design trends 2021

Mar
2021

Steen Uno

Social bubbles were among last year´s most frequently used buzzwords - and also in 2021, they will create big headlines for the post-covid designs, decors, and arrangements of your open office workplace.

Mar
2021

Steen Uno

Up through the corona year 2020, considerations of health and safety managed office workers to do homework - in 2021 just the same precautions will bring them back to the office again.

Social distance and social bubbles will become keywords when you once during 2021 will return to your open office workspace.

First of all, you´ll experience your open space environment as even more spacious, because several of your colleagues will continue to work from the home office.

During the upcoming months, office companies will probably have only half or less of their employees physically present to comply with the guidelines on social distance and safety, studies show.

New standards

Many employees who return to the office during 2021 will experience newly divided, separate workspaces with non-contact doors, fittings, coffee machines, elevators, surface materials with antiviral properties that together will create an updated and safer office environment.

Individual office spaces, areas and zones will achieve their big comeback as your business prioritizes and honours the demands of the new age for health, safety, well-being and efficiency.

The French plexiglass domes were designed by Christian Pottgiesser Architectures
Possible as part of a larger complete office environment - now they might become
hotter than ever before.
Fotos: christian pottgiesser architecturespossibles

"The standards for health and safety at work have undeniably changed since last spring. From dangerous slippery floors and the like, today it is invisible threats such as airborne pathogens that we focus on.

The cleanliness and safety requirements that have applied to operating rooms, intensive care units and the like have today become general will affect the future design of our office spaces and areas," CEO of Armstrong World Industries, Victor Grizzle anticipates.

French desk domes

New room and office furnishings with lots of social distance between the workstations, room dividers, plexiglass walls between adjacent desks, etc. will be the new everyday life in open space offices.

In this context, the French architectural firm christian pottgiesser architecturespossibles´ transparent office domes might well appeal to a great post-covid comeback.

Upgraded office arrangements with the appropriate social distances between all
desks, room dividers, and safe plexiglass between the workstations will become
new standards in your post-covid open-plan office. Photos: WeWork

The plexiglass office desk domes were designed for the Paris companies Pons + Huot 10 years ago as part of a complete office landscape with an enormous shared desk, eight Ficus Panda trees, wardrobe and kitchen.

The domes meant to offer the office worker a feeling of privacy in the turbulent office workspace. In today´s post-covid edition, the bubbles would reach for quite different and new dimensions.

The post-covid office

"Thousands of global office workers have now been working from home for ten months. They are now fully aware that they can perform just as well from their home office as in their workplace office, as from a third, fourth or fifth location.

More than ever, we can manage our jobs from anywhere. The idea is not new, but today we all know that we can. How will this knowledge influence our future office interior designs?" American interior designer Randi Thomas, Cushing Terrell, asks and delivers the answer herself:

The post-covid interior design of the future must, to an even greater extent, match
the framework that employees have become accustomed to after almost one year
in their home offices.

"The office environment will continue to focus on social spaces and greater variety and creativity in work areas. We will see meeting rooms for specific uses because the regular meetings we can manage virtually from anywhere.

Companies will re-prioritize drop-in and ad-hoc workstations over old traditional office layouts. They will ensure their mobile employees to have a platform in the office that suits their current needs.

Post-covid office interiors and designs will assimilate even more with the outside world. Even more, they will have to match the framework and standards that we have been accustomed to at our home offices since last spring," Randi Thomas states. ●

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