Which way to the office of the future?

What will the office look like in 5, 10 or 15 years’ time? Will office buildings even still be needed? And if so, in what form?

“We are already thinking that buildings, after their technical demise, should not be wasted but a source of building material for further projects. Buildings can also be designed in such a way that they change their functions at little cost, such as from an office building to a hotel, after a dozen or so years,” argued Agnieszka Kalinowska-Sołtys, the director of APA Wojciechowski Architekci.

Patryk Czernik, the main leasing specialist of Archicom, believes that the buildings will not change physically very much. Office buildings are already crammed with technology and will simply be integrated with it even more in the future. “Technology can create the need to redesign entire buildings. We are already witnessing drone taxi tests, which will force us to design in a new way. The development of technology related to the conquest of space could also affect the way we will build on Earth,” added Patryk Czernik.

“However, before we fly to Mars, the basic question the owner of an aging building faces is: how can it be improved, altered or leased at lower rates?,” wondered Magdalena Gutowska, the business development director at the Quadrature Group.

“Office buildings will be opened up with public space and so the boundary between the public and private could become blurred. Technological innovations could also bring with them changes that we may not be aware of yet, but which will change our everyday life dramatically. Remember how the iPhone changed our lives? It’s still just twelve years since his device was launched,” remarked Radosław Górecki, Ghelamco Poland’s communication manager.

You don’t have to look too far into the future to see how quickly the way we are thinking about the office could change, as the operators of flexible office space strive to respond to companies’ evolving requirements.

“If a company employs a few dozen top-class IT specialists and needs flexible work space in a prominent building, we can provide it. We can afford to offer such space because we are well financed and have excellent experience, which we have gained as a result of our global reach,” insisted Piotr Lagowski, the head of growth for Eastern Europe at WeWork.