Adapting to Hybrid Work: Workplace Design Strategy

Project Type:

Architectural Programming

The pandemic created a pivotal shift for workplace design, leaving many organizations with offices built for pre-COVID work patterns but facing entirely new hybrid realities. While at Cornell, I collaborated with peers to address the major pain points being experience by a large international engineering firm in New York City, helping them to bridge this gap through comprehensive workplace research.

Despite having the option to work fully remote, 63% of employees still chose to come to the office at least once weekly, primarily seeking meaningful team collaboration. Our observations revealed a fundamental mismatch: the office's open-plan layout actually hindered the the productive collaboration employees craved. Through surveys, interviews, behavioral observation, and site analysis across all departments and leadership levels, we identified four critical pain points: inadequate support for flexibility, privacy, interaction, and psychological well-being.

The programming document defined and addressed the core problem and issues identified from user and site research.

Strategic Recommendations

We proposed a transformative "neighborhoods" concept that dramatically shifted space allocation away from individual desks and toward distinct workplace neighborhoods clustered around project teams. Our evidence-based programming document detailed how to broaden the range of space types needed to effectively bring small and large groups together as well as provide distraction-free spaces, while significantly reducing the overall square footage needed per employee. The solution balanced the contrasting needs we uncovered: entry-level staff prioritized distraction-free environments while leadership emphasized needing a variety of collaboration spaces.

Beyond these higher-level spatial recommendations, we created 16 detailed performance requirements covering everything from acoustic solutions to technology integration, ensuring the redesign would support hybrid work in practice. By presenting our recommendations in implementation phases, we provided stakeholders a roadmap they could follow based on their investment timeline and priorities. This research was presented as "Post COVID19 Pandemic Workspace Design Strategy" at the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) conference in Mexico City in 2023 by Karen Joyce, Lauren Cheetham, Sarah Springer, Sofía Ozambela, and Nooshin Ahmadi.

Survey data collected from the 205-person office indicated the most important activity supported by the
physical office space was “team collaboration.”

A core strategic recommendation was the introduction of a wider breadth of space typologies to support varying work modes not adequately address in the current office.