The office used to be a place people went because they had to.Meetings happened in conference rooms and in person.Desks took up the bulk of the space.The kingdom of Dilbert and of David Brent is now under threat.The pandemic has exposed the office to competition from remote working, and brought up a host of questions about how it should be designed in the future.

Start with what the office is for.In the past it was a place for employees to get their work done, whatever form that took.Now other conceptions of its role jostle for attention.Some think of the office as the new offsite.Its purpose is to get people together in person so they can do the things that remote working makes harder: forging deeper relationships or collaborating in real time on specific projects.Others talk of the office as a destination, a place that has to make the idea of getting out of bed earlier, in order to mingle with people who may have COVID-19, seem attractive.In other words, a layout that is largely devoted to people working at serried desks alongside the same colleagues each day all feels very 2019.

译文

办公室曾经是人们必须去的地方。会议在会议室面对面进行。桌子占据大部分空间。呆伯特和大卫·布伦特的王国现在正面临威胁。疫情使办公室面临来自远程工作的竞争，并引发了一系列关于未来办公室该如何设计的问题。先从办公室的用途说起。过去，它是员工完成工作的地方，不管是什么形式。如今，关于其作用的其他构想也在引起人们的关注。有些人认为办公室是新的“团建地”。它的作用是让人们面对面地聚在一起，这样他们就可以完成远程办公时较难完成的事情：建立更深层次的关系，或者实时协作完成特定项目。还一些人把办公室当成一个让早起的想法变得值得的目的地或地方，这样他们就能混入人群中，虽然可能有人携带着新冠病毒。换句话说，这种设计很大程度上是为了让人们每天坐在密集的办公桌前和同样的同事一起工作，这一切都给人一种2019年的感觉。

With fewer people coming in and more emphasis on collaboration, fewer desks will be assigned to individuals.Instead, there will be more shared areas, or “neighbourhoods”, where people in a team can work together flexibly.(More hot-desking will also necessitate storage space for personal possessions: lockers may soon be back in your life.)To bridge gaps between teams, one tactic is to set aside more of the office to showcase the work of each department, so that people who never encounter each other on Zoom can see examples of what their colleagues do.Another option is to ply everyone with drink.Expect more space to be set aside for socialising and events.Bars in offices are apparently going to be a thing.Robin Klehr Avia of Gensler, an architecture firm, says she is seeing lots of requests for places, like large auditoriums, where a company’s clients can have “experiences”.Designs for the post-covid office must also allow for hybrid work.

译文

随着来办公室的人越来越少，对协作的重视程度越来越高，分配给个人的办公桌也会越来越少。取而代之的是更多的共享区域，或“社区”，团队中的人们可以在这里灵活地合作办公。（更多的“轮用办公桌”也会占用个人物品的存储空间：储物柜可能很快就会回到你的生活中。）为了在团队之间实现同步，一种策略是在办公室留出更多的空间来展示各部门的工作成果，这样那些从未在Zoom上见过面的人就可以看到他们同事所做的工作是怎样的。另一个选择是不停地给大家送酒。预计会有更多的空间留给社交和活动。在办公室设吧台显然将成为一种趋势。建筑公司Gensler的Robin Klehr Avia说，她看到很多人要求提供大型礼堂那样的场所，这样公司的客户就可以在那里“体验”一番。疫情后办公室的设计也必须考虑到混合工作。

Meetings have to work for virtual participants as well as for in-person contributors: cameras, screens and microphones will proliferate.Gensler’s New York offices feature mini-meeting rooms that have a monitor and a half-table jutting out from the wall below it, with seating for four or five people arranged to face the screen, not each other.Variety will be another theme.People may plan to work in groups in the morning, but need to concentrate on something in the afternoon.Ryan Anderson of Herman Miller, a furniture firm, likens the difference between the pre- and post-pandemic office to that between a hotel and a home.Hotels are largely given over to rooms for individuals.“Home is thought of as a place for a family over years, hosting lots of different activities.”All of which implies the need for flexibility.

Laptop docking stations are simple additions, but other bits of office furniture are harder to overhaul.Desks themselves tend to be tethered to the floor through knotted bundles of cables and plugs.The office of the future may well feature desks with wheels, which ought to go well with all that extra alcohol.Meeting rooms are likely to be more flexible, too, with walls that lift and slide.

译文
会议既要服务于虚拟参会者，也要服务于现场参会者：摄像机、屏幕和麦克风的数量将会激增。Gensler在纽约的办公室设有迷你会议室，里面有一台显示器，一个从下方的墙面伸出来的半桌，还设有四五个座位，这些座位是面向屏幕的，而不是彼此相对。多样性将会是另一个主题。大家可能计划在早上进行小组协作，但在下午需要自己专注做一些事情。家具公司Herman Miller的Ryan Anderson把疫情前和疫情后办公室的区别比作酒店和家的区别。酒店基本上是为个人提供房间。而“家多年来都被认为是一家人居住的地方，举办许多不同的活动。”所有这些都意味着需要灵活性。笔记本电脑扩展坞是比较简单的附件，但要对其他办公家具进行改造会更加困难。办公桌本身往往被一捆捆打结的电缆和插头拴在地板上。未来的办公室里很可能会有带轮子的办公桌，这应该会和加上的那些酒很搭。会议室也可能变得更加灵活，配有可以升降和滑动的墙壁。

If socialising and flexibility are two of the themes of the post-pandemic office, a third is data.Property and HR managers alike will want more data in order to understand how facilities are being used, and on which days and times people are bunching in the office.Workers will demand more data on health risks: the quality of ventilation within meeting rooms, say, or proper contact-tracing if a colleague tests positive for the latest COVID-19 variant.And data will flow more copiously in response: from sensors in desks and lighting but also from desk-booking tools and visitor-management apps.The question of who owns data on office occupants and what consent mechanisms are needed to gather this information is about to become more pressing.Put this all together and what do you get?If you are an optimist, the office of the future will be a spacious, collaborative environment that makes the commute worth it.If you are a pessimist, it will be a building full of heavily surveilled drunkards.In reality, pragmatic considerations—how much time is left on the lease, the physical constraints of a building’s layout, uncertainty about the path of the pandemic—will determine the pace of change.Whatever happens, the office won't be what it was.
译文

如果说社交和灵活性是疫情后办公室的两个主题，那么第三个主题就是数据。公司资产管理者和人力资源经理都想获得更多的数据，以便了解人们是如何使用设备的，以及人们在哪些日子和时间聚集在办公室。员工们将要求提供更多有关健康风险的数据：比如会议室内的通风质量，或者说，如果同事感染了最新的新冠病毒变种，就能提供的正规的接触者追踪信息。相应地，数据将更加丰富：来自办公桌和照明设备的传感器，也来自办公桌预订工具和访客管理应用程序。谁拥有办公室使用者的数据，以及需要什么样的同意机制来收集这些信息，这个问题即将变得更加紧迫。把所有这些放在一起，你会得到一个怎样的办公室？如果你是一个乐观主义者，那么未来的办公室将是一个宽敞、协作的环境，让通勤变得值得。如果你是悲观主义者，那它将是一座充满受严密监视的酒鬼的大楼。在现实中，务实的考虑因素——租约还剩多长时间，建筑布局的物理限制，流行病传播路径的不确定性——将决定改变发生的速度。无论发生什么，办公室都不会再是以前的样子了。