Derwent London’s Benjamin Lesser, meanwhile, reported ‘surprisingly strong active demand’ for space from tech and media sectors, and ‘definitely the yearning for flight to quality’. To attract employees back to the office, a high-quality environment was necessary, said Lesser, with the ‘experiment’ of working from home ‘near its end’, and far from the death of the office. ‘I think a year on, people are very much of the belief that was just an aberration and really the importance of offices has shot up in people’s understanding of what it takes to run a successful organisation with identity and culture and trust and relationships. You can’t do that for a prolonged period of time, like this’. Derwent, he added, strongly believes in the city, and London in particular, with technology to help deliver in the city centre in a sustainable, long-term way.

Sascha Lewin of W.RE said it was ‘really encouraging’ the number of people knocking on the door to have conversations about workspaces, with ‘extremely strong interest’ being shown, the office likely to remain at the core of business identity as places for collaboration, training, building culture and nurturing business growth.

 

China, said Jose Merino of WeWork, is at 90% occupancy, a path he felt the UK would likely follow, but only if built on ‘purpose’ to entice employees back, in tandem with being offered flexibility by employers. ‘We’re seeing an increased demand into our spaces, mainly from enterprise clients’, he said. ‘There will be a return to the office’. 

Part of what they want, said Gensler’s Jane Clay, is ‘experience’ with culture being king. ‘So, it is all about design for culture and the experiences they want to have’, she said. ‘It’s around quality, not necessarily quantity, which has always been a truism – but I think now more than ever’.

The City’s Bruce McVean said it remained to be seen whether people will start to return to work only in the office from Tuesday to Thursday, but many forms are shifting, added Merino, from an HQ to spreading space across satellite offices, ‘de-densifying’ in the process. AECOM’s June Koh said the pandemic had thrown all our differences into the open but that one of the biggest challenges for the development industry was that the years spent on building up benchmarks and averages on workplace were now dependent on what organisations discover their structures will be. Added to this mixture, said Keith Priest of Fletcher Priest, there was not just the effects of the pandemic but an AI revolution and Brexit to contend with too. But to the practice’s many Asian clients, Covid was ‘less of an event’ given its experience with SARS and London was a unique case amongst its European rivals, not least on scale. Trends are being accelerated, yes, he added on issues like transport, air quality and density, but also on dealing with vast quantities of data. Foster and Partners’ Grant Brooker agreed that it was a fast-changing environment, with guidelines ‘over’ as a result but with ‘special’ office environments likely to succeed. ‘I think generic is really going to struggle’, he said. ‘You really don’t want to lose teams to the coffee shop’.

Sustainability, of course, has come to the forefront too, said Lewin, with a concern for adaptability and longevity built in. But attracting staff back to their desks will also perhaps mean having to deal with a rise in bicycle use, perhaps leading to more storage space for fold-up bikes said Foster. More unusually, it may also mean having to look to dog ownership having ‘shot up’ too, he added, with a resultant call on landlords or occupiers to try to come up with creative solutions to cater for those wanting their pets at work – or resort to a higher demand for dog walkers in the suburbs at night.

22 Bishopsgate is also seeing more tenants wanting to bring their dogs in – so much so that they are allowed if they are well-behaved and owners sign a waiver. But the pitch to prospective occupiers is more about why they would want to be there rather than physical specification.

There is a broader point about placemaking here, said Kimberley West of Westminster, and viewing not just the building in isolation but the place that is created around them. ‘One of the things we’ve learnt over the last year is how valuable outside space is’, she said, pointing to the growth in walking meetings or just having somewhere nice for lunch.

The prestige of having a central London address, though, will always be there, she added, even if some de-densification will take place. In the City there have been as many if not more applications coming through for major developments, said McVean, and given that the Square Mile added 100,000 jobs between 2015 and 2019, it may not take long post-pandemic to get similar numbers up. The Corporation is looking to support coffee shops and other amenities in the meantime, while e-scooters will add another potential big change to the streets. The West End, meanwhile, will be about a mix of leisure and culture, protecting the CAZ, but, said Priest, has ‘authenticity and culture coming out of its ears’, something which has meant a lack of nervousness about London or the urban condition. “Everyone is desperate to get back to it and get on with it’.

Ultimately, what we are seeing now is ‘just the beginning’, said Merino, with WeWork and others trying to anticipate the needs of companies engaging with their employees ‘in a meaningful way’ so they are able to return to the office to do what they can’t today, rather than just because they are tired of the last year. ‘We’re just seeing the first beginning of this’, he said. ‘I think there will be changes and I think we’re going to be in a much better place’.