Foster and Partners’ Simon Hicks suggested that people should cast aside their preconceptions of what a business park is and instead imagine, given that 60% of people are full time working from home, using parks with temporary shelters or kiosks, toilets and WiFi to host workers.

Perkins and Will’s Linzi Cassels suggested that local neighbourhood working might be the way forward, especially in a mixed mode of working with some in the office and some at home, with work hubs in the suburbs and major transit zones alongside neighbourhood work points, both privately and publically funded. ‘Many people regularly work at home but not everyone has a good space for this’, said Cassels. ‘‘Why build new when the fabric of our neighbourhoods can be repurposed for work and local events?’. High street retail units could be reconfigured to different kinds of workspaces for writers, makers and myriad other job types, with an emphasis on community living with shared services and spaces.

The ‘in between place’ was the focus of Wilkinson Eyre’s Yasmin Al-Ali Spence, along with the notion that technology has freed us all from compulsory office attendance. With such lines blurred, this could be the coffee shop, and going into the office needs to be redefined as a place for collaboration or meeting. ‘When we are talking about the future of the office we are talking about the home, the “in-between” and the office itself’, she said.

Maybe another idea to bring in should be to bring the outdoors in, argued Civic Engineers’ Keith Wilson, especially given University of Liverpool research has shown that spending two hours each week in nature is associated with good health. ‘I propose that when we come back from COVID we should be looking to retrofit buildings or build new buildings that have a proportion of the floorplate given over to external space.’ This can be green but it doesn’t necessarily have to be, Wilson went on, with the potential for balcony spaces used as outdoor working spaces. 

BDP’s Daniel Walder felt that the return of the fun palace, or at least some of the principals of Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood’s famous conception could be long overdue. Mixing and socialising with people is still fun, and those businesses that are flexible and allow the choice of returning ‘will be those that attract the brightest ad the best’, but those that mandate a return to ‘the Victorian workhouse’ where you have to be at the desk between 9 and 5 will be those that ‘struggle’. The freedom of choice underpinned the Fun Palace, and while education environments have started to see students as consumers and embraced that they need choice, the workplace now needs to learn from them. ‘Why not have spaces where we can have fun?’, he asked, switching the balance of space given over to traditional office uses.

Flexibility, though, has to start with the base build structure, argued Heyne Tillett Steel’s James Morgan, with so much responsibility over carbon contained within. ‘It just seems crazy to me that in someone’s professional lifetime they can build, demolish and rebuild again on the same site’, he said. ‘I think this repeating sequence needs to be stopped.’ Ultimate flexibility starts with the structure with items like floor panels designed as breakout panels or columns designed to span over two storeys. ‘we believe that true flexibility has to start with the structure; it has to provide the strong bones that can be versatile and adapt to our buildings’ changing needs throughout a long lifetime’.