In hybrid work, being in the office is increasingly a choice. People come when the space offers something home cannot give. If that space has not been designed to do so, the office becomes an obligation people endure – and the occupancy data shows it clearly.
Presence as a choice
Organisations that wonder why their offices stay empty often look for an answer in policies. The real answer is in the space. If a team spends most of the day in individual calls, coming into the office to sit in front of the same screen makes no sense. The office becomes attractive when it offers what remote work does not enable: spontaneous encounter, collective energy, a sense of belonging to something bigger than one's own screen. These elements are designed – and they start from understanding how teams really work.
Designing the experience, beyond workstations
An office conceived as a sum of workstations and meeting rooms tackles the wrong question. The right question is: which moments does it make possible? The chance encounter in the corridor, the conversation that starts at the coffee point, the meeting that runs on because the place invites it – these are the experiences that build culture and that space can or cannot generate. Community Based Design works exactly on this: borrowing the models of the city – the square, the street, the places of encounter – to shape an environment in which the community recognises and strengthens itself.
From the typical day to the project
With interviews and surveys we reconstruct each team's typical day: when they come to the office, to do what, with whom, and which needs remain unexpressed. From this information come the work settings that make presence an added value – collaboration areas sized around actual use, places of encounter positioned on natural flows, support spaces that make people feel someone has thought about them. The survey is the first step to understanding what is missing.