Hotelification—the future of the office?
This week I spoke with Craig Murray, Strategy Design Director @TSK—he’s been designing offices for life after Covid. And they’re amazing! I’ve spoken in some, including SAGA’s Folkestone HQ, complete with sweeping coastal views and an onsite nursery.
He explores ‘hotelifcation’:
🎉 Offices are becoming curated spaces for experiences, a destination for celebrations and an active draw for teams. Many offices will now be ‘half the space, but twice the experience’.
🏨 Hotels offer a unique mix of seclusion and privacy with very public places. This mix is important when considering how to make work experiences more equal for hybrid teams.
🤫 The importance of acoustic privacy: remember when people used to take mobile calls on the fire escape? It's the difference between a discreet chat with a colleague in the office, compared with that same conversation on a Teams call... New offices need higher levels of sound proofing in meeting rooms and pods than pre-pandemic.
👀 Visual privacy is also paramount given the prevalence of video. Especially when EVERYONE turned up this week to camp under the delicious stream of air con.
We on the other hand celebrated the heat wave by… moving house 🥵, although I also achieved a personal record of wild swimming every day for seven days—twice on Tuesday!
Next week
Everything we’ve learnt moving house (a lot… we made every mistake going), filmed on location… from our new house!
And Dominic Collard has suggested an in-person vlog in the autumn. TBD my friends, TBD.
Christine
