Workspace and Office Design Competitions: Designing the Post-Pandemic Workplace (Updated May 2026)
This is the UNI editorial home for workplace architecture — the design of offices, studios, coworking environments, corporate campuses, and the hybrid workplaces that have replaced the pre-2020 office. It is one of the most urgent live conversations in architecture right now. US office vacancy sits at roughly 19.6% (Q1 2025 data), Downtown Los Angeles tips above 31%, and roughly 70,700 residential units are currently in the office-to-housing adaptive reuse pipeline — a fourfold increase from 2022. Meanwhile, Gensler's 2025 Global Workplace Survey of 16,800+ workers found that only 26% believe their current workplace helps them perform at their best. The post-pandemic office is broken, and architects are the only profession with the tools to fix it.
What Is Workplace and Office Architecture?
Workplace architecture is the discipline concerned with designing every space where people work — individually or collectively, on-site or hybrid, full-time or flexibly. It sits at the intersection of several traditionally separate practices:
- Architecture: the building envelope, structure, and spatial organization.
- Interior design: the finishes, furniture, lighting, and atmosphere.
- Acoustic engineering: speech privacy, noise control, and focus protection.
- Workplace strategy: how the space serves organizational behavior and culture.
- Technology integration: video conferencing, smart building systems, AI-augmented environments.
- Sustainability and carbon accounting: energy, embodied carbon, and circular design.
- Change management and behavioral science: how people actually use the spaces we design.
No other building typology demands this many disciplines in such tight integration. Which is why workplace architecture, once dismissed as a subset of commercial real estate, has become one of the most sophisticated design problems of the decade.
The Office Is in Crisis — and That's the Opportunity
Four converging forces have made the post-pandemic workplace one of the largest live briefs in architecture:
- Historic vacancy levels. US office vacancy reached around 19.6% in Q1 2025, the highest on record. Class A buildings are largely surviving; Class B and C stock is emptying. This is not a cyclical dip — it is a structural reset of how much office space the economy actually needs.
- Hybrid work as the new baseline. Global average in-office attendance sits around 55%, well below the ~65% Gensler research identifies as the peak-performance threshold for organizational collaboration. The question is no longer "will people come back?" but "what does the office have to offer to deserve their commute?"
- Gen Z and Millennial expectations. A new generation of workers entered the workforce during the pandemic and has no nostalgia for cubicles, open plan bullpens, or fluorescent ceilings. They expect workplaces to feel like hospitality, to support wellness, to include biophilic design as standard, and to accommodate neurodiverse ways of working.
- Carbon accountability. Underused office buildings are an enormous embodied-carbon waste. Leaving a 500,000-square-foot building empty while new construction continues elsewhere is a climate failure. Architects are being asked to retrofit and reuse rather than tear down.
Put together, these forces describe the most comprehensive workplace design reset in a century. And it is happening right now.
A Brief History of the Office: From Taylor to Apple Park
The office has been reinvented multiple times in the last century. Every contemporary workplace architect should know this lineage:
- Frederick Winslow Taylor and scientific management (1911): the office as factory. Taylorism treated workers as units of productivity, ordered in rigid grids, supervised from central positions.
- Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Administration Building (Racine, Wisconsin, 1939): the office as civic cathedral. Wright's mushroom columns and skylit Great Workroom proved that workplaces could be spiritually elevating.
- Eero Saarinen's Bell Labs (1962) and GM Technical Center (1956): the corporate research campus as creative ecosystem.
- The Bürolandschaft movement (Germany, 1950s-60s): the Quickborner consulting group proposed non-hierarchical open-plan offices with curved partitions, plants, and informal groupings. The original humanist open plan.
- Kevin Roche's Ford Foundation Building (New York, 1968): an indoor garden surrounded by offices. Biophilic design as primary architectural concept.
- Robert Propst's Action Office for Herman Miller (1968): the system furniture that was supposed to liberate workers from Taylor's grid. Instead, cost-cutting turned it into the cubicle.
- The dot-com office (late 1990s): beanbags, foosball, scooters. A generation's first attempt to make offices feel like homes for long hours.
- The corporate campus era (2010-present): Apple Park (2017), Google Bay View (2022), Amazon Spheres (2018). Mega-scale workplace as brand embassy.
- The post-pandemic reset (2020-present): where we are now. Hybrid work, destination workplaces, activity-based working, office-to-housing conversion, the end of the assumed desk.
The Action Office Tragedy: How the Cubicle Was Invented by Accident
The most important story in workplace architecture is also the saddest. In 1968, Robert Propst — working for Herman Miller's research division — introduced the Action Office II after years of study on how people actually do knowledge work. Propst's research, drawing on psychology and behavioural science, argued that office workers need variety, privacy, and control. The Action Office was a flexible system of movable partitions, adjustable work surfaces, and storage — designed to be arranged into non-orthogonal configurations supporting those different modes.
Then the system met the real estate market. Corporate facilities managers, looking for maximum workers per square foot and tax depreciation on office furniture, arranged Action Office panels into identical 8-by-8 foot grids. What was meant to be liberating became the cubicle farm — the exact Taylorist factory logic Propst had tried to escape. By the 1990s, Propst was publicly distancing himself, calling the cubicle "monolithic insanity" and a "misuse" of his system.
The lesson for contemporary workplace architects: you can design for human flourishing, but the market will impose its own logic unless you build the right logic into the design itself. Post-pandemic activity-based working is, in many ways, a second attempt at what Propst was trying to do the first time.
Contemporary Workplace Typologies
The Corporate Headquarters: Brand Embassy or Ghost Town?
Large corporate HQs are the most photographed workplace typology. Apple Park, Google Bay View, Amazon Spheres, Bloomberg HQ London, and BIG's Lego House are the current flagships. They are also among the most vulnerable to hybrid work — a 2.8 million square foot corporate HQ is hard to justify when only half the workforce shows up on any given day.
Coworking and Flex Offices: After WeWork
The spectacular collapse of WeWork did not kill coworking. It killed venture-backed coworking at mass scale. Smaller, locally operated, community-focused coworking spaces are thriving. The contemporary flex office is usually smaller, better designed, and closer to a member's club than to a tech-bro open plan.
Creative Studios and Agency Offices
Advertising agencies, design studios, film post-production houses, music studios, and architectural practices have their own workplace typology — prioritizing informal collaboration, material experimentation, and distinct aesthetic identity over grid efficiency.
The Campus Model
Google Bay View (BIG + Heatherwick Studio, 2022), Apple Park (Foster + Partners, 2017), Amazon Spheres (NBBJ, 2018), and Facebook Menlo Park (Gehry, 2015) represent the corporate campus at its most ambitious. Their defenders point to innovation and brand identity; their critics point to embodied carbon and the political problem of suburban mega-campuses in an era of housing shortage.
The Third-Place Workplace
Offices that deliberately blur the line between workplace and public social space. The sociologist Ray Oldenburg's concept of the "third place" — the social space between home and work — is being absorbed into contemporary workplace design. Coffee shops with coworking memberships. Hotel lobbies designed for nomadic workers. Member clubs that include work zones.
The Return-to-Office Debate: What Architecture Has to Say
The debate about returning to office has largely been framed as a policy and HR question — mandate vs flexibility, amenities vs culture. Architecture has a distinct position that is rarely heard: great design wins where mandates fail.
A well-designed workplace that is acoustically superior to home, offers collaboration infrastructure a kitchen table cannot provide, includes genuine biophilic elements, and has hospitality-grade food and social space will draw employees back without requiring a mandate. A badly designed workplace — a fluorescent open plan bullpen with no meeting rooms and terrible acoustics — will not, regardless of policy. The emerging industry term is "destination workplace": an office designed to be worth the commute, not required to be endured. The architecture profession's job is to make offices that are actually better than home for the activities where being in person produces real value.
Activity-Based Working (ABW): The Model Reshaping Floorplans
The dominant new workplace model is activity-based working — a floorplate logic that replaces assigned desks with a variety of purpose-designed zones. Employees choose where to work based on what they are doing. The five canonical ABW zones are:
- Focus zones — quiet, acoustically protected, minimal distraction. Single-person rooms, library-style carrels, silent zones.
- Collaboration zones — meeting rooms, project rooms, stand-up spaces, writable walls.
- Social zones — café, lounge, kitchen, break rooms. Designed for informal interaction and mental rest.
- Learning zones — training rooms, tiered classrooms, workshop spaces.
- Rejuvenation zones — nap rooms, meditation rooms, gym spaces, gardens.
ABW is not always the right answer — it can fail when employees feel they have "no home" in the workplace. But when done well, it represents the most significant rethinking of office floorplates since the Action Office.
Biophilic Design as a Baseline, Not a Feature
Biophilic design — the deliberate integration of natural systems into built environments — has moved from a premium upgrade to a baseline expectation in post-pandemic workplace architecture. Contemporary biophilic workplace design includes:
- Daylighting: every workstation within reasonable distance of a window or skylight.
- Circadian lighting: artificial lighting that matches the colour temperature curve of natural daylight.
- Natural materials: wood, stone, linen, wool, cork — materials with tactile and visual connection to the natural world.
- Living plants: real, not plastic. Integrated into planters, green walls, and interior gardens.
- Water features: fountains, reflecting pools, and acoustic dampening via moving water.
- Views of nature: framed window views of trees, sky, gardens, or water.
- Air quality: monitored CO2, VOCs, particulates, with mechanical ventilation exceeding baseline code.
- Thermal comfort and variation: temperature gradients across the floorplate.
The evidence is overwhelming: workplaces with genuine biophilic integration produce measurable gains in productivity, retention, and reduced absenteeism. The WELL Building Standard and LEED certifications formalize it.
Office-to-Housing Conversion: Architecture's Biggest Adaptive Reuse Opportunity
The single biggest new brief in workplace architecture is actually about un-workplacing: converting vacant office buildings into residential housing. With roughly 70,700 units currently in the adaptive reuse pipeline in the US alone — up fourfold from 2022 and representing about 47% of all adaptive reuse projects — office-to-residential conversion has become a defining architectural problem of the decade.
It is also genuinely hard. Office floor plates are typically 20-30 metres wide, which is fine for workstations but terrible for residential light and ventilation. Office cores are placed for elevator efficiency, not residential plumbing. Structural bays are sized for different loads. Facades were designed for curtain wall glass, not operable bedroom windows.
The architects solving these problems — Gensler, S9 Architecture, CetraRuddy, PAU, and others — are defining a new typology. Seattle ran a design competition for office-to-co-living conversion. If you want to work on the biggest urban architecture problem of the decade, this is it.
Neuro-Inclusive Workplace Design
A growing body of workplace research recognizes that office environments have historically been designed for a narrow range of neurotypes. Neuro-inclusive workplace design is the response: offices that offer varied environments so people can choose the one that fits their cognitive and sensory needs. The seven design levers:
- Acoustic zoning: silent zones, quiet zones, and acoustically-active zones clearly differentiated.
- Lighting variation: bright and dim zones, natural and artificial, with personal control.
- Visual privacy: screens, high-back furniture, and booth seating.
- Movement support: standing desks, walking paths, fidget-friendly environments.
- Sensory zone clarity: wayfinding that is obvious and consistent.
- Air quality and temperature control: stable, comfortable environmental conditions.
- Choice of stimulation: quiet cocoon spaces and lively social spaces, accessible without permission.
Microsoft, SAP, JLL, and a growing number of corporate clients are making neuro-inclusive design an explicit brief requirement.
Open Briefs in This Section Right Now
The competitions currently curated in the workspace and office design section on UNI:
- Arch-Station — Competition to design a workstation for architects
For more workplace and related briefs on the platform, browse all ongoing competitions.
How to Prepare a Strong Workplace Architecture Competition Entry
- Start with how people actually work. Before you draw a floor plan, answer: what are the activities people will do in this space? A workplace is a palette of settings, not a grid of desks.
- Take acoustics seriously. Acoustic failure is the single biggest reason employees hate their offices. Zone your design for speech privacy, noise control, and focus protection.
- Show biophilic integration. Natural light, plants, materials, water, views of nature. Juries in 2026 expect biophilic design as a baseline, not a flourish.
- Engage the hybrid question. Design for variable occupancy. What does the space feel like when it's half empty?
- Include a neuro-inclusive argument. Show how your design supports varied cognitive and sensory needs.
- Study Propst, not just Wright. Robert Propst's Action Office story is the most important lesson in workplace design history.
- Quantify your claims. Cite Gensler, Herman Miller, Steelcase, and the WELL Standard data.
- Consider adaptive reuse. Treat office-to-residential or office-to-mixed-use as a default starting point rather than new construction.
May 2026 Platform Snapshot
- 1 open briefs currently curated in the workspace and office design section
- 54 competitions currently open across all themes on the platform
- 767 total competitions hosted on UNI since 2017
- 7364 total entries submitted across all competitions
- 898 jurors have evaluated work on the platform
- 270K+ architects and designers in the global UNI community
- 68 disciplines across architecture, interior, product, and allied design
Frequently Asked Questions About Workplace Architecture
What is workplace architecture?
Workplace architecture is the design of spaces where people work — offices, studios, coworking environments, corporate campuses, and hybrid facilities — integrating building design, interior specification, acoustics, technology, workplace strategy, and behavioral science into a single discipline.
How has the office changed since the pandemic?
Post-pandemic offices have moved from density-maximizing open plans to activity-based zoning, with fewer assigned desks (UK corporate desks per 100 employees dropped from 79 to 56 between 2022 and 2025), stronger biophilic and wellness elements, more acoustic attention, and a new focus on the office as a destination — worth the commute rather than merely the place the employer owns.
What is a "destination workplace"?
A destination workplace is an office deliberately designed to give employees a compelling reason to come in — exceptional acoustics, genuine collaboration infrastructure, biophilic design, hospitality-grade amenities, and social spaces that home and coffee shops cannot match. It treats the office as a hospitality proposition, replacing mandate with magnetism.
What is activity-based working (ABW)?
Activity-based working is a workplace model where employees choose among purpose-designed zones — focus rooms, collaboration spaces, social areas, learning zones, and rejuvenation spaces — rather than being assigned a single desk. Done well, it represents the most important rethinking of office floorplates since the 1968 Action Office.
What is office-to-housing conversion and why is it growing?
Office-to-residential conversion repurposes vacant commercial buildings as apartments or mixed-use housing. With US office vacancy at roughly 19.6% and approximately 70,700 units currently in the adaptive reuse pipeline (up fourfold from 2022 and representing about 47% of all adaptive reuse), it has become one of the fastest-growing briefs in architecture and urban design.
What is biophilic workplace design?
Biophilic design integrates natural systems into workplace environments — daylighting, circadian lighting, natural materials, living plants, water features, views of nature, and managed air quality. In 2026 it is considered a baseline expectation rather than a premium upgrade. Research consistently links biophilic workplaces to higher productivity, retention, and reduced absenteeism, and the WELL Building Standard formalizes the metrics.
What is neuro-inclusive workplace design?
Neuro-inclusive workplace design creates office environments that support cognitive and sensory diversity — including ADHD, autism spectrum differences, sensory processing sensitivity, dyslexia, and anxiety disorders. It uses acoustic zoning, lighting variation, visual privacy options, movement support, clear wayfinding, and a choice of quiet and lively zones.
Who are the major firms in workplace architecture?
Gensler is the world's largest workplace design firm and publishes the most influential annual workplace research. Other leaders include Foster + Partners (Apple Park, Bloomberg London), NBBJ (Amazon Spheres), BIG (Google Bay View), Clive Wilkinson Architects, Studio O+A, Perkins + Will, and Henning Larsen. Herman Miller's research division and Steelcase's WorkSpace Futures group produce defining intellectual frameworks for the field.
What is the Action Office and why did it become the cubicle?
The Action Office was a flexible system of movable partitions and adjustable work surfaces introduced by Herman Miller in 1968, designed by Robert Propst. Propst intended it as a humanist alternative to Taylor's factory-grid offices. Cost-cutting facilities managers arranged the Action Office panels into uniform 8-by-8 grids for maximum density and tax depreciation, producing the cubicle farm Propst had explicitly designed against. Propst spent the rest of his career disavowing the result.
Can architecture students enter workplace design competitions?
Yes. Workplace competitions on UNI are open to students, early-career designers, and established professionals alike. Because workplace design is traditionally the domain of large corporate firms, student access to the typology is limited — which makes competition participation particularly valuable for students interested in the field. A UNI Membership unlocks unlimited entries across every workplace brief on the platform.
Recommended Reading for Workplace Architects
Start your library with: Francis Duffy The Changing Workplace; Robert Propst's original 1968 monograph The Office: A Facility Based on Change; Gensler's annual Global Workplace Survey; Nikil Saval Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace; Stewart Brand How Buildings Learn; the WELL Building Standard documentation; Stephen Kellert Biophilic Design.
Explore More on UNI
Beyond workplace and office design, browse all ongoing competitions, see what's trending, preview upcoming launches, or study the past competitions archive. Related sections include retail and commercial architecture, temporary and modular architecture, and free architecture competitions. Want unlimited access to every brief on the platform? Explore UNI Membership.
