On Offices: Creative Urban Resilience during Work from Home

A series by: Aya Abdelfatah and Islam (Sam) Ibrahim

Urban Reflections is a series which sheds light on the degree of resilience of cities as revealed by the pandemic in a way that contributes to a constructive dialogue so that social justice prevails in the future of our urban life.

Skyline of Downtown Toronto featuring office towers. Photo credit: Omar El Banna

Whether going back to the office entirely is an option or not, there is empty space that can be utilized to cut down on the ongoing overhead costs for companies and solve some of the city’s resilience issues.

Almost a year into the pandemic, one can see how the need for office space has “changed” to say the least. Some work entirely from home, while only a handful still go to the office regularly, but yet again with restrictions. These observations suggest an increasing vacancy rate as workspaces have been moving away from offices.

Contrary to this anecdotal evidence, data and insights from Brookfield, global owner-operator of Class A offices, show that businesses are expanding their office space. This expansion in office space can be attributed to short-term solutions ensuring social distancing within the office, or long-term strategies for future expansion and return to “life before the pandemic”.

In fact, the industry is calling for innovative approaches to provide purpose and comfort in the offices, or what has been called “hotelification”; an approach where office design is treated like airport lounges. This entails providing space to host a percentage of the full workforce capacity, while offering more amenities that are not provided otherwise in a work-from-home setting.

Regardless of the fact that people could return to the office some day, statistics reveal that 55% of businesses globally offer a working from home option. This leaves space, at least temporarily, for other uses that could solve some of our urban problems and work towards resilience.

Resilience within Urban Pockets

Work spaces vary greatly based on industry, location, and scale. Hence, before we dive right into solutions, we must frame the scope of inquiry which will be focused on office spaces for sectors that are currently capable of working remotely.

Office spaces are typically grouped in one office tower (Fig. A), but they also can reside alongside other uses such as retail or even residential (Fig. B). Others can be part of a smaller scale building (Fig. C). Each workspace type offers different opportunities to make use of these temporarily empty pockets within our cities.

Social Resilience: Housing

Social resilience can take multiple forms to ensure equitable access to resources for the people and citizens of a city. Take Vancouver, for example, which has identified a total of 2,095 homeless individuals in 2020, of which 547 people were living on the street. A number clearly indicating the housing affordability issue.

One method to tackle homelessness plays on the arrangement of office towers. They are commonly arranged around a central service core with an open plan concept. This makes it relatively easy for office equipment to be stored in one central area leaving the rest of the space open for flexible partitioning. This empty space could be turned into Single Room Occupancies (SROs) that can be constructed in a matter of days and with minimal cost to accommodate those who are in need of shelter.

Flexible open plan of office space (left) is ideal for partitioning and transforming into SROs (right) while keeping the service core for elevators, stairs, bathrooms, and kitchen. Illustration by Authors

A bolder idea of repurposing office space into permanent housing was discussed earlier during the pandemic by professionals. While others were already implemented years before that in the US.

Thus, the idea of turning empty offices into temporary SROs is not too far-fetched. Different cities have been putting immense efforts to support social resilience. For instance, BC Housing has recently implemented the SRO Renewal Initiative where multiple aging hotels were purchased, renovated, and turned into homeless shelters and SROs.

Another concept is the Tiny Homes Village which Bryn Davidson, principal of Lane fab Design, is already deploying through his practice. The main difference is that each unit can be plugged into the existing open plan while relying on the central core for services such as kitchen and bathrooms.

While bureaucracy can be an impediment to this idea, politics will play an essential role in realizing these initiatives. Similar to the tax breaks given to developers for converting empty lots into community gardens, tax cuts can be provided, or rent could be paid for these spaces to be converted into SROs.

Now some companies might want to use their space differently. Considering the security concerns, and the accommodations required to implement such change, there are other ideas to use the space with less disruption.

Cultural Resilience: Art Residency

Cultural resilience is essential within any community to ensure protection of heritage and continuous growth and development. Even though art centers have shifted their work online, their revenues have dropped significantly. In response, institutions such as England Arts Council and New Zealand Arts Council have allocated funding to save their artists during the pandemic.

Office spaces provide the perfect opportunity to be used as art residency spaces. Again, with simple partitioning the open workspace could be allocated for multiple artists which is applicable to Fig. A or Fig. B. The exact capacity would be determined based on the available space.

This solution offers more restricted access to the space and it helps support the creation of local art which is severely affected by the closure of art and cultural centers. At the same time, office owners can benefit from the funding by renting the space, as stipulated by some of the funding institutions, and paying for its maintenance which is a running cost incurred whether the space is operational or not.

Toronto-based Akin Collective, for instance, provides an art residency program while following the health and safety measures. This model can be applied to the office spaces whether office towers, or smaller scale workspaces. Each artist is allocated a space marked on the floor or partitioned to act as their own bubble of creativity.

Akin Collective is a Toronto-based arts studio space; an idea similar to co-working spaces for artists. With simple partitioning, each artist can have their own private space. Whether visual artist or performer, the designated space can be forged to fit their needs and encourage their creativity. Photo credit: Akin Collective

In the case of office towers shown in fig A, the ground floor lobby could transform into temporary exhibition space, where applicable. In other cases, the roof garden can become the exhibition space.

Future Possibilities

While the possibilities are vast, it is simply a methodology of urban resilience. The examples presented above focused on the office tower type (Fig. A). With consideration to the existing architecture, interior configurations, scale, and requirements for the chosen urban issue, the solutions can fit the other types as well.

Since COVID has pushed much of the workforce outside the office leaving valuable space behind. Whether this space will remain empty, or not is a matter of speculation. Even more so with the new vaccine becoming available to the public. The reality is that right now we have the chance to use an ample amount of space to support our city.

Some cities face more social dilemmas, others face more cultural challenges, and the list goes on. Empty office spaces emerge as a low hanging fruit. An opportunity to employ these spaces creatively while being resilient in the face of the pandemic. It is our role to identify the problems and engage in dialogue, rather than just brush them away.