Comfort & Joy - Rethinking office interiors
**The Future of Interior Design: A Deep Dive into Trends, Sustainability, and the Role of Designers in Modern Real Estate**
In the world of real estate, the conversation often begins with "dirt"—the land itself—and then moves on to bricks, mortar, steel, glass, power, and air quality systems. These elements form the built environment that stands and functions. However, what goes inside these buildings—the floor plans, fixtures, and furniture—are among the last choices made by owners and occupiers. Yet, these details go far beyond aesthetics; they impact business in significant ways. This article explores the evolving role of interior design, sustainability, technology integration, and trends shaping the future of office spaces.
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### The Changing Landscape of Interior Design
Interior design is often misunderstood, with many people associating it solely with color choices and furniture. However, the field encompasses a wide range of sectors, including corporate interiors, healthcare facilities, hospitality, education, and more. Amanda Schneider, founder and president of Think Lab, emphasizes that interior design is not just about aesthetics but also about functionality and productivity.
Pre-pandemic, the corporate sector was the largest contributor to interior design work. However, since the onset of COVID-19, there has been a 19% decline in corporate interior design projects. Despite this shift, healthcare has surpassed hospitality as the second-largest sector, reflecting the changing priorities of businesses and institutions.
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### The Meteor Impact: How COVID Changed Office Design
Amanda Schneider compares the pandemic to a meteor hitting the Earth, fundamentally altering the way we think about office spaces. Open-plan offices, once seen as the epitome of collaboration, are now being reevaluated. While open spaces have their advantages, they often lack a sense of place and privacy, which can be detrimental to productivity.
One key change is the shift in decision-making processes. Previously, decisions about office design were made by a handful of executives, such as the CFO or CEO. Today, companies involve multiple stakeholders, including HR leaders, chief technology officers, and heads of hybrid workspaces. This collaborative approach ensures that designs meet diverse needs but also makes the process more complex.
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### Balancing Efficiency and Productivity in Design
Efficiency versus productivity is a critical consideration in interior design. While efficiency focuses on cost-effectiveness and functionality, productivity looks at how spaces can enhance human performance. Schneider highlights that while productivity is challenging to measure, it often correlates with employee well-being and satisfaction. For example, if employees feel comfortable and inspired in their workspace, they are more likely to be productive.
One of the most significant changes post-pandemic is the reduction in individual workspaces. Historically, 80% of office space was dedicated to individual work, while only 20% was for collaboration. Now, this ratio is expected to flip, with 80% of spaces designed for collaboration and fewer areas for solo work.
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### Sustainability: A Growing Priority
Sustainability has become a cornerstone of modern interior design. Designers are increasingly focused on materials that are recyclable or have low environmental impact. For example, exposed ceilings and ventilation systems reduce the need for drop-down ceilings, simplifying construction and lowering costs.
Used furniture is another area where there is growing interest. Businesses like Receph aim to revolutionize the used furniture market by providing detailed histories of each piece, similar to Carfax reports for vehicles. However, challenges remain, particularly in cataloging and tracking used furniture, which requires significant labor.
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### Technology and Its Double-Edged Role
Technology plays a dual role in modern offices. While it enhances productivity and connectivity, it can also be overwhelming if not integrated thoughtfully. For instance, open-plan offices with high-tech amenities may inadvertently create inequities between remote and in-office employees.
One innovative approach to addressing this issue is the creation of "device-free zones." These spaces encourage face-to-face interaction and reduce distractions, fostering a more collaborative environment. Examples include the debate chamber at Crow Holdings, where electronic devices are prohibited, allowing for focused discussions.
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### Nostalgia and Hybrid Workspaces: Emerging Trends
The rapid pace of technological advancements has left many people feeling disoriented. In response, there is a growing trend toward nostalgia in design, with elements like retro finishes and traditional layouts making a comeback. This shift reflects a desire to reconnect with the familiar and humanize spaces.
Hybrid workspaces, which combine remote and in-office elements, are also shaping interior design. Designers must integrate technology seamlessly into physical spaces to ensure equity for all employees, regardless of their location. This requires careful planning to balance aesthetics with functionality.
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### The Future of Interior Design
The future of interior design lies in collaboration. By involving designers earlier in the decision-making process, businesses can create spaces that align with their goals and enhance productivity. As Schneider notes, being together physically is more important than ever for fostering relationships and mental health.
Ultimately, the meteor impact of COVID has changed the way we think about office spaces. The challenge now is to reinvigorate these environments, making them places where people want to be—productive, sustainable, and conducive to collaboration.
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### Conclusion
The field of interior design is evolving rapidly, driven by sustainability, technology, and changing work habits. As businesses navigate the post-pandemic world, the role of designers will become increasingly crucial in creating spaces that meet both practical and emotional needs. By embracing innovation and collaboration, the future of office design looks promising—a blend of functionality, aesthetics, and humanity.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin the real estate business we talk about the dirt site location the land itself and then it's about bricks and mortar steel and glass the power and Air Quality Systems everything that makes the built environment stand and function what goes inside those buildings the floor plans fixtures and Furniture those are some of the last choices owners and occupiers have to make but those details involve much more than Aesthetics and can impact business in a variety of important ways on this episode a discussion of design and why design has been elevated to the top of many corporate decision trees now you've got the chro you've got the chief technology officer maybe you have a head of hybrid head of remote especially when we get in that office sector you've got a lot of different people sometimes with a lot of competing priorities and that gets very challenging when you have creatives that are trying to kind of take into account all of these different perspectives to try and get somewhere that is actually most beneficial for the people that will be occupying this space that's Amanda Schneider founder and president of think laab a design research division of the Publishing Company sandal based in Chicago Amanda originally covered design as a Huffington Post blogger before she founded an independent consultancy in 2011 that firm was acquired by Sandow in 2018 and rebranded as thinklab which today helps businesses understand the entire design ecosystem coming up we visit the windy city and a space design for podcasting at the All Steel experience Center to bring you insights into functional space device free zones an emerging trend of nostalgia at the office and lots more I'm Spencer Levy and that's right now on the weekly take welcome to the weekly take and this week I am I am delighted to be with Amanda Schneider president of Think Lab Amanda welcome to the show thanks for having me let's talk about what design is okay so I'm not trying to bring it down to the basic level but most of our listeners are in the real estate business not all of them are in office but just in basic terms do you cover office retail hotels tell us a little bit about the scope of your practice absolutely so I think that there's an issue with interior design because there's things like HD TV that really promote interior designers as color Pickers and pillow Pickers and some of them that are very famous and welln are actually not even degreed interior designers so the true field of interior design does cover residential and it does cover decorators but it also covers the commercial side and the commercial side includes corporate interior design those that design hospitals it includes Hospitality education and a whole slew of other vertical markets so a lot of what we do is really try to look at where design work is happening what's growing and really help our clients stay ahead of trends of shifts and changes that are happening and of course corporate we can't miss corporate as well because a lot of conversation is happening around that today so your your personal practice covers all of the above but would you say a disproportionate amount of your practice is around the interior of office space I would say that's where our industry naturally focuses is office because office is the largest sector and my team and I also run all of the Interior Design Giants of design numbers so think of that like the Fortune 500 except for interior design firms really looking at what work is happening and corporate is by far almost double any other sector when you look at interior design work MH so take me through where you see the market today from where we were pre-co what what are some of the major changes yeah so a lot of our interior design Giants design which again is the top 200 firms looking at detailed metrics about where their fees come from what they're earning so corporate is the largest sector and corporate is actually down 19% since the onset of the pandemic so we look at 2019 numbers compared to our most recent numbers it's Fallen 19% and is expected to kind of stay at a steady state for a while we've seen interesting shifts where actually for the first time during the pandemic Healthcare surpassed Hospitality which is typically the second kind of in that bar chart and it stayed ahead since the onset of the pandemic but I predict we start to get we're just now analyzing actuals from 2023 and looking at projections for 2024 I think healthcare is probably cooling a little bit we've seen a bump in Hospitality so I expect Hospitality to bump back up and then the next one typically is residential followed by education and we're seeing some really interesting early indicators that education is actually doing quite well right now so we're trying to dig into that as we analyze these numbers for 2024 so education meaning universities or high schools or other things there's more interior design work done in universities kind of that higher ed sector than there is in like K12 got it got it and so when I look at interior design there are two ways to look at it because workplace isn't just a place to work it's culture it's Mission it's all these things coming together in a physical manifestation of all of that and and the way I I look at it is in a continuum the Continuum on one end of the spectrum is efficiency let's make this cost effective and work as best we can the other end is productivity how do we make these people better how do you look at it so I think what's interesting from my point of view as we think about interior design and offices is um kind of form meets function and how do we make it pretty you don't have to know interior design to know that you feel good in certain spaces versus others but also form is there's really a function to these spaces and designers do much more than just making things pretty they really look at furniture layouts they look at behavior of people they really try to make spaces that make more productive teams and I think that's especially important as we look at the office sector I know you're exceptionally interested in the office sector and what's happening there especially with this back to office conversation that's happening in 2023 and probably is not finished in 2024 I think the power of interior designers is matching that form with function to really make it beautiful so you feel good in a space even if you're not a designer you know when you feel good in a space but also the form really looking at how we need to reinvent the office because I think a lot of people are coming back to offices that maybe shut down pre-co maybe have been less occupied for a while and it's a little bit this is a depressing example but it's a little bit like going to someone's house after they've died right it just feels like it's sat there for a while right so how do we need to reinvigorate these spaces to make them places that people want to be I just attended a presentation that you gave at a cornet luncheon here in Chicago and I think one of the things you said was Co was like a big asteroid did you say asteroid I said a meteor in the Earth close though what's the difference between an asteroid and a meteor I now our listeners are going to send somebody I'm not quite sure myself I think an asteroid is when it's out in space I think it's a meteor when it comes down into Earth so it's an asteroid until it becomes a meteor all right well something hit us yes and it changed the way we think and I think it's going to change the way that we do offices as well I was a blogger for the inton Post in 2017 is when I started blogging for The Huffington Post and I studied co-working and I thought co-working was fascinating because it was basically people paying for something that they essentially got for free right you get a job you get a badge you get to badge into an office so what would they pay for and one of the most interesting things about that is for when you think of co-working spaces I think you think of you know open Office places you know where there's a beer on tap and people just want to come for the community but actually one of the top spaces to sell out were private offices and they sold for the highest feeds so some of this was the asteroid the meteor hitting us but some of this is human behavior that I think we just haven't tapped into because we haven't had to in terms of the changes you're seeing postco the meteor I think we both I think we should agree it was the meteor hitting in the earth Y how did it change design so one of the things you mentioned is individual offices and demise Space versus open collaborative and there's issues there both practically and culturally the cultural issues has to do with the hierarchical nature of having an office versus not the size of your office or not and then the practically is it's more expensive to demise more space than it is to have more open space any changes there postco I would say definitely and I know one of the question questions that we kind of talked about before was you know can design help with this and I would say that depends because a lot of it depends on how much they're empowered to take control of for so many years we've been focused on how many people can you get in what's the cost per square foot and I think if we're invited in to really make it effective and make sure how do you measure Effectiveness make sure that's clear measures and then we measure it and repeat I think that there's certainly a lot we could do there MH so we're in a a beautiful space today with all steel which is a major manufacturer of furniture and I'm looking out at the furniture within this office right now and what strikes me is that even though it's primarily an open Office design they have brakes in in the the the line so like right in front of us we have a not a wall but like a half of a wall and then they have a slotted wall and things like that so I think that pure open Office isn't the answer I think it has to still have a sense of place even within that office is that a fair way to put it I think that's a fair way to put it and I think that rethinking the office is going to have to happen it's not going to be a sea of cubicles it's not going to be a sea of desks coming in just for individual work it's going to be a sea of spaces that really can support how people need to work today and how they want to collaborate today so that means different zones different areas different heights different acoustic treatment because I think some of the statistics I've heard say that while it used to be about 80% of the office was individual work space 20% was that collaborative meeting space I think post medeor we're going to see that probably flip-flop with 80% of the space much more collaboration focused and maybe less space in only physical heads down work one of the changes that we've noticed in the real estate business is that we're dealing more today with the HR function and increasingly the seite function than we were prior to that which was procurement or the financial function because I think people are now realizing that the office is not just a place to work it's a functional device to increase productivity and and it's at risk who are you dealing with today as your customer so many more people I would say so one of our statistics says well pre-co and pre all of this change Prem meteor we'll say uh the average number of decision makers was probably about two on the average project if you think of about a manufacturer like all steel today they're dealing with as many as 14 used to have the CFO the CEO maybe making the key decisions now you've got the chro you've got the chief technology officer maybe you have a head of hybrid head of remote especially when you get in that office sector you've got a lot of different people sometimes with a lot of competing priorities and that gets very challenging when you have creatives that are trying to kind of take into account all of these different perspectives to try and get somewhere that is actually most beneficial for the people that will be occupying this space MH so I go to back to that continue once again which is continue to efficiency and productivity and I think that the reason why that's not a common way to look at in the business is because productivity is very difficult to measure right people have to use proxies and a proxy for productivity would be a survey where they'll use happiness as a typical proxy I'm happy you must be productive well not necessarily how do you look at productivity how do you measure it in the context of interior design I think that's one of the biggest challenges I have not seen super effective way to measure productivity especially as it relates to the design of the space now some of the things I've seen is measuring you know occupancy you can look at who's occupying uh a certain space more than others you know let's say you've got five equal conference rooms but each of them have slightly different designs when you often dig into those numbers understand why it could be because of technology in this room functioned a certain way it could be because of the comfort of the furniture and something so as you mentioned earlier when you were talking about each building has it its own you know unique story even when we get those data studies kind of looking at why people use one space over another it's often so nuanced it's hard to relate back to a hard productivity number well I guess we're all working on that people have been measuring efficiency productivity those types of things for hundreds of years in labor studies PhD level articles written by Cornell Stanford has several and you would think that the academic side would have caught up but we're dealing with a psychological issue more than we're dealing with a widget issue so to speak of producing more generic things agreed and how do you measure if you feel good in this space or not because if you feel good you're probably going to be more productive I think that there's a lot of exploration to be done and I would say oftentimes these projects don't have budgets to go back in and do extensive studies plus once a capital buildout is done there's often not a lot of money left over to make changes would they discover something different so we're sitting here in a great office at all steals offices and and it's got a big screen TV and it's got a bunch of Lights looks like like an old-fashioned spaceship and in certain ways so a lot of Technology going on here but technology to me is a double-edged sword right because while technology can make you more productive can it make you less productive and so the example I use is a speech I gave in Los Angeles in June where I gave it on a Friday afternoon and you was a downtown LA Friday afternoon you probably gave the speech to yourself and it was a full house and and part of the reason was we decided not to zoom it so what's your point of view on technology its use in the workplace its use outside of the workplace the hybrid workplace all of the above yeah I think one of the biggest things we've got to figure out is this hybrid equity and really how to make technology work for us when we're in a space and it's been really interesting because I think it's often who's in the room that kind of feels like maybe you want to be in that room and if you're remote you're a bit left out but what's actually happening sometimes now in this hybrid era is when you've got 10 faces in one square versus single faces on the other Square it's making kind of a different kind of inequity so I think a huge opportunity for design for these spaces is really to kind of integrate the technology with the furniture with the architectural space in the room so that it's much more seamless and really gives opportunity for that equity and I think that's a huge challenge today I'll say one of the other things is that most Furniture is designed to last decades and decades and decades right it's designed to be sustainable it's designed to stand up to college students beating it up to rotating corporate clients beating it up technology is not technology changes so fast so it's very very difficult to integrate technology with things like furniture and architecture that aren't changing as fast as that technology is so let's go back to that sustainability question these chairs that we're sitting in right right now they may be brand new and I suspect they are but it's going to last well beyond the fashionability if that's the correct word of these chairs so to what extent when you're looking at designing a space now the space that we're in today has exposed ceilings exposed vents so that means we don't need the drop down ceilings and things like that but this chair will it ever be used again it depends historically in our industry I've been in this industry a little over 20 years um used furniture has been kind of the lower end of the market and perceived as less than with the rise of importance of sustainability I am seeing that grow we are seeing little pockets of things there's a couple of new really interesting businesses one of them called receip that is really trying to take furniture that is used and tag it so you know what the life of it is kind of like a Carfax vehicle history report you know kind of where the life of that product is and you can kind of track it so there's some innovators that are really in the space and trying to push forward to make used furniture a little bit sexier and I hope that we see more grow on that front there's a lot of work to be done to get everyone kind of adopted into that and the complexity around you know you're looking around here all the furniture that's in here literally any color different bases on a table different finishes of wood the possibilities are endless so you end up with this kind of caca of all of these amazing pieces and to catalog those and track them and if you're trying to reuse them in another office kind of find what can be used is so labor intensive as much as our industry likes to talk about flexibility reconfiguration even things like demountable walls the truth is the labor here's back to your labor story the labor to do all of that cataloging and finding it and designing with it is almost more than it would be just to buy new so our industry has a lot of work to do there so this is a complete nonse word I'm a big barbecuer and in my backyard I have right now three barbecues I have two smokers in one regular barbecue and I recently got a new barbecue about a year ago and the reason I got a new barbecue is because I tried to price out the cleaning of my existing barbecue it was three times the price to clean my existing barbecue versus getting a new one and so labor is everything so this chair that we're sitting in here right now if I wanted to move it from here to say New York City just the labor cost of moving this one chair from point A to point B hundreds of dollars at least because of the cost the weight all that stuff I don't know what this chair actually costs the manufacturer versus what they sell it for but the value of a car Falls by what 25 30% the minute it drives off the lot the furniture I'm not saying it becomes functionless but it may become worth less once you factor in these other costs is that an unfortunate place where the industry is right now it's an fortunate place that this industry has been for a long time now I will tell you I am seeing some kind of data indicating that we might be shifting outside of that and I think that a lot of that is because of this big meteor that hit as well so I think the design industry all of the product manufacturers that serve the design industry have long really cared about sustainability many of them are very passionate about it many of them tell a lot of stories around it though when it comes down to things like reusing it you know sadly a lot of the takeback programs and things that many companies have tried to kind of put into place have failed in the past let's go beyond the ReUse of furniture let's just talk about sustainability more more generally because putting aside reusing Furniture there are other elements of light and air and um environmental cleanliness clean air those types of things tell me about how those changes are being Incorporated today versus years ago sure so I think a lot of these are the lead practices that we all know and love that we're all very familiar with it does go beyond just use Furniture it does go beyond materiality of the furniture and recyclability of the furniture it goes into light views of the outdoors it goes into you know the health and the wellness of the people that are in the space but I would say one of the things that's changing now is really the demand for this so we have the industry's first ever Persona study that really looks at these designed specifiers why they're choosing what they're choosing and in the last year the sustainability first Persona has actually doubled so meaning that is the reason that they do it and I think a big reason that that demand has shifted is around the awareness of the world to really care about these sustainable attributes as well not just the designers but their clients are actually asking for them you know when things shut down and we saw the smog over La lift we saw a lot of things get a little bit better especially as gen Z kind of Rises it's a very important thing for their generation I think the need to do things more sustainably is is effective now a couple of newer things that really fall into sustainability but not just sustainability of a building but but also sustainability of the humans within the building is we're also seeing a shift towards more Wellness rooms we're seeing shift towards electronic free zones and things that help with mental health as that rises in a conversation we're seeing much more focus on those spaces that go beyond just the physical elements of a building I have a client of ours Crow Holdings they have office space at the old Parkland Hospital in Dallas and it if you see it is is some of the most spectacular space you'll ever see just absolutely beautiful and this is not me asking to get invited back but yes if anybody from Crow is listening I love coming to your space but I'm going to give them a shout out for one other thing they have what they call a debate chamber which is like three stories down and I don't know how they pulled this off or if this was even intentional there is no cell phone reception in that room at all none and I think it was intentional I think it was because if you're going to listen to a speaker listen to the speaker or don't be there and they got all electronic capability out of that room what's your point of view on that I think it's brilliant I mean um this is a debate room now like a place that they listen to speakers orace they actually debate it's a conference room it's not a conference that's not that's not true it looks like a Shakespearean theater in the round is what it looks it's super cool and next time you're in Dallas I as an interior designer I must must visit but in any event it's a cool probably SE 300 people the and the speaker rather than being on stage is in the middle of the floor oh interesting and and there's no electronic devices that you can get in the in the at least my phone wasn't working every time I've been down there and I think it's potential but I I love that to have an electronic free zone and I think there's a Renaissance towards that I think the pandemic kind of created us back to kind of the core of who we are as humans in some ways we were forced indoors some of that was uncomfortable but some of it was really beautiful we are doing these dinners now around around the country called Jeffersonian dinners have you ever attended a Jeffersonian dinner you got to dress up like in Revolutionary St it sounds like that but it's actually not that terrible it's a dinner that dates back the format of it dates back to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson would invite thought leaders into his home of varying backgrounds so they got this great debate happening and these great discussions happening and there are no electronics we ask everyone to shut their Electronics off and there is one conversation typically there's about 8 to 12 people around a table so you have one conversation which keeps you all kind of focused on one thing so there's one question with the appetizer there's a second question that goes around with the main course which typically is a medus question and the dessert question is a little something that's sweeter something to end the night on and every time we host one of these dinners we've had quite a few CB Folks at these various dinners around the country every time we host one of these dinners they're like oh my God I can't believe that time went so fast most of them have gone close to 5 hours because everyone's so engrossed in the moment and I think for where we are as Society that's such a healthy thing well I'm not suggesting people should dress up in Jefferson and era you can if you can but I'll tell you what uh we were talking in the car right over here uh that I do go to the horse racing track I lot and I go there not for the races solely I go there I go there I put on old timey gear I wear the hat the bow tie the whole thing and he's like oh who's this weirdo I'm like everybody else there right if you go to October Fest in Germany people wearing leader hos in them things like that and I know it's not interior design and I'm not saying we should wear costumes to the office but it is something that changes the flavor for sure but I think it's a trend towards Nostalgia I think change is happening so fast right now you've got AI you've got metaverse you've got all these things that feel so uncomfortable because they're kind of coming at us faster than ever before and this Nostalgia makes us more comfortable because it's familiar so we're seeing that from a design standpoint I think you're seeing it in a lot of the different things that we just discussed so old time Design Concepts coming back I mean you see like a lot of this retro stuff from the 1950s coming in look at the Walnut finishes that are happening in here um very much so well getting people back to the office that is that is the primary question that you're dealing with Amanda and the primary question we're dealing with as as office professionals Leasing and Sales agents what's the future how do we get to a future where we're in the right place I certainly respect the the hybrid work I certainly respect the equity uh issue but what's your point of view yeah I just wrote an article that appeared in Forbes and went pretty viral on Forbes titled gen Z and the great back to office debate won't end in 2023 so I think fortunately or unfortunately we are at this kind of inflection point and we can't put the toothpaste back in the tube I think there are some ways we can get people back to the office but I think it's going to involve really involving more people in that discussion I don't know how old your kids are but I have uh three boys two of whom are teenagers teenagers are terrorists as you know do you have teenagers in your house uh 1918 and 14 so yes okay so you've been through it with some of them and I think you know employees have this power today that they've not had in recent history especially as it relates to the office many of them have proven they can do their jobs remotely they've been given some of this freedom and it's tough to give that back but I think this is a huge opportunity for design it's huge opportunity for the commercial real estate industry as we look at rethinking these offices for how they need to perform for the future and I think historically a lot of the decisions around space around budget for the space around layouts for the space have been kind of passed down from leadership and one of the opportunities is involving more people in the discussion to really look at how we can kind of co-create spaces that are going to be more functional and make people want to leave their home give them something they cannot get from their home are we at The New Normal yet I don't think so I don't think so and and I'll tell you I think everyone's waiting to see who else figures out the new normal so I don't know if you ever read this study in my NBA class we read a study about McDonald's versus Burger King and McDonald's would do all of this market research looking at the exact Corners at the exact intersection of the exact markets of the exact regions that they wanted to be in and hone it down to exactly which corner they wanted to be on to build you know what Burger King did they built across the street so who was more successful there I'm not sure and I feel like a lot of us are waiting to see who takes these steps first because it is a huge expense and we are in the unknown we're in this great waiting period what is the future of interior design that is not only from a very practical standpoint going to bring people back but how do we make the interior environment better and how do you see that changing over the next five years I mean My Hope for this is that we bring designers into these conversations earlier and give them big bigger roles right like really helped bring them in this conversation of how based on whoever the owner whoever the tenant whoever the landlord whatever their goals are how do we bring designers in to be a part of that conversation I think as we've talked about since this meteor of Co hit it's really change the way that we think about space and I do think being together physically face to face breathing the same air in one space is more important today than ever and more important to relationships and mental health and being together so by bringing interior designers into that conversation earlier I think they could really help us creatively problem solve where we need to go from here well Amanda I want to thank you so much for coming out today in this beautiful Space by All Steel in the fton market in Chicago Amanda Schneider president Think Lab thank you so much for coming out what a great discussion all right thank you so much for more about design and related content you can hear more from Amanda on a podcast that she hosts called design nerds Anonymous or you can visit our website cbre.com thee weekly take we'd love to hear from you too so please send us your feedback review the show and share it with your network and of course we hope you'll subscribe on Apple podcasts Spotify or wherever you listen we'll be back with ideas from other terrific thought leaders insights into topics such as how new kinds of data are influencing Property Management real estate stories from Industries including the media and higher education and lots more we look forward to sharing those with you soon for now thanks for joining us I'm Spencer Levy be smart be safe be wellin the real estate business we talk about the dirt site location the land itself and then it's about bricks and mortar steel and glass the power and Air Quality Systems everything that makes the built environment stand and function what goes inside those buildings the floor plans fixtures and Furniture those are some of the last choices owners and occupiers have to make but those details involve much more than Aesthetics and can impact business in a variety of important ways on this episode a discussion of design and why design has been elevated to the top of many corporate decision trees now you've got the chro you've got the chief technology officer maybe you have a head of hybrid head of remote especially when we get in that office sector you've got a lot of different people sometimes with a lot of competing priorities and that gets very challenging when you have creatives that are trying to kind of take into account all of these different perspectives to try and get somewhere that is actually most beneficial for the people that will be occupying this space that's Amanda Schneider founder and president of think laab a design research division of the Publishing Company sandal based in Chicago Amanda originally covered design as a Huffington Post blogger before she founded an independent consultancy in 2011 that firm was acquired by Sandow in 2018 and rebranded as thinklab which today helps businesses understand the entire design ecosystem coming up we visit the windy city and a space design for podcasting at the All Steel experience Center to bring you insights into functional space device free zones an emerging trend of nostalgia at the office and lots more I'm Spencer Levy and that's right now on the weekly take welcome to the weekly take and this week I am I am delighted to be with Amanda Schneider president of Think Lab Amanda welcome to the show thanks for having me let's talk about what design is okay so I'm not trying to bring it down to the basic level but most of our listeners are in the real estate business not all of them are in office but just in basic terms do you cover office retail hotels tell us a little bit about the scope of your practice absolutely so I think that there's an issue with interior design because there's things like HD TV that really promote interior designers as color Pickers and pillow Pickers and some of them that are very famous and welln are actually not even degreed interior designers so the true field of interior design does cover residential and it does cover decorators but it also covers the commercial side and the commercial side includes corporate interior design those that design hospitals it includes Hospitality education and a whole slew of other vertical markets so a lot of what we do is really try to look at where design work is happening what's growing and really help our clients stay ahead of trends of shifts and changes that are happening and of course corporate we can't miss corporate as well because a lot of conversation is happening around that today so your your personal practice covers all of the above but would you say a disproportionate amount of your practice is around the interior of office space I would say that's where our industry naturally focuses is office because office is the largest sector and my team and I also run all of the Interior Design Giants of design numbers so think of that like the Fortune 500 except for interior design firms really looking at what work is happening and corporate is by far almost double any other sector when you look at interior design work MH so take me through where you see the market today from where we were pre-co what what are some of the major changes yeah so a lot of our interior design Giants design which again is the top 200 firms looking at detailed metrics about where their fees come from what they're earning so corporate is the largest sector and corporate is actually down 19% since the onset of the pandemic so we look at 2019 numbers compared to our most recent numbers it's Fallen 19% and is expected to kind of stay at a steady state for a while we've seen interesting shifts where actually for the first time during the pandemic Healthcare surpassed Hospitality which is typically the second kind of in that bar chart and it stayed ahead since the onset of the pandemic but I predict we start to get we're just now analyzing actuals from 2023 and looking at projections for 2024 I think healthcare is probably cooling a little bit we've seen a bump in Hospitality so I expect Hospitality to bump back up and then the next one typically is residential followed by education and we're seeing some really interesting early indicators that education is actually doing quite well right now so we're trying to dig into that as we analyze these numbers for 2024 so education meaning universities or high schools or other things there's more interior design work done in universities kind of that higher ed sector than there is in like K12 got it got it and so when I look at interior design there are two ways to look at it because workplace isn't just a place to work it's culture it's Mission it's all these things coming together in a physical manifestation of all of that and and the way I I look at it is in a continuum the Continuum on one end of the spectrum is efficiency let's make this cost effective and work as best we can the other end is productivity how do we make these people better how do you look at it so I think what's interesting from my point of view as we think about interior design and offices is um kind of form meets function and how do we make it pretty you don't have to know interior design to know that you feel good in certain spaces versus others but also form is there's really a function to these spaces and designers do much more than just making things pretty they really look at furniture layouts they look at behavior of people they really try to make spaces that make more productive teams and I think that's especially important as we look at the office sector I know you're exceptionally interested in the office sector and what's happening there especially with this back to office conversation that's happening in 2023 and probably is not finished in 2024 I think the power of interior designers is matching that form with function to really make it beautiful so you feel good in a space even if you're not a designer you know when you feel good in a space but also the form really looking at how we need to reinvent the office because I think a lot of people are coming back to offices that maybe shut down pre-co maybe have been less occupied for a while and it's a little bit this is a depressing example but it's a little bit like going to someone's house after they've died right it just feels like it's sat there for a while right so how do we need to reinvigorate these spaces to make them places that people want to be I just attended a presentation that you gave at a cornet luncheon here in Chicago and I think one of the things you said was Co was like a big asteroid did you say asteroid I said a meteor in the Earth close though what's the difference between an asteroid and a meteor I now our listeners are going to send somebody I'm not quite sure myself I think an asteroid is when it's out in space I think it's a meteor when it comes down into Earth so it's an asteroid until it becomes a meteor all right well something hit us yes and it changed the way we think and I think it's going to change the way that we do offices as well I was a blogger for the inton Post in 2017 is when I started blogging for The Huffington Post and I studied co-working and I thought co-working was fascinating because it was basically people paying for something that they essentially got for free right you get a job you get a badge you get to badge into an office so what would they pay for and one of the most interesting things about that is for when you think of co-working spaces I think you think of you know open Office places you know where there's a beer on tap and people just want to come for the community but actually one of the top spaces to sell out were private offices and they sold for the highest feeds so some of this was the asteroid the meteor hitting us but some of this is human behavior that I think we just haven't tapped into because we haven't had to in terms of the changes you're seeing postco the meteor I think we both I think we should agree it was the meteor hitting in the earth Y how did it change design so one of the things you mentioned is individual offices and demise Space versus open collaborative and there's issues there both practically and culturally the cultural issues has to do with the hierarchical nature of having an office versus not the size of your office or not and then the practically is it's more expensive to demise more space than it is to have more open space any changes there postco I would say definitely and I know one of the question questions that we kind of talked about before was you know can design help with this and I would say that depends because a lot of it depends on how much they're empowered to take control of for so many years we've been focused on how many people can you get in what's the cost per square foot and I think if we're invited in to really make it effective and make sure how do you measure Effectiveness make sure that's clear measures and then we measure it and repeat I think that there's certainly a lot we could do there MH so we're in a a beautiful space today with all steel which is a major manufacturer of furniture and I'm looking out at the furniture within this office right now and what strikes me is that even though it's primarily an open Office design they have brakes in in the the the line so like right in front of us we have a not a wall but like a half of a wall and then they have a slotted wall and things like that so I think that pure open Office isn't the answer I think it has to still have a sense of place even within that office is that a fair way to put it I think that's a fair way to put it and I think that rethinking the office is going to have to happen it's not going to be a sea of cubicles it's not going to be a sea of desks coming in just for individual work it's going to be a sea of spaces that really can support how people need to work today and how they want to collaborate today so that means different zones different areas different heights different acoustic treatment because I think some of the statistics I've heard say that while it used to be about 80% of the office was individual work space 20% was that collaborative meeting space I think post medeor we're going to see that probably flip-flop with 80% of the space much more collaboration focused and maybe less space in only physical heads down work one of the changes that we've noticed in the real estate business is that we're dealing more today with the HR function and increasingly the seite function than we were prior to that which was procurement or the financial function because I think people are now realizing that the office is not just a place to work it's a functional device to increase productivity and and it's at risk who are you dealing with today as your customer so many more people I would say so one of our statistics says well pre-co and pre all of this change Prem meteor we'll say uh the average number of decision makers was probably about two on the average project if you think of about a manufacturer like all steel today they're dealing with as many as 14 used to have the CFO the CEO maybe making the key decisions now you've got the chro you've got the chief technology officer maybe you have a head of hybrid head of remote especially when you get in that office sector you've got a lot of different people sometimes with a lot of competing priorities and that gets very challenging when you have creatives that are trying to kind of take into account all of these different perspectives to try and get somewhere that is actually most beneficial for the people that will be occupying this space MH so I go to back to that continue once again which is continue to efficiency and productivity and I think that the reason why that's not a common way to look at in the business is because productivity is very difficult to measure right people have to use proxies and a proxy for productivity would be a survey where they'll use happiness as a typical proxy I'm happy you must be productive well not necessarily how do you look at productivity how do you measure it in the context of interior design I think that's one of the biggest challenges I have not seen super effective way to measure productivity especially as it relates to the design of the space now some of the things I've seen is measuring you know occupancy you can look at who's occupying uh a certain space more than others you know let's say you've got five equal conference rooms but each of them have slightly different designs when you often dig into those numbers understand why it could be because of technology in this room functioned a certain way it could be because of the comfort of the furniture and something so as you mentioned earlier when you were talking about each building has it its own you know unique story even when we get those data studies kind of looking at why people use one space over another it's often so nuanced it's hard to relate back to a hard productivity number well I guess we're all working on that people have been measuring efficiency productivity those types of things for hundreds of years in labor studies PhD level articles written by Cornell Stanford has several and you would think that the academic side would have caught up but we're dealing with a psychological issue more than we're dealing with a widget issue so to speak of producing more generic things agreed and how do you measure if you feel good in this space or not because if you feel good you're probably going to be more productive I think that there's a lot of exploration to be done and I would say oftentimes these projects don't have budgets to go back in and do extensive studies plus once a capital buildout is done there's often not a lot of money left over to make changes would they discover something different so we're sitting here in a great office at all steals offices and and it's got a big screen TV and it's got a bunch of Lights looks like like an old-fashioned spaceship and in certain ways so a lot of Technology going on here but technology to me is a double-edged sword right because while technology can make you more productive can it make you less productive and so the example I use is a speech I gave in Los Angeles in June where I gave it on a Friday afternoon and you was a downtown LA Friday afternoon you probably gave the speech to yourself and it was a full house and and part of the reason was we decided not to zoom it so what's your point of view on technology its use in the workplace its use outside of the workplace the hybrid workplace all of the above yeah I think one of the biggest things we've got to figure out is this hybrid equity and really how to make technology work for us when we're in a space and it's been really interesting because I think it's often who's in the room that kind of feels like maybe you want to be in that room and if you're remote you're a bit left out but what's actually happening sometimes now in this hybrid era is when you've got 10 faces in one square versus single faces on the other Square it's making kind of a different kind of inequity so I think a huge opportunity for design for these spaces is really to kind of integrate the technology with the furniture with the architectural space in the room so that it's much more seamless and really gives opportunity for that equity and I think that's a huge challenge today I'll say one of the other things is that most Furniture is designed to last decades and decades and decades right it's designed to be sustainable it's designed to stand up to college students beating it up to rotating corporate clients beating it up technology is not technology changes so fast so it's very very difficult to integrate technology with things like furniture and architecture that aren't changing as fast as that technology is so let's go back to that sustainability question these chairs that we're sitting in right right now they may be brand new and I suspect they are but it's going to last well beyond the fashionability if that's the correct word of these chairs so to what extent when you're looking at designing a space now the space that we're in today has exposed ceilings exposed vents so that means we don't need the drop down ceilings and things like that but this chair will it ever be used again it depends historically in our industry I've been in this industry a little over 20 years um used furniture has been kind of the lower end of the market and perceived as less than with the rise of importance of sustainability I am seeing that grow we are seeing little pockets of things there's a couple of new really interesting businesses one of them called receip that is really trying to take furniture that is used and tag it so you know what the life of it is kind of like a Carfax vehicle history report you know kind of where the life of that product is and you can kind of track it so there's some innovators that are really in the space and trying to push forward to make used furniture a little bit sexier and I hope that we see more grow on that front there's a lot of work to be done to get everyone kind of adopted into that and the complexity around you know you're looking around here all the furniture that's in here literally any color different bases on a table different finishes of wood the possibilities are endless so you end up with this kind of caca of all of these amazing pieces and to catalog those and track them and if you're trying to reuse them in another office kind of find what can be used is so labor intensive as much as our industry likes to talk about flexibility reconfiguration even things like demountable walls the truth is the labor here's back to your labor story the labor to do all of that cataloging and finding it and designing with it is almost more than it would be just to buy new so our industry has a lot of work to do there so this is a complete nonse word I'm a big barbecuer and in my backyard I have right now three barbecues I have two smokers in one regular barbecue and I recently got a new barbecue about a year ago and the reason I got a new barbecue is because I tried to price out the cleaning of my existing barbecue it was three times the price to clean my existing barbecue versus getting a new one and so labor is everything so this chair that we're sitting in here right now if I wanted to move it from here to say New York City just the labor cost of moving this one chair from point A to point B hundreds of dollars at least because of the cost the weight all that stuff I don't know what this chair actually costs the manufacturer versus what they sell it for but the value of a car Falls by what 25 30% the minute it drives off the lot the furniture I'm not saying it becomes functionless but it may become worth less once you factor in these other costs is that an unfortunate place where the industry is right now it's an fortunate place that this industry has been for a long time now I will tell you I am seeing some kind of data indicating that we might be shifting outside of that and I think that a lot of that is because of this big meteor that hit as well so I think the design industry all of the product manufacturers that serve the design industry have long really cared about sustainability many of them are very passionate about it many of them tell a lot of stories around it though when it comes down to things like reusing it you know sadly a lot of the takeback programs and things that many companies have tried to kind of put into place have failed in the past let's go beyond the ReUse of furniture let's just talk about sustainability more more generally because putting aside reusing Furniture there are other elements of light and air and um environmental cleanliness clean air those types of things tell me about how those changes are being Incorporated today versus years ago sure so I think a lot of these are the lead practices that we all know and love that we're all very familiar with it does go beyond just use Furniture it does go beyond materiality of the furniture and recyclability of the furniture it goes into light views of the outdoors it goes into you know the health and the wellness of the people that are in the space but I would say one of the things that's changing now is really the demand for this so we have the industry's first ever Persona study that really looks at these designed specifiers why they're choosing what they're choosing and in the last year the sustainability first Persona has actually doubled so meaning that is the reason that they do it and I think a big reason that that demand has shifted is around the awareness of the world to really care about these sustainable attributes as well not just the designers but their clients are actually asking for them you know when things shut down and we saw the smog over La lift we saw a lot of things get a little bit better especially as gen Z kind of Rises it's a very important thing for their generation I think the need to do things more sustainably is is effective now a couple of newer things that really fall into sustainability but not just sustainability of a building but but also sustainability of the humans within the building is we're also seeing a shift towards more Wellness rooms we're seeing shift towards electronic free zones and things that help with mental health as that rises in a conversation we're seeing much more focus on those spaces that go beyond just the physical elements of a building I have a client of ours Crow Holdings they have office space at the old Parkland Hospital in Dallas and it if you see it is is some of the most spectacular space you'll ever see just absolutely beautiful and this is not me asking to get invited back but yes if anybody from Crow is listening I love coming to your space but I'm going to give them a shout out for one other thing they have what they call a debate chamber which is like three stories down and I don't know how they pulled this off or if this was even intentional there is no cell phone reception in that room at all none and I think it was intentional I think it was because if you're going to listen to a speaker listen to the speaker or don't be there and they got all electronic capability out of that room what's your point of view on that I think it's brilliant I mean um this is a debate room now like a place that they listen to speakers orace they actually debate it's a conference room it's not a conference that's not that's not true it looks like a Shakespearean theater in the round is what it looks it's super cool and next time you're in Dallas I as an interior designer I must must visit but in any event it's a cool probably SE 300 people the and the speaker rather than being on stage is in the middle of the floor oh interesting and and there's no electronic devices that you can get in the in the at least my phone wasn't working every time I've been down there and I think it's potential but I I love that to have an electronic free zone and I think there's a Renaissance towards that I think the pandemic kind of created us back to kind of the core of who we are as humans in some ways we were forced indoors some of that was uncomfortable but some of it was really beautiful we are doing these dinners now around around the country called Jeffersonian dinners have you ever attended a Jeffersonian dinner you got to dress up like in Revolutionary St it sounds like that but it's actually not that terrible it's a dinner that dates back the format of it dates back to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson would invite thought leaders into his home of varying backgrounds so they got this great debate happening and these great discussions happening and there are no electronics we ask everyone to shut their Electronics off and there is one conversation typically there's about 8 to 12 people around a table so you have one conversation which keeps you all kind of focused on one thing so there's one question with the appetizer there's a second question that goes around with the main course which typically is a medus question and the dessert question is a little something that's sweeter something to end the night on and every time we host one of these dinners we've had quite a few CB Folks at these various dinners around the country every time we host one of these dinners they're like oh my God I can't believe that time went so fast most of them have gone close to 5 hours because everyone's so engrossed in the moment and I think for where we are as Society that's such a healthy thing well I'm not suggesting people should dress up in Jefferson and era you can if you can but I'll tell you what uh we were talking in the car right over here uh that I do go to the horse racing track I lot and I go there not for the races solely I go there I go there I put on old timey gear I wear the hat the bow tie the whole thing and he's like oh who's this weirdo I'm like everybody else there right if you go to October Fest in Germany people wearing leader hos in them things like that and I know it's not interior design and I'm not saying we should wear costumes to the office but it is something that changes the flavor for sure but I think it's a trend towards Nostalgia I think change is happening so fast right now you've got AI you've got metaverse you've got all these things that feel so uncomfortable because they're kind of coming at us faster than ever before and this Nostalgia makes us more comfortable because it's familiar so we're seeing that from a design standpoint I think you're seeing it in a lot of the different things that we just discussed so old time Design Concepts coming back I mean you see like a lot of this retro stuff from the 1950s coming in look at the Walnut finishes that are happening in here um very much so well getting people back to the office that is that is the primary question that you're dealing with Amanda and the primary question we're dealing with as as office professionals Leasing and Sales agents what's the future how do we get to a future where we're in the right place I certainly respect the the hybrid work I certainly respect the equity uh issue but what's your point of view yeah I just wrote an article that appeared in Forbes and went pretty viral on Forbes titled gen Z and the great back to office debate won't end in 2023 so I think fortunately or unfortunately we are at this kind of inflection point and we can't put the toothpaste back in the tube I think there are some ways we can get people back to the office but I think it's going to involve really involving more people in that discussion I don't know how old your kids are but I have uh three boys two of whom are teenagers teenagers are terrorists as you know do you have teenagers in your house uh 1918 and 14 so yes okay so you've been through it with some of them and I think you know employees have this power today that they've not had in recent history especially as it relates to the office many of them have proven they can do their jobs remotely they've been given some of this freedom and it's tough to give that back but I think this is a huge opportunity for design it's huge opportunity for the commercial real estate industry as we look at rethinking these offices for how they need to perform for the future and I think historically a lot of the decisions around space around budget for the space around layouts for the space have been kind of passed down from leadership and one of the opportunities is involving more people in the discussion to really look at how we can kind of co-create spaces that are going to be more functional and make people want to leave their home give them something they cannot get from their home are we at The New Normal yet I don't think so I don't think so and and I'll tell you I think everyone's waiting to see who else figures out the new normal so I don't know if you ever read this study in my NBA class we read a study about McDonald's versus Burger King and McDonald's would do all of this market research looking at the exact Corners at the exact intersection of the exact markets of the exact regions that they wanted to be in and hone it down to exactly which corner they wanted to be on to build you know what Burger King did they built across the street so who was more successful there I'm not sure and I feel like a lot of us are waiting to see who takes these steps first because it is a huge expense and we are in the unknown we're in this great waiting period what is the future of interior design that is not only from a very practical standpoint going to bring people back but how do we make the interior environment better and how do you see that changing over the next five years I mean My Hope for this is that we bring designers into these conversations earlier and give them big bigger roles right like really helped bring them in this conversation of how based on whoever the owner whoever the tenant whoever the landlord whatever their goals are how do we bring designers in to be a part of that conversation I think as we've talked about since this meteor of Co hit it's really change the way that we think about space and I do think being together physically face to face breathing the same air in one space is more important today than ever and more important to relationships and mental health and being together so by bringing interior designers into that conversation earlier I think they could really help us creatively problem solve where we need to go from here well Amanda I want to thank you so much for coming out today in this beautiful Space by All Steel in the fton market in Chicago Amanda Schneider president Think Lab thank you so much for coming out what a great discussion all right thank you so much for more about design and related content you can hear more from Amanda on a podcast that she hosts called design nerds Anonymous or you can visit our website cbre.com thee weekly take we'd love to hear from you too so please send us your feedback review the show and share it with your network and of course we hope you'll subscribe on Apple podcasts Spotify or wherever you listen we'll be back with ideas from other terrific thought leaders insights into topics such as how new kinds of data are influencing Property Management real estate stories from Industries including the media and higher education and lots more we look forward to sharing those with you soon for now thanks for joining us I'm Spencer Levy be smart be safe be well\n"