Towards a new society brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic;
Safer & More Innovative Workplaces

　“The office is home, a living, breathing space”, so mused Shoji Hayashi, former vice president of Nikken Sekkei, whose words have served as motto for us in the design and construction of office buildings. During Japan’s period of high economic growth, office buildings grew in size to handle huge amounts of paperwork, and at the time, were referred to simply as boxes, not architecture. However, office buildings, where white collar workers spend more than a third of the day, should be as human and as superior an architectural space as their homes. Since that era, office buildings have evolved dramatically not only in terms of their designs and the functions they perform, but also in terms of safety and environmental performance.
　However, under the state of emergency declared for COVID-19, many office workers had no choice but to stay at home. While there were challenges to being able to work from home at such short notice, at the same time, a number of companies discovered the potential of working remotely as an option and launched initiatives to expand its application in the “new normal”. Conversely, office buildings must be able to blend in with both lifestyles and workstyles now more than ever and redesigned as safer, more secure and more appealing spaces.

　The slightly sarcastic Hayashi was later heard to say that the “office, in the end, becomes a ‘kamidana” (a household Shinto altar shrine). When office work and communication are completely digitalized, the office simply becomes a place to verify the significance and symbolism of the existence of the company itself, or as a place that offers employees a sense of belonging.
　Now, we must rethink what it means to have workers gather together in offices.

　ABW (Activity Based Workplace) is a term that has been bandied around the world of workplace design in recent years. An ABW is a workplace where employees are encouraged to actively choose where they work according to the activity, rather than a homogeneous set of workstations based around an organization or number of workers.
　Many companies in Japan have defined work based on the time one arrives and leaves the office. In other words, even when it came to promoting ABW, programs tended to focus on in-office activities. In the future, it will be easier to think of the office as an option for ABW with a base in working remotely. ABW’s scope extends outside the office and into a broader idea of time and space—wake up in the morning and check email, drop the kids off at daycare, arrive at the office at a set time, put together materials for a team meeting, visit clients, attend a wrap-up meeting at a satellite office, work solo taking advantage of a more advanced environment, and attend an event on self-improvement before going home.
　In Europe, the birthplace of ABW, the purpose of a worker’s time in the office is clarified with clear contracts between companies and workers, achievements in each period, and evaluations of those results. It seems that some companies are now paying benefits only to workers who live close to their offices and are mobile, rather than covering the cost of commuting from far-off locations with no conditions attached. Since companies in Japan have a strong relationship of mutual trust and are skilled at teamwork due to the length of time workers have been employed, they will need to restructure their own rules, tools and practices while retaining this advantage to create offices that can be selected and that go beyond reforming workstyles.

　The only reason to gather in the office should not be simply to put your hands together in prayer before the kamidana, or household Shinto altar shrine, in your home. The insights that arise from informal communication, ideas that are spun from the objectives of discussions, and companies of the future will need to have mechanisms for collaboration in place with a number of other companies to be able to develop these into new business models. Although virtual spaces have the benefit of creating a wider circle of connections quickly, the highly functional and secure space of an urban office holds an advantage in terms of achieving stronger and more precise collaboration. Individual workers will also seek to confirm the vision of the company to which they belong as a place where they can meet others and gain a sense of their own growth. It is said that if we do not look beyond the COVID-19 pandemic and reboot to create workplaces as spaces for open innovation, companies will find it harder to attract great talent.

　Office buildings in Japan have evolved to the point where they are able to withstand earthquakes, floods and disruptions to lifelines. The COVID-19 pandemic can be positioned as one more addition to this BCP (Business Continuity Plan) menu. We must be prepared not only for the second wave of the novel coronavirus, but also for the complexities of the next expected disaster. Depending on the type of disaster, the office may be safer than the home.
　There is a demand for safer offices for the many workers who were able to keep up the fight in the city center to support social infrastructure during the state of emergency. Although some companies may be considering relocating or dividing up roles with satellite offices, there may be others that need a more secure office in the city center.
　A number of businesses have taken up tenancy in large office buildings, so building owners need to prepare several, even more meticulous, modes. Furthermore, if we do not push ahead with the development of remote robotics, we will not be able to respond quickly or precisely to the needs of our user companies. We are awaiting the dawn of smart buildings.
　A variety of proposals have already been created for non-contact devices and the expansion of natural ventilation systems, but depending on the expected disaster, it is possible that air quality and flow may need to be even more actively controlled not only with ventilation but also intricately-designed, air-tight systems. If we expand our scope to include sophisticated medical and research facilities, we can see that individual elemental technologies are already available, so we should be prepared to precisely integrate these technologies depending on the programs required. (July 22, 2020)