Woodbury School of Architecture Board of Advisors member Debra Gerod, Dean Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, and alumnus Mark Rapisardi were recently featured in the June edition of the San Fernando Vallery Business Journal. Exploring the future of centralized workplaces, the article brought together a range of architects and builders to comment on how the current pandemic will shape office design and how we work together.
Gerod noted that companies will quickly make the easy changes of more hand-sanitizer in the office, the lunchroom may disappear, and employees will likely choose to use stairwells over elevators. “There’s already a priority to getting people to use stairs instead of elevators for health reasons,” she said. Looking to the impact on college campuses, Dean Wahlroos-Ritter commented that, “As everybody else in mid-March, we left our physical campus and continued instruction online, and now we’re deep in planning for the fall.” Ingalill told SFVBJ that a school campus represents a microcosm of every occupiable space – offices, classes, cafeteria, assembly halls, and more.
In the same issue, the SFVBJ featured alumnus Mark Rapisardi at S3 Builders, who told the Journal that he believes practices like installing plexiglass around cubicles and work-from-home teams will be short-lived. He maintains that socializing and collaboration comprise the core of corporate work culture. “Let’s remember that the open office paradigm was a direct response to the phenomenon known as water-cooler moments. Covid-19 is going to change the work environment, but in the years to follow, I do not believe it will change how we occupy and utilize the space.” He goes on to say that, “At our core, we enjoy working together and our collaborative work environments.”
You can read the centralized workplace article here.
Images Courtesy Jesus Montes