The business sector's comeback to physical workplaces is well underway. Staff members at international firms such as Amazon, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs have been instructed to return to their offices for the entire workweek. In the initial days of December, Instagram became the latest firm to announce a return-to-office mandate made a similar decision, with its chief executive, Adam Mosseri, explaining the action was intended to enhance employee “cooperation” and “creativity”.
TL;DR
- Amazon, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs mandate full-week office returns for staff.
- Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri cited cooperation and creativity as reasons for return-to-office.
- Office planners must create appealing experiences, not just workspaces, to entice employees.
- Designers are incorporating amenities like food, bars, and modular furnishings into offices.
However, numerous employees have feared returning to in-person workplaces, asserting that a blended work model offers adaptability without sacrificing output. This poses a fresh post-pandemic hurdle for office planners, who are now tasked with creating appealing environments to entice staff back to their desks, according to Ray Yuen, the office managing director at the architectural company Gensler.
“We’re no longer just designing workplaces, we’re actually designing experiences,” said Yuen, at the Coins2Day Brainstorm Design forum in Macau on Dec. 2. “You’ve really got to make the campus or the workplace more than work, and that’s the fun part of it.”
Drawing on findings from a 2025 poll conducted by his company, Yuen stated that when questioned about the elements of positive work environments, staff members more frequently cited aspects like sustenance and well-being.
“They didn’t even mention anything about work—everybody just picked the stuff that we really want as human beings,” he added.
Consequently, professionals in office design, such as Yuen, must consider how to reinvent contemporary workspaces. He referenced a Gensler undertaking in Tokyo, Japan, for a firm whose employees were predominantly working remotely, with half of them doing so.
“We designed it [their office] with 15 different food offerings, including trying to bring Blue Bottle in. We ended up [also] designing a secret [vinyl] bar,” said Yuen.
Yuen further noted that businesses have been pursuing more adaptable office environments, prompting interior designers to substitute fixed structures with modular, detachable furnishings. “[This way,] you can transform a space when you need to, from an F&B [space] for the staff, to an events space or a happy hour space for your clients.”
Yuen mentioned that consumer demands are also growing more intricate. For example, airports have evolved beyond being simple transit points to also function as areas where individuals can conduct work or relax.
The designer stated that airports now have “a lot more outdoor-indoor space [and] natural light, past the actual check-in area. Airport [experiences] used to be just you checking in, and sitting there, waiting,”. “It’s a destination, it’s no longer just a [place of] transit.”
As with other fields, artificial intelligence is also rewriting the playbook for designers.
Yuen shared that certain customers have presented images from AI art tools such as Google's Nano Banana Pro, subsequently inquiring: “If they can do it in a second, why can’t design firms do it quicker?”
Many designers traditionally regard time and craftsmanship as core tenets of design, but AI is pushing them to change the way they work, Yuen said. Clients now want “immediate response, immediate gratification,” he continued.
“With AI, we’re now almost like a creator [of] all these art pieces, and we try to select what is suitable—that’s the only way we can manage that need from clients on speed and time,” said Yuen.
