JLL’s 2022 Office Fit Out Guide report provides benchmark costs to build out a range of office types across major markets in the United States and Canada. The cost benchmarks are built on the data from thousands of real-world projects, supported by detailed cost estimating models, and confirmed by local experts working across the country.
Additional variants of the COVID-19 virus delayed a mass return to the office in 2021, frustrating expectations for a timely return to normal. At the end the first quarter of 2022, hybrid work remains prevalent and the role of the office remains in flux, with firms navigating increased scrutiny around employee work-life balance in a tight labor market. The office must evolve in response to the lessons learned in the pandemic.
Where Are We Now?
The guide offers high-level guidance on what offices ready for the post-pandemic world might entail and cost.
- Supporting mobility and changing work cadences: With an estimated 64% of workers stating that they would or have considered quitting if asked to return to the office full time and no marked decline in productivity noted due to work-from-home, hybrid schedules remain a part of office worker life and a critical evaluation of how the office can best support work is underway. As a result, future office designs will place a greater emphasis on custom collaboration and community spaces, enhancing in person communication.
- Technology-centric design to support new ways of working: A workplace designed for a mobility-focused and partly remote workforce will include a greater share of conference rooms, huddle rooms, and flexibility collaboration spaces that allow for video calls and presentations designed for a virtual-first environment. Audio visual and other supportive tech infrastructure once limited to higher-end build outs is now a baseline requirement for a post-pandemic office.
- Sustainable design and new measures of costs: As almost 90 percent of the global economy is attached to a net-zero carbon goal, sustainability in the built environment has become a first-class measure of value. In order for both occupiers and landlords to achieve science based target initiatives for emissions, fit outs must support long-term sustainability goals.
- Employee wellness supported by the built environment: Part of redefining the office in a post-pandemic work is navigating the impact the built environment has on employee health. From preventing the spread of viral transmission to increasing cognitive function in the office by up to 26 percent, wellness focused design is critical to facilitating return to office at any scale and supporting productivity.
Related Stories
| Aug 27, 2014
Designs for community-based workspace in Carlsbad unveiled
Cruzan announced make, a 175,000-square-foot office redevelopment project on the coast of Carlsbad, Calif. Cruzan will usher this next generation of community-based, integrated workspace into existence in fall 2014.
| Aug 25, 2014
Tall wood buildings: Surveying the early innovators
Timber has been largely abandoned as a structural solution in taller buildings during the last century, in favor of concrete and steel. Perkins+Will's Rebecca Holt writes about the firm's work in surveying the burgeoning tall wood buildings sector.
| Aug 25, 2014
'Vanity space' makes up large percentage of world's tallest buildings [infographic]
Large portions of some skyscrapers are useless space used to artificially enhance their height, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
| Aug 25, 2014
Photographer creates time-lapse video of 1 WTC using 30,000 photos
Choosing from 30,000 photos he took from the day construction began in 2006 to the day when construction was finished in 2012, Brooklyn-based photographer Benjamin Rosamund compressed 1,100 photos to create the two-minute video.
| Aug 19, 2014
Goettsch Partners unveils design for mega mixed-use development in Shenzhen [slideshow]
The overall design concept is of a complex of textured buildings that would differentiate from the surrounding blue-glass buildings of Shenzhen.
| Aug 18, 2014
From icon to breadbasket: Gehry building to be turned into Whole Foods
The Howard Hughes Corporation, in association with architecture firm Cho Benn Holback + Associates, plans to turn the building—at least the majority of it—into a Whole Foods.
| Aug 18, 2014
SPARK’s newly unveiled mixed-use development references China's flowing hillscape
Architecture firm SPARK recently finished a design for a new development in Shenzhen. The 770,700 square-foot mixed-use structure's design mimics the hilly landscape of the site's locale.
| Aug 14, 2014
How workplace design can empower employees, businesses
Focusing on recent work at Follett and Zurich, CannonDesign’ Meg Osman reveals the power of research, strategy, change management, and measurement to transform businesses for the better.
| Aug 12, 2014
Shading prototype could allow new levels of environmental control for skyscraper occupants
Developed by architects at NBBJ, Sunbreak uses a unique three-hinged shade that morphs from an opaque shutter to an abstract set of vertical blinds to an awning, depending on what is needed.
| Aug 11, 2014
The Endless City: Skyscraper concept connects all floors with dual ramps
Rather than superimposing one floor on top of another, London-based SURE Architecture proposes two endless ramps, rising gradually with a low gradient from the ground floor to the sky.