Norman Foster explores the future of the workplace

In a world after Covid, which magnified the trend of working from home, what will define the workplace of the future and what lessons can we learn from the past? For me, the subject has a very personal connection because the factory and the office were the essence of the early years of practice, before we evolved into more diverse kinds of buildings, infrastructure, and products. Notwithstanding our present diversity, the workplace as a design challenge continues to engage us. There is also a connection between the present and those projects of six decades ago in that they all share a common philosophy.

The social propositions, which I describe as a philosophy, are even more valid in a post-Covid era than they were in the past. Before exploring these and at the risk of a degree of post-rationalisation, it might be appropriate to set the personal context of my own experience of the workplace at a time before I had the opportunity as an architect to shape it for others.

After leaving school at 16, I started work as a junior clerk in Manchester’s Victorian Gothic Town Hall. It was inspirational as an architectural masterpiece, but the working conditions were Dickensian. If the city was managed effectively from this base, then it was despite the environment, which in equal measure was uncomfortable, drab, and (much like the work itself) boring.

This work experience was followed by its light industrial equivalent after my enlistment for National Service in the Royal Air Force, where I was trained as a radar technician. Here I became a number (2709757) for two years, assigned to a workbench in a wood-and-metal cage equipped with a soldering iron and surrounded by the innards of the state-of-the-art electronic radar systems, known as Rebecca IV and Gee III. This windowless factory in a dark hangar-like space was a 20th-century equivalent of the offices in Manchester’s 19th-century Town Hall. My next experiences of the workplace were as a student – working in parallel with my studies. These ranged from night shifts in a bakery to heaving cans of ice cream in a cold store to the dirtiest jobs in a local garage. During this time my father was working in the industrial complex of Trafford Park for Metropolitan-Vickers, and I would listen to his descriptions of the deplorable conditions that he endured every day.

By the time I left architecture school in Manchester, I had experience of a multitude of jobs in some of the most disagreeable environments over a period of some ten years. So perhaps it is not surprising that as an architect, I would seize any opportunity to demonstrate that the workplace did not have to be a soul-destroying place. 

What if it could positively address social differences – be not only colourful, cheerful, and uplifting but also healthy; be so desirable in terms of lifestyle and leisure opportunities that it would transcend the job description and aspire to be a place you would want to go to and stay long? Furthermore, if technology is the means to social ends, then could we anticipate change and design the workplace to be adaptable for an unknown future?

Taken together, these are the propositions that constitute the philosophy of the workplace that, as a practice, we have sustained in projects over more than six decades. Starting in the 1960s, the Reliance Controls factory for electronics created a democratic pavilion with a common entrance and shared facilities with the same standards for management and workers alike – all under one roof with only a transparent glass wall separating their separate work zones. This was the opposite of the then traditional management box fronting the workers’ shed with the overtones of “we and they,” “front and back,” “clean and dirty.” In the early 1970s in London’s Docklands, our Operations Centre for Fred Olsen Lines was even more radical. The Port of London Docks were notorious for their toxic working conditions and unfair practices. Bringing together dockers and management under the same roof was therefore bolder and more controversial than in the example of Reliance Controls.

A few years later we explored these themes further in a building for insurance firm Willis Faber & Dumas (1975), who had relocated to Ipswich, a market town two hours north-east of London. We developed a new kind of deep low office structure, or “ground scraper,” as an alternative to the traditional shallow tower. This new urban model fitted into the low-rise historic setting as well as encouraging greater connectivity with its larger open floor plates. Its perimeter followed the meandering medieval street pattern and was defined by an innovative suspended glass wall, creating a workplace full of light and views. All of the leisure facilities were linked to one of the first applications of flexible working hours or flexitime, so that employees could enjoy such benefits with their families at the most convenient times.

Opening image: The new Bloomberg headquarters in central London. Photo © Nigel Young / Foster + Partners