Designing offices people want to visit: lessons from Gensler's co-CEOs

Executive overview

Most offices fail because they're designed for occupancy, not for people. Gensler, a 6,000-person global architecture firm, has spent 60 years building spaces from the inside out — starting with human experience, not façade.

Co-CEO Elizabeth Brink and co-chair Andy Cohen argue that the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution is now underway in workplace design. The office must become a destination, not an obligation.

The core insight: design that prioritises human experience over aesthetics drives both culture and business outcomes.

Co-leadership as a structural advantage

• Gensler pairs co-leaders at every level — offices, practice areas, and the C-suite.
• "Aces and spaces": everyone has strengths and gaps; paired leaders cover more ground together.
• Disagreements are resolved through trust and deference, not hierarchy.
• Co-leaders often consult prior CEOs (Andy and Diane) as neutral advisers when stuck.
• Binary thinking kills co-leadership — the model requires commitment to hard conversations.
• Collaboration is native to design culture, making the model easier to embed firm-wide.

Designing from the inside out

• Art Gensler's founding insight: buildings should be designed around user experience, not exterior form.
• Teams focus on the emotional experience of people in a space, not just function or aesthetics.
• Gensler embeds a dedicated practice to deeply understand clients' underlying business goals.
• No single "Gensler style" — a "constellation of stars" allows diverse designers to lead distinct visions.
• The NVIDIA headquarters used AI to optimise walking distances, natural light, and innovation clustering.

How AI is changing the design process

• AI-enabled blocking, planning, and sustainability analysis are now standard on projects.
• Visualisation that once took 3–6 months now takes one week — clients experience finished spaces early.
• AI lets Gensler show clients the future of airports, stadiums, and entertainment venues in real time.
• Data from building sensors informs air quality, daylight, space utilisation, and portfolio optimisation.

The office as destination

• Coming out of COVID, the core design mandate is: make people want to be there.
• Rows of desks are being replaced with collaboration settings — small conference rooms, living rooms, flexible zones.
• Hybrid infrastructure (screens, Zoom-ready rooms) is now standard rather than optional.
• Younger workers are driving in-office demand — they seek social capital and learning proximity.
• Culture and collaboration cannot be replicated remotely; senior leaders are now seeing the consequences of avoiding this.
• Gensler moved to five days in-office; they lost some people but gained clarity and cohesion.

Climate change and resilient design

• Buildings account for 40% of global carbon emissions — Gensler sees this as the defining design challenge.
• The firm is working with the world's largest concrete manufacturers on lower-CO2 mixes.
• Mass timber is being adopted as an alternative structural system.
• Resilience design — fireproofing, siting, material selection — is now a client requirement, not an option.
• Early-stage sustainability decisions cost far less than retrofitting; clients increasingly understand this.

Cities, loneliness, and the 15-minute neighbourhood

• Workplace design and city-making are interconnected — the best offices activate their surrounding neighbourhoods.
• 61% of workers surveyed built friendships across race, religion, and age through in-person work.
• The "15- or 20-minute city" — walkable, amenity-rich, mixed-use — is the model Gensler designs toward.
• Autonomous vehicles could return city streets to people, enabling denser, greener urban environments.