Gensler reveals 2025’s hottest design trends: mixed-use districts, affordable housing, better offices

On Thursday, US-based Gensler unveiled its “Design Forecast,” which outlines the trends it expects to shape design in the coming year. These trends include a focus on how design can adapt to changes in city life – the ongoing shift to working from home, the resulting hit on downtown and shopping districts, and increasingly unaffordable housing.

“Our cities are the conveners,” said Jordan Goldstein, co-CEO of Gensler, in an interview. luck In mid-November. “Here we see the power of design to shape that experience for the better.”

The Covid pandemic sparked a transformation in urban life that can still be seen. Despite company pleas to return to the office five days a week, hybrid working appears to have stabilized in urban professional life, reducing the need for office space and thus reducing traffic through urban downtown areas. This, coupled with rising interest rates, has contributed to a massive global downturn in the commercial real estate market, as office and retail tenants reduce their physical presence.

“The issues we’re seeing post-pandemic are driving a lot of (these design trends),” Goldstein said. Then add what he calls “crisis multipliers” – such as technological change and sustainability, to name a few.

But he points out that planners are now more willing to consider experimental redevelopments in urban cores. “There’s an opportunity to have these dialogues (with planners) that frankly weren’t necessarily happening on a regular basis, before the pandemic,” he said. In some markets, such as India, “those discussions were not happening.”

In one example, Gensler is working with Philadelphia city government on a transformation South Broad Street In an art park measuring 10 blocks, it includes green spaces, outdoor recreational spaces, and public artwork. The company is pursuing a similar project in Chicago Michigan AvenueAnd the construction of new green spaces, performance venues and a new café in the water tower in Jane Byrne Park.

“Most of our cities know they cannot thrive in the future by doing things the way they did them. Incorporating design into the mix drives innovation (and) experimentation forward,” Elizabeth Brink, Gensler co-CEO, said in mid-November. .

Unique and unpredictable

In Design Forecast, Gensler identifies five trends that it calls “the most important actionable insights that our clients need to know about,” drawn from its dozens of offices around the world.

“We reach out to all of our sites and ask: What do you see? What do you see as a need at your site?,” Brink said in mid-November.

Many of the trends relate to the need to rethink the city post-Covid-19, as areas move away from the traditional mix of discrete office districts, suburbs, shopping and entertainment districts that characterizes most modern cities.

For example, Gensler predicts that mixed-use districts will “take center stage in 2025,” as cities look to “drive community engagement and bring people together around deeply shared experiences.”

Brink and Goldstein both pointed to the idea of ​​the “20-minute city,” or an urban environment where people can get to home, work and leisure in just a 20-minute commute.

But beyond that, Brink noted that there is a desire to create a “more immersive and participatory experience,” and cited sports as an example. “People want to have unique and unpredictable experiences. They do it together, and it’s something that creates a sense of community,” she explained.

How to repair the office

Another major design trend that Gensler highlights is the need to revamp the workplace. Rather than asking people to return to their offices, employers will instead need to make them a valuable place to do work. The company expects that offices will revolve around “employee experience” and “inspiration”, with tenants continuing to “flight to quality” that meets the “career aspirations” of their employees.

“We know that the workplace still really matters,” Brink said in mid-November. “It’s really important for organizations. It’s really important for creativity. It’s really important for communication, and it’s really important for the human experience,” she explained.

The Gensler Global Workplace Study, released in May, indicates that nearly all workers in high-performance offices have access to a space for focused focus, compared to just 26% in low-performance workplaces.

Some companies have successfully revived in-person presence after moving to a better office. HSBC Bank in the United Kingdom The rate doubled New York-based employees came to the office after moving into the spiral building, designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels.

However, the commercial real estate slump caused by hybrid work is not going away. Gensler expects that lower prices provide developers with an opportunity to create “new properties of value.” Interest rate cuts may also encourage developers to take the plunge and convert unused office space into something more in demand. The architecture firm says the “adaptive reuse boom” will go beyond just the direct office-to-apartment move, with developers instead embracing “creative conversions” including sectors such as healthcare, science labs and senior living, among others.

But Brink noted that moving from the office to home is easier said than done. Offices do not support traditional apartment design, due to the need to add plumbing infrastructure and kitchen areas.

She suggests that a co-living model, with smaller units and shared bathrooms and kitchens, would be easier for developers. Construction costs can be reduced by a third, while saving three times as many units as the conversion.

“It’s a creative way to look at some of those conversations that can be great for different urban populations: students, retirees, and it’s useful for anyone who might just need a space,” she suggested.

Converting underutilized office buildings into apartment complexes may help realize another of Gensler’s design trends for 2025: the push toward “attainable market-rate housing,” where changes in zoning laws and building codes encourage the construction of all types of homes.

“One plus one equals three”

Founded in 1965 by architect Art Gensler, Gensler has more than 6,000 designers spread across 17 countries, in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Among Gensler’s many projects are Headquarters in Santa Clara, California From Nvidia, Station number one is still under construction At John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, and Shanghai TowerThe third tallest building in the world. The company stated $1.84 billion in revenue For the fiscal year 2023.

Brink and Goldstein took over as co-CEOs of Gensler in April. Their predecessors, Diane Hoskins and Andy Cohen, together led the architecture firm for nearly 20 years.

Gensler is an unusual example of a company that has embraced the co-CEO model. Other companies have tried hiring their own CEOs with mixed success: Salesforce and SAP both saw one of their co-CEOs resign within a year. (On Monday, chipmaker Intel adopted a co-CEO model, promoting David Zinsner and Michele Johnston-Holthaus to serve as interim co-CEOs, replacing retiring CEO Pat Gelsinger.)

However, successful co-CEOs say that structure allows executives to lean on each other for support, provides a check on a particular leader’s biases, or just allows executives to do more each day. “Most CEOs have 24 hours in a day, and we have 48 hours in a day,” Hoskins said. luckLeadership Next podcast last year.

“The two of us can work together and be in a ‘one plus one equals three’ scenario,” Goldstein said. “We each have some special feelings, and we brought those feelings together, and they really resonated throughout the company.”