Gensler might have begun life as a Californian interior design studio, but these days it’s a multifaceted built-environment behemoth, still big in its original sphere (it heads the 2023 Interior Design Top 100 Giants list) but now probably the largest architectural practice in the world as well (total revenues of $1.2 billion in 2021).
So it’s big. It has more than 50 locations and more than 7,000 staff around the world – including a sizeable footprint in the Middle East – servicing more than 4,000 clients across 29 practice areas. That’s a lot of experience, and some of it is put to good use in the Gensler Research Institute.
Of course this is a slightly self-conscious exercise in thought leadership and brand positioning – “we are guided by our mission to create a better world through the power of design and believe the source of our strength is our people” – but if the resource is available, it does make sense to utilise it; and in fact there’s not too much overt self-promotion in the Institute’s output. A newly published example of this is Gensler’s Design Forecast 2023, a substantial survey of trends and proposed responses that draws on the group’s experience and carries the sonorous subtitle ‘Transformation: Design Strategies for the Human Experience’. It’s not a dense academic report; far from it, in fact, with punchy headlines, liberal use of top-quality photographs (of Gensler projects, naturally) and bite-sized numbered entries that all make it very easy to read.
There are typically four or five of those entries in each of the subsections in the report, and there are a lot of those subsections. The main chapters are on Cities, Work, Lifestyle (bit of catch-all, that one) and Health, presumably corresponding to Gensler’s principal areas of activity; within each of those are the subsection ‘practice areas’, with a dozen of them for Work and eight for Lifestyle but only five for Cities (lots of meat in. there, though) and four for Health.
The report opens with an introductory ten ‘meta trends that will transform the future of cities’, which to some extent could be seen to cross all the boundaries. (Apropos of not very much, these should probably be called ‘metatrends’ in that the prefix meta- can legitimately mean ‘overriding’ and ‘more comprehensive’, while ‘meta’ as a standalone adjective surely means something more like ‘self-referential’ and doesn’t really fit here. But hey, magpie’s team wasn’t asked to edit it …)
2 Live-Work Connection The future of cities depends on successfully addressing the interconnected issues of workplaces, housing, and transportation.
3 Building Transformation Cities can be regenerated by repurposing outdated assets (the report calls them ‘stranded’ assets) – turning office buildings into residential space, for instance.
4 Attainable Housing Inflation and interest rate rises are “creating a larger opening for multifamily development that could finally address the global shortage of attainable housing”. Such project are a key feature of the type of live-work, mixed-use neighbourhoods that will redefine the future of cities.
5 Decarbonisation Investment in sustainable design and construction will transform the building industry (or should that be ‘should’?).
6 Mobility New forms of private and public transportation will allow cities to refashion underused urban districts into mixed-use live-work communities.
7 Equitable Design Spaces and infrastructure can address issues like inequality, aging populations, and community engagement.
8 Intelligent Places Sensors, IoT, and other smart property technologies and apps can benefit tenants (“more curated experiences”) and developers (“data and insights they need”).
9 Flight to Quality Top-class spaces in prime locations with the right mix of high-quality amenities in and around the building will have a competitive advantage (though ‘flight’ sounds a bit desperate).
10 Office as a Destination The office still has an important role to play in the future of work, but only if we include a mix of spaces that make it easy for individuals and teams to “focus and connect”.
In fact these ‘meta trends’ are a blunt summation (still manages to miss out much of the soon-to-be-prevasive effects of AI, even so) and there’s a lot more nuance in the observations in the more detailed chapters. For instance, the Cities section has some explicit proposals for more balanced and more equitable living (“the idea of ‘neighbourhoods of choice’ promotes economic attainment regardless of socioeconomic status, with a range of options for residents to thrive through different life stages …”). Specifics include decentralisation of institutions, bringing social infrastructure like libraries and clinics into the 20-minute-city frame. The implication is that public spending on this kind of urban design won’t be discretionary – it has to happen if we want living and liveable cities in the future.
The Gensler researchers also like the idea of ‘affinity districts’, communities based on a degree of commonality among members – education districts, marker spaces, arts areas – which feels like a better thought-out version of the ‘city’ districts in Dubai’s masterplan.
Another implied standard is the need to maintain and regenerate high urban densities, especially in city centres. Living in a walkable neighbourhood is a key requirement, though, so somehow those affinity districts will have to accommodate enough variety to avoid becoming single-function ghettoes.
We also liked the notes on Education, an area where good design has demonstrable and measurable impact on the quality of learning. Gensler notes that educational institutions will have to cater for more diversity in delivery, with more offsite and non-degree courses, and this should be reflected for instance in versatile, adaptable teaching and learning spaces.
The substantial chapter on Work is equally solid, especially in terms of making working spaces more appealing, more usable, and basically more rentable. There’s some repetition as the report considers the needs of different types of white-collar workspace. Organising such workspaces is of course the bread and butter of interior architecture and design, which might account for the absence of a section on artist studios and maker spaces (which tend to need very little in the way of design and which aren’t usually provided in commercial developments).
The other large section is on Lifestyle, a catch-all term which seems to mean ‘not business’ and includes residential, retail, hospitality, sports, entertainment and museums – but also features sections on brand and digital experience design. The latter are some of the more anodyne conclusions (“brands will have to prove their commitments to ESG and DEI”, “the golden marketing rule of ‘understand your audience’ has never been more important”, “environmental psychology will inform the next chapter of digital content”) perhaps because they don’t seem to owe much to Gensler’s main activities. The rest of the chapter is sound enough, though unremarkable – there’s a lot more creative thinking being done on museum and gallery displays than appears here, for instance, especially with the sudden arrival of AI.
The final section on Healthcare, which includes research facilities and assisted living developments, is good (and is one of the few that includes any mention of AI at all). There’s also sensible piece on the value of employer-provided wellness services (“supporting emotional and mental well-being will become a differentiator for recruiting and retaining talent”).
So the Design Forecast 2023 covers a lot of ground, and in general lives up to its claim to identify trends and strategises for design in a fast-changing world. But we’re left with a couple of overriding caveats. For one, the key issue overall is not so much how we apply design to development, it’s who actually pays for the development in the first place, and what kind of returns over what timescale they expect for their investment. This has an unavoidable impact on what gets built and where; commercial clients need to maximise returns, so who’s going to pay for the architecture that services the poor, the dispossessed, and those for whom financial viability isn’t the overriding factor in their choice of vocation.
And then there’s the sustainability question and how much responsibility the designer should feel. There’s a good section on ‘Climate Action & Sustainability Services’, starting from the pragmatic view that companies and institutions will increasingly be required to demonstrate action on climate change. Gensler says the catalysts for sustainable approaches to design will be “ESG and carbon disclosure mandates” rather than say any overriding desire to save the planet.
So the section on airports, a key business area for Gensler, gives most of its attention to details like minimising queueing and appealing to a broader set of travellers. It’s probably fair to imply that aviation will continue to recover, but it’s slightly disappointing that there’s no recognition of its environmental impact. Much the same applies the Critical Facilities section, which focuses on data centres without commenting on their unsustainability – except to note that “community scrutiny is increasing”, and then to amplify this by referring to the physical appearance of the data centre itself (“data centres can become better designed, more appealing community fixtures rather than something to conceal”).
But then Gensler isn’t in the business of advocacy, and as a commercial enterprise with investors to appease and clients to bill it’s probably unreasonable to demand anything more from it. This report is an interesting, readable, well presented canter through observed trends and proposed strategies in response; it’s a handy overview, and all the better for being based on observation in the field.
As for those caveats: the company’s view is “design allows us to view challenges as part of an ecosystem. By understanding the interconnected nature of problems, we can devise multifaceted, integrated solutions”. Well, yes, but the best solutions should cover as many of the problems as can possibly be seen from as many different perspectives as are available. And that might produce a different set of solutions …
The Design Forecast 2023 is available as a free download here.
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