Many have predicted the death of the office, driven, in large part, by the rise of tele-working as a serious alternative to travelling to work. Yet, on the contrary, the physical work environment appears to be as important as ever.

Not only does work performance improve if people are happy in their workplace, but office work has become a social activity. The balance has shifted from an overriding focus on management efficiency towards the human factors of performance and wellbeing.

Probably the most important aspect of the office is the requirement to be able to meet face-to-face and the need for secure and private club-like spaces for discussion and private matters. The SAS building outside Stockholm, for example, completed in 1988, set a trend for “the office as the city”. It was large, based around a covered, linear street and gave rise to out-of-town campuses across Europe that provided all the amenities of the city inside the workplace.

The future, however, lies in the opposite direction, in the “city as office”. In future, companies will downsize the footprint of their property and make use of city-centre facilities that are publicly available — coffee shops, restaurants, pubs, parks. Why add millions to the cost of your office scheme to build a boardroom used once a month, when you can book a private room in a grand hotel every month two years in advance? Why worry about the limits of technology when the city is covered by a wireless network? The most amenable, attractive and convenient place for people to meet is usually the centre of the city, so we can look forward to an urban consolidation of office property after decades of out-of-town developments and suburban hubs.

Considerable efforts have been made to create a much tighter fit between corporate culture and work environment. A recent book, Good Office Design, published by the British Council for Offices, shows how corporate cultures are changing with networks and sustainable agendas.

The emergence of the networked office depends critically on one factor — the growth of the knowledge economy, requiring the rapid acceleration of networks to capture, build and share knowledge. Knowledge workers need to collaborate, think and act in a flexible environment. The first identified knowledge workers were lawyers, doctors, accountants and scientists. Today the term can be routinely applied to most executive and managerial roles. This is because computers handle much of the repetitive process and work is more dependent on the application of knowledge and learning.

Electronic document management allows knowledge to be retrieved from a central source remote from the work station, located in a virtual world and retrieved anywhere, so the workplace becomes a variety of environments tailored to particular business requirements.

Flexibility is the key to future office development and a move away from the tailor-made shell. As people work in patterns that are more fluid, serendipity within the city and the chance encounter seem a hopeful and exciting prospect.

• Paul Warner is Chair of the British Council for Offices Urban Affairs Committee and Research Director at 3D Reid

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