Name: When Work is an Experience (Not a Place)
Uploaded: 2025-12-02
Duration: 16 min 25 s
Description: Design is re-imagining the places where we work and travel, making them more multipurpose and multifunctional. An architect from the world’s largest architecture firm shows how offices, airports, and lifestyle spaces are evolving to offer more flexibility, choice, and connection to serve professional and personal needs simultaneously.

Design is re-imagining the places where we work and travel, making them more multipurpose and multifunctional. An architect from the world’s largest architecture firm shows how offices, airports, and lifestyle spaces are evolving to offer more flexibility, choice, and connection to serve professional and personal needs simultaneously.

When Work is an Experience (Not a Place)

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From designing corporate culture we moved to designing corporate spaces more and more where we work and travel are not just places but entire experiences. Rae Wen, who leads the Hong Kong office for the global design and architecture firm Gensler, has over 20 years specializing in workplace and hospitality projects. He and Fortune's Kristen Soler will explore how offices and airports are evolving, offering much more choice, flexibility, and connection. Please welcome them. All right, Ray, thank you so much for joining me. So Ray, clearly the future of work in the world of work has changed a lot in the past couple of years. So I want to start by asking you what is the most surprising way that people are working today that you didn't anticipate 5 years ago and how are you designing for that today? Um, I think the most exciting thing is work is not work anymore because after COVID, even before COVID, you can work anywhere. Uh, what COVID did was just supercharged it, so I don't know about you guys, but I work 24/7 a week since the phone is there. Some pinged me because we work with US time, European time. You just got to be attentive to your clients, especially global clients, and I think that's the biggest change right now for a lot of the workplace designers, and for me personally, I think it's such an exciting. Um, time in the workplace design arena. Yeah, now I know you said people can work from anywhere, but there are a lot of companies that are requiring their employees to come back into the office 5 days a week. How are you thinking about that, about workers who might be reluctant to come back into an office and return to the office, and how, what does that tell you about kind of employee behavior that corporate leaders are still overlooking? I think the two biggest challenges for a lot of the um corporate real estate heads and Fortune 5G companies is I've got so much asset and if people can work anywhere, how can I drive the utilization up? That's really what the biggest problem to solve. And with AI and technology, a lot of us can't forecast how much head count we're going to have next year. So it used to be like back 10 years ago, I'll get a spreadsheet from a client, oh yeah, this is day 2, day 3 forecast, I'm gonna hire this many people, we'll go do the plan and design. These days that answer just keeps shifting. So what are the biggest changes and challenges is how do we bring people back and make the space transformational so the utilize this can go up. So we're no longer in. The headquarters and campus at least we're no longer just designing workplaces, we're actually designing experiences because if you think of what bringing us together as human beings is, well, if I can work anywhere, why do I want to go to work? I can do it at home. So you really got to make the campus or the workplace be more than work, um, and that's the fun part of it. And from that I just saw a quick slide. Yeah, let's see. We do um surveys every year. I thought this was really interesting. Um, this is actually an employee survey that Genza do annually, um, and then this year in 2025, we, we asked them, you know, from my experience and point of view, what makes a great workplace. And if you look at the top 10, it's really food. It's about wellness, they didn't even mention anything about work, like everybody just like pick all the stuff that really, that we want as a human being. I mean this morning, if you listen to our topics, it's all about that user experience, that human experience, whether it's. About, um, a stadium or workplace or hospitality, is that is the thing that brings us together. Uh, and I think right now, um, what we are doing more than ever is creating teams that can deliver these experiences. Um, I used to have a team of, you know, um, probably 80% workplace designers, planners, strategists, and then 20% probably could do a little bit of breakout, a bit of FFNE, um, but these days I've got event planners. I've got like someone who's full FMB, um, FFME expert, uh, work in hotels, etc. um, and then we talk about experience. What is the entrance experience for the guests, um, how do they mingle with the back of house staff? Like that's the type of conversation that we talk about. So that's a very different landscape. Can you give me an example of something really interesting you designed for a workplace centered around the food experience? Um, yes. I just clicked this slide because it's very similar to this, um, I can't show you the project I'm talking about, this is in Shi here. Uh, project I worked on, um, very passionately this, it was during COVID, it was completed, it was uh 500 square, um, Uh, 50,000 square meters, so roughly around 5000 square feet, um, and the brief from the client was we now got people 50% of my of their staff whilst working from home. Um, how do we bring them back? So we brainstormed with all the stakeholders and the people who are putting money on the table to design this new headquarters in Shua, um, and it turns out in the end we designed it like 15 different food offerings, including trying to bring blue bottle in, uh, we end up, Designing a secret bar that was basically vinyl bar, those of you who have been to Tokyo, it's really big where they got um they play vinyl, you're not allowed to really talk, it's a silent bar. So it's like a no tech bar which is similar to a library concept where you don't talk to your phone, etc. but they just put a spin on it, and that became a memorable experience where everybody go to their headquarter, can I go to the secret bar? And it becomes a story for that global organization. That's the iconic moment. In Tokyo, so that that's a really exciting, uh, still to this day one of the most amazing projects I've worked on. That is really cool, I think. When I think about your job, the toughest part, I think, is you have on one hand you have employees who are like, that is so cool. I would love to go to a record bar. And then on the other hand you have employees that are like, I don't want to spend any more time in the office, and you're tricking me with free food and a bar and this is not going to help me want to go back into the office. How do you, how do you thread the needle and are there any, you know, tricks and tips you use when you're when you're thinking about that, um. It depends on our organization, obviously, because, um, if you work with a tech client versus a financial um client, very different, um, although they both want great experiences, but the kind of offer, um, that they need for other things, other for their staff, in terms of guest experience slightly different, um, there's a lot more labs, um, and also maker space within tech. um, so what we realize now. Um, we used to design for a lot of headquarters, we designed 80%, we leave 20% for the client to flex. What's actually happened now is we designed 50%. The other 50% has to be transformational. So what I mean by that is we are designing less and less built in space, furniture, modularity and removable items, so you can transform a space when you need to from a, Whether it's an FNB for the staff and then transmit event space or a happy hour space for your clients, um, and where you put those within the building it's also very important accessibility from the guest experience, but you also got to be very careful about security because we're working with companies here. So that type of complexity is actually making workplace almost like um creating a mixed use, I call a city in a city, um, and it's, it's very exciting. And a good example is actually this global client of ours. Um, if I didn't tell you, you wouldn't know Sanofi is actually a pharmaceutical R&D, um, tech company. Um, you know, we, we used to think if you're into, um, medical, um, and pharmaceutical, you have white box and say this is the staff and client, um, cafeteria canteen. Um, which is to me, you'll find that in any restaurant, but if you really look carefully at the furniture, it's removable, um, it's layered. It's got different zone, but we try to figure a way how can you transform this space when you need to, but you can still have this space for happy hour, etc. And because work is always on the go, and I think maybe everyone in this room is guilty of, you know, doing their work from an airport on their way to this conference, I know you're also transforming airports and lounge spaces as well. Tell me a bit more about that. Ah, that's a, that's another thing, um, so because we now can work anywhere, uh, what we are finding, I'm gonna skip some of this lie, I'll go straight to the airport. Um, we found that airport is now the new, it's not a transit hub anymore. It's actually a new place where you recharge. Depending on day you go on business or you dare to travel, um, the need at the airport is very different. We used to just go there, check in, it takes forever to line up, right? Now a lot of airports, what they're trying to do is reduce that time to check in. And they're trying to increase the time so you can linger at the after check-in to enjoy the FNB, enjoy the lounges, enjoy whether you want to work, rest, or relax, whatever you want to do, they want to provide that. Um, and surprisingly, um, I mean this is a new terminal that's coming out of JFKK. We now got a lot more outdoor indoor space, natural light, past the actual, um, check-in area. Uh, airports used to be just like you check in, you'd be sitting there waiting. If you're lucky, you're business class or whatever, you're going to go to a lounge, but now it's even just a normal going through the airport, you can experience all that. It's a destination. It's no longer just a transit. That's what I think is also interesting about what you do is that you're both creating, you're you're designing these terminals, these lounges as high performance workspaces in and of themselves. Does that risk airports competing with offices? who are you looking to please when you design all this stuff? I think they're becoming Like all areas of practices, is becoming more and more overlapped. Um, I summarize this just to give a high level. This is what you expect an airport lounge now. It's, it's really about that full, uh, work, play live and rest and recharge, it's all those items expected. So designing these small lounges, you've got to create a setting that have all the layers that cater for whether it's at work or other things and. That's, it becomes a lot more rich the entire experience, um, and that's what we are seeing and it's very exciting, um. What are some of the most interesting features that you've designed for in an airport or in a lounge that you think are totally things that no one's thinking of? Uh, massage room is getting more and more common. Um, it's, it's almost even if, if those of you fly with Cathay, um, they've had. Massage and wellness for a while, uh, at least in the, um, first class, but it's almost that it's becoming much more of a norm, like it's not just the best premier, you'll get that, um, all around the world you see a lot more wellness factor adding in, whether they go full massage chair, or massage bed with massurs, um, they're gonna get that. Offer and that's getting more and more about not just a transitional waiting space, it's how can I make people feel better, more positive flying with a specific airline and that directly relates to their brand. Uh, at the end of the day, all this is still to do business. Nothing comes for free, right? Um, so it's all about trying to express their culture through the experience of the lounge, the airport for the city, and for headquarter to represent that, uh, Fortune 500 company. Now we've talked about the customer. I want to talk about the client because expectations, I think, have changed for you, especially with the advent of AI and predictive analytics. Talk to me about how that has changed your process for for prototyping and what your clients expect from you today, for better or for worse. Um, yeah, exactly, for better or worse. So I will skip this one. It's just one of the new lounges, um, Minor Iconic. I think everything this morning is about more about architecture, big space. I think interiors, we are much more about those, um, the things you can touch and what you can remember when you go through the space experience. So these days there is just a lounge and also a JFK, um, but the hardest thing is we used to get a lot of time to design these, uh, you know, you can, you can say anything up to one year. The challenge for us is we now are expected to produce record speed. Um, I one particular client is that I want this in light speed, Ray, light speed. OK, I go what do you mean like can you just give me ASAP like now, um, so it's quite interesting because AI has transformed how we work. If you look at what I've got up in the screen, the left-hand side is a project I worked on around 2 years ago. Um, so what we used to do, I'm more old school, so I'll do hand sketch ideas, narrate it, and start working with my team on look at the 3D model. We build physical model as well just to see how the space goes and eventually get to a semi-final one. These are not final output, these are just work in progress. Um, that would take probably about 1 to 2 weeks, depending on the project complexity. Um, the one on the right, that was just last week. Um, it was 1 day, full on, we built a white model first. The client gave us basically 2 to 3 days. It's like the reason he told me, well, I saw my friend clicking on Nano Banana, those of you know that app. Um, and I say, well, if they can do it in a second, why can't design firms can do it quicker? So we end up going, OK, because it's hard to explain to a client when they're not architects. Um, as designers we see design as more time, craftsmanship, and you kind of. Bit by bit, get to a result that is the perfect graph, whereas what we're seeing a lot more with the AI, we're now almost like a creator, like all these art pieces and we try to select what is suitable and that's the only way we can manage that um need from client on speed and time. Um, and it's, you see positive or negative, I think it really depends on the project. Um, your project got time, of course, you can have a lot more ideation and use it as a tool. Um, but what we're seeing more right now is clients asking for immediate response is, it's the trend. I mean, everyone is just so used to clicking and getting it straight away, and they're expecting from the consultants, and I think it's not going to go away. Um, the clients who give you time, um, like what Populists had for the uh the Pearl in Hong Kong and Um, the hotels with Andre food, that's being more rare. There's still those clients, but I think the clients who expect immediate outcomes, we're going to have to find a workflow that can achieve what they need. Now Ray, in our last minute together, I have one last question for you about the future. What's the future scenario that Genzler is actively designing for that most companies haven't even imagined yet that you think is going to be the next big trend of the future? Tomorrow we're going to launch our annual design forecast. This is the 14th edition. I can't answer all that because actually all in here. OK, we're going to share it with everyone today, but I asked, they said no, you've got to wait till tomorrow. All right, what a, what a teaser for all of us to look forward to tomorrow. But the big big one is about experience. It's all about experience, whether you're in a workplace or you're in retail or you're in hospitality, it's all about experience focus. Well, thank you so much, Ray, and good luck with that tomorrow. Thank you.