How will AI change office design?

One of the largest stories in corporate America is the rapidly expanding footprint of artificial intelligence firms. Last year, AI and tech companies leased 55% of the office space in the Bay Area, a striking 14 million square feet. And in New York City, AI leasing has helped drive a resurgence in overall office activity. With massive IPOs planned for Anthropic and OpenAI, there are expectations that well-funded frontier labs will gobble up even more space.

But there’s a parallel shift happening across myriad other industries that may impact how clients ask architects to design offices. As more people incorporate AI tools into their jobs, the technology may reshape the physical layout of offices, challenging designers to consider how workspaces will evolve.

Less screentime, more mobility

Perhaps surprisingly, hands-free AI tools and interfaces require less screen time and make workers more mobile. That’s why “the workplace is way more fluid than just the idea of moving some furniture around to support different postures,” said Michael Villegas, a director at IA and a coleader of the firm’s AI research practice group.

And while it’s still a nascent technology with substantial questions about its ultimate effectiveness, AI “is a major tool that's going to shift the way that we work [and] the way that our workplaces are designed,” believes Selin Ashaboglu, media relations manager at Gensler.

“One of our firm’s main findings is that AI is actually making people more social and making the office more important rather than less,” said Ashaboglu. “​​The assumption is that AI is making people lonelier and more isolated, but our research is actually finding the opposite. People are utilizing it for research purposes, for deep focus, but then they actually want to go and mentor and exchange ideas with coworkers.”

Most companies’ AI infrastructure may not immediately impact their real estate footprint, according to Sarena Ehrlich, a former architect and the national head of workplace strategy for CBRE, a real estate brokerage and services firm. But she and her collaborators are beginning to have serious conversations with clients about AI’s impact as they move up the adoption curve. Villegas likewise reported having discussions about AI’s impact on office space, especially with tech clients.

Ehrlich’s team believes AI is going to make a long-term impact on future office design, particularly affecting collaboration space. “One of the challenges of being in architecture [is learning] about the language of business,” she said. In the future, she believes architects and designers will “need to understand how all these functions play together if you’re going to get work done on a corporate level.”

Clients have begun to seriously consider how the tech will change their policies, processes, and physical spaces. As more talent makes AI an everyday tool, working styles are shifting: Per Gensler’s 2026 Global Workplace Survey, AI power users spend less time working alone, spend more time learning, and spend more time collaborating virtually and socializing. 

Space for focus and reflection

Many workplace design experts expect the broad contours of the post-pandemic office–a reduction of personal space and an increase in amenities and collaborative working environments–to continue. However, there will be additional alterations and changes to accommodate an AI-fluent staff.

First, the demand for private and breakout spaces will likely accelerate. That means more phone booths, small private meeting rooms, acoustical engineering, and other features that support focused work, discrete conversations, and even voice prompting with AI tools. Madeleine Dunsmore, a senior workplace strategist at SmithGroup, said the demand for phone booths has already gone from a novel ingredient just a few years ago to a necessary part of any recipe. Ehrlich called the creation of private soundscapes “a big question at the moment,” one in search of sustainable solutions.

According to Gensler’s recent workplace survey, these spaces remain in high demand. When asked what workers hoped future workplaces prioritized, 43% asked for quiet, reflective spaces for focused work, and when asked what spaces were important beyond desks and conference rooms, 36% said quiet/deep focus areas. Villegas relayed that, for a confidential financial client, his company even created a generative AI soundscape that reacted to weather and even financial market signals. This created a bespoke, unique soundtrack for work, one that helped filter out background noise and improve worker focus.

While acoustic privacy remains a paramount reason for more focus rooms, there are also larger privacy and even legal issues at stake. Joseph Lazzaroti, a partner at Jackson Lewis who has written extensively about AI in the workplace, said lawyers and others need to increasingly think about how to segregate AI recording and analysis in legal settings, which places new demands on office design.

Finding a home amid flexible seating

Another challenge is keeping workers grounded in ever-shifting office space. According to Gensler data, 1 in 5 employees in newer workplace models don’t have a permanently assigned seat anymore. Ehrlich has seen large clients that swung heavily toward unassigned seating post-pandemic try to include more space for shared work and more focus rooms. They often ditch individual office space yet retain the same overall footprint.

While AI isn’t explicitly a cause of this unmooring from fixed desks, the assumed flexibility of AI-focused workers–darting from phone booths for chatbot sessions to group meeting rooms for chats with each other–will reinforce the fluid nature of the office. As a reaction, workers may desire solutions that help them feel anchored. Villegas believes there will be a move toward more privacy and assigned spaces because workers crave a “home base” and want to know: “By joining this company, what did I earn?”

A new fluency for architects and designers

The decision-making around corporate offices and design has also evolved. Ever since staff started trickling back into offices after Covid, more and more stakeholders in companies have become involved in shaping workplace policy and getting a say in approving office designs and leases. Ehrlich notes that many corporations, especially with national or global portfolios, are revisiting what their firm-wide office design standards look like. These revamped standards can be a catalyst for more redesign work and also challenge architects to be more up-to-date with the latest theories and philosophies of workplace design.

That has made it more important for architects seeking workplace design gigs to fluently speak the language of prospective business clients, bringing up how good design impacts budgets, productivity, and workplace satisfaction, along with how it helps employees better utilize AI tools. 

Ehrlich said her clients are using AI to research how their teams and staff work, then using that data to make space decisions. While an AI office of the future isn’t here today, or perhaps even in the short term, it’s increasingly a concept that clients consider core to their long-term strategy, and something office designers need to be comfortable discussing and designing around.

“We generally overestimate the impact of technology in the short term and underestimate the impact of technology in the long term,” said Ehrlich.

 Patrick Sisson is a freelance writer covering the AEC industry. He lives in Los Angeles.