How to avoid your office become a workplace zoo

Every author knows the value and importance of an intriguing title. From that perspective, Nigel Oseland has succeeded very well. The Workplace Zoo? What does he mean? I see David Brent and his employees in the classic TV series The Office right in front of me when I read the title. But that was not Nigel Oseland’s intention at all, he explains.

“It’s more about the kind of confinements associated with old fashioned zoos: small cages with animals not in particular good condition having no choices. One of the biggest problems we have with offices is the density and managers being obsessed with reducing space to save money. But the building should be there to support people. We should look at what people need and build the space around that.”

Cities are like human zoos

The title of the book falls back on the British zoologist and ethologist Desmond Morris, who in the late 1960s published the books The Naked Ape and The Human Zoo. The first explores humanity's animalistic qualities and its similarity with other apes. The latter analyses human behaviour in big modern societies and their resemblance to animal behaviour in captivity.

“He reacted to the expression that people in cities are living in concrete jungles. They are not. A jungle is a natural environment. On the contrary, in high density and overcrowded cities people behave more like caged animals in zoos. Desmond Morris called it a human zoo.”

We can learn from modern zoos

Nigel Oseland was also inspired by the American environmental psychologist Judith Heerwagen. She claims that offices can learn from modern zoos, where the care of the animals is central, and every species are offered the environments and needs that make them thrive. Nigel was himself impressed by a zoo he visited together with his kids many years ago.

“Each enclosure was specifically built around the needs of each species. They could choose if they wanted to be on show or hide, they had lots of greenery, the right temperature, the right amount of daylight and so on. There were a lot of young animals and a good breeding program as well. It was wonderful. Then I came back to my office and was met by a homogeneous sea of desks in a quite boring, dense environment where everyone was on show. It does not work because we are all different. We are all one species, but we are still very different animals with very different needs.”

An opportunity for the landscaped office

Nigel Oseland’s analogy with a zoo refers mostly to these high-density conditions and putting all people in one place, with no freedom of choice. Of course, the analogy is not valid for all circumstances and all aspects of a zoo versus an office. Nigel Oseland’s message is that architects, facility managers and business managements must reach beyond this workplace zoo.

“If you have two extremes, a full open plan office in one end and enclosed private offices in the other end, the chances are it is not going to work. It is probably suitable for a small minority, but most of us are in the middle ground. Right now, after the pandemic, we have an opportunity to create another office environment, what I call the landscaped office,” he says.

The freedom of choice

The landscaped office is still an open plan design but much less dense. High density is the central problem that Nigel keeps coming back to.

“It causes issues with noise, personal space and cross infections. The landscaped office has more partitions, spaces broken up with furniture, planting, meeting spaces, break out areas and different kinds of screenings.”
Having the freedom of choice is basically what the landscaped office is all about, he explains.

“I have not invented this totally. The 1950s and 1960s ‘Bürolandschaft’ and ‘Action Office’ were on the right track. They included screens and had desks in clusters of two or three, not eight, 10 or even 12 that I often see today. It’s time to revive those open plan concepts and modernise them. Today we know much more about acoustics, lighting, air quality and biophilic principles to create a healthy environment. The landscaped office offers a freedom of choice with different spaces for different needs and tasks alongside desk sharing.”

Recent surveys with real estate professionals, conducted after the pandemic, worries Nigel Oseland.

”I see answers like ‘now we can get rid of half the space.’ But the reality is that the spaces are already too dense. Now is an opportunity to reduce the number of desks instead and use the space you get for social and collaborative activities as well as areas for focused work. The answer is not to get rid of space,” he stresses.

Offices need to be attractive

To get people back to offices after the pandemic will be a challenge for many employers. Working from home frees a lot of time. In big cities like London, the commuting time can easily be two to three hours a day. This is one important reason why employers need to make their offices attractive to people.

“I do believe hybrid working will become the norm, the pandemic will force companies in that direction. But to only work from home is not the answer. Employers must cater for the different ‘animals’ needs, so they really want to come to rather than avoid the office. If you treat the office as a service, people will come back. We are social animals; we tell stories, share information and eat together. The idea that the office is dead is rubbish.”

Biophilia – a natural part

Nigel uses the term landscaped office not only because of partitions and a variety of different spaces. He also uses it to include the idea of biophilia – a greener office. He refers to biophilia as an aspect of evolutionary psychology.

“The idea of evolutionary psychology is that our bodies and brains developed to survive on the African savannah. We still have preferences for that kind of environments, even if our bodies are stuck in office cages the last hundred years or so.”

He stresses that biophilia is not just about plants and greenery.

“It is an important part, but it is much more than that. It is about the right soundscape and sound levels, natural ventilation, variations in temperature and the right levels of lighting. You need to create zones with different levels of temperature, noise and light, so the ‘animals’ can choose a zone where they are most comfortable and with that also most productive.”

A neat volume full of advice

Beyond the Workplace Zoo is a quite neat volume of 200 pages. Nigel has worked a lot to cut down the content. A driving force has been to make mainly psychological, but also sociological and anthropological research readable and accessible. As well as interpreting and explaining a lot of academic research, the book is the result of over 30 years of experience. Consequently, it contains a lot of practical advice on how to design offices.

“I am not a designer, but the book offers quite a few hints about how to do this,” he sums up humbly.

Text: Lars Wirtén

Nigel Oseland’s five top tips for a well-functioning landscaped office:

1. Embrace the individuality, recognise that we are all different. Don’t design for the average. You have got to provide offices with choices and different work settings.
2. Get the balance right. Don’t focus solely on saving space and money. Also look at the other side of the equation – how do you improve people’s working environment.
3. Engage with and listen to your people. Don’t assume you know the answer and that your likes and needs are what everyone else like or need.
4. Reduce density! Low density is better for people in terms of acoustics, personal space, thermal comfort, cross infections etcetera. Stop clustering people close together in groups of 8 or more.
5. Look at your overall environmental conditions. Surveys show that problems in offices are most about noise, thermal conditions and air quality.