The “blueberry muffin” meeting space is cloaked in calming blue paint, the shade similar to what you might see in a baby’s room. The room’s centerpiece is a ruby red oval table, decorated with artificial succulents in violet pots.
The “fruity” meeting room features vibrant red walls and vintage chairs upholstered with a yellow pineapple print fabric. Further down the hallway is the “maple waffle” room, a soothing brown space used for tense talks with investors.
This is the workspace of Magic Spoon, a cereal brand launched in 2019. As of last year, the company began inviting its staff – around 50 in number – back to the office for at least two days each week. Magic Spoon’s conference rooms in SoHo, designed during the company’s transition back to office, are reflections of cereal boxes.
“One of our key company principles is ‘Be a Froot Loop in a world of Cheerios,’” says Magic Spoon’s co-founder, Greg Sewitz. “Our office embodies this.”
Their environment mirrors a not-so-new yet growing trend among startups and tech companies—who are competing to attract young, skilled professionals—, which may be termed the Envy Office. Mixing the comfort of home with the allure of a holiday, these spaces are marked by colourful walls, plush furniture and artfully arranged coffee table books, sophisticated setups that provide employees with countless photo ops for social networks.
“These designs are inspired by homes, hospitality, and Pinterest,” says Jordan Goldstein, co-managing principal at Gensler, one of the world’s biggest architectural firms. He mentions the new Marriott headquarters, redesigned by Gensler to feature banquettes, library recesses and a tree sprouting up in the midst of the lobby. In addition, Gensler has recently overhauled office spaces for Barclays, Pinterest, and LinkedIn in this style.
Notwithstanding, some employees find that accessories like artificial plants, accent walls and chic pet beds serve to obscure impractical space-saving measures like hot desks, where personal desk allocation is removed.
The designers responsible for the Magic Spoon workspace, Laetitia Gorra, 41, and Sarah Needleman, 33, were once designers at the women’s social club, the Wing. A landmark of millennial-pink décor filled with throw pillows and colour-coordinated shelves, the Wing closed down last year. In 2020, Gorra established design firm Roarke and Needleman took charge of operations. They partner with executives to conceptualise a workspace, which comes at a time when many employees question the need for one.
“We highlight employee retention in our sales pitch,” says Gorra. “How can we make your staff want to return to the office after experiencing work-from-home comfort?”
It’s a recurrent scenario: whenever work norms change, office design follows suit. Actually, according to a Gensler survey of approximately 14,000 global workers conducted last year, nearly 40 percent reported that their employers had revamped office designs during the pandemic.
“If you look into the history of the office, you see the evolving attitudes towards work and employees,” says Craig Robertson, author and media historian. “Office design reflects prevailing societal values.”
Like past workplace aesthetics, several managers with this recent trend now have a simple, direct aim in view: ensuring that folks linger around the office.
From Cubicle Farm to Open Table
Over fifty years ago, the cubicle was the latest addition to office life.
Post-World War II, America’s office worker population exploded, given the growing economy and increasing female participation in the workforce. Early management “scientists” like the efficiency-driven Frederick Winslow Taylor, advocated for treating white-collar roles more like factory jobs. This led to the development of the Action Office: modular office furniture that later became compactly arranged cubicles.
Cubicle farms, as office historians like Nikil Saval describe, symbolized a power hierarchy, with a direct correlation between higher positions and larger spaces.
“You were one among hundreds of people who were similar to you,” says Sheila Liming, an associate professor at Champlain College and author of the design history book “Office”. “The impression was that you were replaceable.”
Visualizing a cubicle farm as a hotbed for innovative thoughts is challenging, particularly as such creativity was greatly valued by tech companies in the 1990s after Microsoft’s origin story – its inception in a garage – became legendary. Tech startups were encouraging their employees to emerge from their bare cubicle confines, own their work and realize the infinite possibility for growth.
Such thinking partially led to the progression of office design into the tech utopia phase. Carolyn Chen, a sociologist who spent years studying the work environment of Bay Area tech companies, points out certain unique physical features of their campuses. They offered free snacks (from peanut butter cups to dried mango) and sometimes alcoholic beverages (beer, frosé). They provided amenities such as nap pods and massage chairs.
Chen observed a company that allocated part of its design budget to giving its office a more austere look. The firm paid to expose its bricks and pipes, reinforcing the start-up ethos of working overtime within its workforce.
Since the tech offices of the early 2000s were primarily social spaces with events like happy hours and video games, employees felt that their need for recreation and community could be fulfilled without having to leave.
“Google reconfigured the office space to create a constant sense of invitation for employees to not only work, but also spend their leisure time there,” says Liming. “The term ‘campus’ is highly relevant.”
However, the lure of working from the comfort of one’s bed proved even more attractive. Therefore, when the pandemic necessitated turning offices into homes in the literal sense, managers needed to re-envision how to make the office space enticing.
‘Live From HQ’
When Magic Spoon’s team moved into their new office earlier this year, Senior Social and Community Manager, Sarah Bourlakas, 26, posted a photo of the space on her personal Instagram story with the caption: “Live from HQ.”
This level of Instagrammability is by no means accidental. Brooke Erin Duffy, Associate Professor of Communication at Cornell University, posits that employers are employing social media aesthetics, alongside conventional perks like cold brew or unique ones like the Lizzo concert offered by Google to its employees, for corporate branding. With this branding, companies are seeking to make their office designs visible not only to their workforce, but also to the entirety of social media. This, according to Duffy, aims at “maintaining employees by promoting a fun, enjoyable, and incredibly social workplace.”
Hollywood movies and television shows used to be the main advertorial avenues for glamorizing office life to young individuals, according to Duffy. Examples include “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Mad Men,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Internship,” and “The Social Network”.
Now, social media platforms, especially TikTok, are where people rush to, to romanticize office life. Content creators like “Corporate Natalie” joke about professional antics that many young people, who began their careers during the pandemic, have yet to experience. More than half of the workforce derive a sense of identity from their jobs, as repeatedly proven by Gallup polls from 1989 through 2014. This is why it is not surprising that young people are eager to share on their social media profiles what forms a major part of their self-identity. The trendier an office is, the easier it is for employees to convey that their work life is much more exciting than the mundane cubicle lifestyle depicted in “Office Space.”
When Bourlakas posted a photo of Magic Spoon’s new SoHo office, her Instagram followers were intrigued.
“Several people responded, saying things like ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so cool,’” says Bourlakas, who recently left Magic Spoon for a new position. “’It’s very much in the style of Magic Spoon.’”
Desiring the Cubicle Life
A tour of these Envy Offices, populated with workers bent over long desks and wearing noise-canceling headphones, brings to light a discrepancy between what workers are given and what they express a need for. They have wall decals and expertly-selected book collections, but what they truly need, as some claim, is privacy.
A brief 10-minute walk from Magic Spoon, there is an office also refurbished by Roarke in 2021, belonging to the communications agency, M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment. Employees sit around long, shared wooden tables, with exposed bricks in the backdrop and fake plants all around. There is a sole bunch of artificial grapes kept on top of a Keith Haring coffee table book.
Maddy Franklin, 27, a senior art director at the agency, mentions aspects of the new office that she loves, such as its pet-friendliness. However, thanks to the hot-desk system, she lacks a spot to store personal belongings.
It’s also a challenge to secure a spot with a monitor. When Franklin is involved in a large project, she says, “I will aim to get to the office a little earlier,” to claim a prime seating space.
Robin Clark, 58, a marketing director at a healthcare non-profit, yearns for the days when her office had an open floor layout. When her company underwent a complete redesign in 2018, executives attempted to create a welcoming space, adding lounge areas with couches in vivid hues like orange, teal, and lime. But the lack of dividers between desks means that Clark’s workday is continuously interrupted by noise: the crunch of apples, the sound of sneezes from colleagues. Upon starting remote work during the pandemic, she realized what she truly wanted was peace and tranquility.
As she put it: “With cubicle walls, at least you feel like you have some privacy.”
In an ironic twist, other workers are now reminiscing about the age of the cubicle. Take Jerry Gulla, 56, a senior engineering manager based in Winchester, Massachusetts, who embarked on his career in 1989 – the heyday of cubicles. Over the years, as he worked in offices with open-floor plans and hot-desk systems, he missed the ability to personalize his desk – independently, without any assistance from a design firm.
Gulla is a fan of the TV show “The Expanse,” and he used to keep a model ship from the show at his workspace. “Sometimes, someone might pass by, see the model and realize that you’re a fan,” he reflects. “That could start a conversation and you could meet someone new that way.”
For Gulla, the perfect office is simple: “It has to be a place that fosters productivity.”
The Envy Office: Can Attractive Instagrammable Design Attract Young Workers Back?
