What The F* is Happening to The Office?

What the F* is Happening to the Office?The workplace is being reinvented—and we're talking to the people leading the charge. From architects to real estate strategists, tech innovators to culture experts, this podcast dives into the seismic shifts reshaping where and how we work. If you’re building, designing, managing, or just trying to make sense of the new office landscape, this is your front-row seat to the ideas, experiments, and people redefining the future of work.

What The F* is Happening to The Office? is a arts podcast hosted by Work Design, with 29 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Work Design hosts What The F* is Happening to The Office?, a arts show with 29 episodes published.

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  Episode #13

  Why Open Offices Fail — and What Actually Works | Adam Morgan

  Aug 9, 202654 minS3

  A consulting firm spent 18 months designing the perfect workspace. Six months after move-in, they tore it out. That one moment launched Adam Morgan on a mission to rethink everything about how offices get built — and why most of them are still getting it wrong.Adam is co-founder of Bureau, a company that designs and builds soundproof booths for modern workplaces. But his perspective goes far beyond the product. Coming from a finance background, Adam thinks about the office as a performance system — and the data he's seeing tells a clear story: focus spaces are running at 56–57% utilization while open collaborative areas sit at 25–30%. Workers aren't broken. The spaces are.In this conversation, Bob and Adam dig into:- Why the open office was built for a way of working that no longer exists- What CO2 levels are quietly doing to your afternoon productivity- How AI companies are reshaping office demand — and what the rush to spec suites signals- Return-to-office mandates: what actually works, and what quietly backfires- The real reason people come to the office (hint: it's not the ping pong table)

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  Episode #12

  It's a Time Problem: How AI Could Save Apprenticeship in Design | Valerie Trent

  Jul 28, 202643 minS3

  Somewhere right now, a talented designer is copy-pasting details, finishes, and door schedules into a set of CDs — instead of designing the inspiring workplace needed to bring a fragmented team back to the office. That's not a people problem. That's a time problem.In this episode, Bob Fox sits down with Valerie Trent, a licensed designer (NCIDQ, LEED AP ID+C) who spent about a decade practicing before starting a technology company. She realized firms were burning most of their hours on documentation — coordination, redlines, cut-and-paste work — instead of the design thinking that actually shapes how a space feels to work in. That observation led her to start building AI tools aimed at reducing the repetitive production work, so the people trained to solve physical, spatial, and human problems can spend their time solving them.They dig into what's really driving the industry's shrinking margins, why production work has quietly replaced real apprenticeship for a generation of designers, and two firsthand stories of firms using freed-up time to rebuild mentorship from the ground up — one through a rotating shadow-a-principal program, another through a weekly group redlining session that's become the most valuable hour of the week. Valerie also makes the case that AI doesn't create a firm's culture — it amplifies whatever culture is already there, for better or worse.

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  Episode #11

  Nature Inside: What the Best Workplaces Already Know | Bill Browning & Catie Ryan

  Jul 11, 202656 minS3

  What if the single most powerful thing you could do to bring people back to the office had nothing to do with perks, mandates, or the latest collaboration tech and everything to do with trees, light, and the patterns found in nature?In this episode, Bill Browning and Catie Ryan of Terrapin Bright Green, authors of Nature Inside and 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design, make the case that biophilic design and biophilia in the workplace are no longer optional extras but essential workplace strategy for anyone serious about the future of work. From fractal lighting and fractal fluency to daylighting office environments and dynamic lighting that shifts brain states from calm to engaged, they reveal how a nature-inspired office and green office design can transform workplace productivity, drive return to office, and create a workplace experience that no ping pong table can replicate. Drawing on cutting-edge biophilia science, including new research on epigenetics and nature, biophilic design research, and neurodiversity in the workplace; Bill and Catie show how human centered design and biophilic architecture are reshaping the office environment to support employee wellbeing and workplace wellbeing across every setting, from hybrid work environments to corporate real estate portfolios. With real case studies this is the conversation on nature at work and what sustainable workplace design actually looks like when the science drives every decision.About the guests:Bill Browning is a founding partner of Terrapin Bright Green and one of the world's leading experts on biophilic design and sustainable economics.Catie Ryan is a principal at Terrapin Bright Green and co-author of 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design.Purchase the book here: https://amzn.to/4vVIlMU

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  What The F* is Happening to The Office?

  The Smart Office Revolution: What Buildings Know | Melissa Marsh

  Jun 15, 20261 hour

  What if your office could tell you who to sit next to based on what you're working on? What if the building knew you were stressed before you did?In this episode, Bob Fox sits down with Melissa Marsh, founder and CEO of PLASTARC. With 25+ years in the field and clients like Microsoft, Google, Lululemon, and Logitech, Melissa is an expert on where the workplace is headed and why most organizations are still behind.They cover the shift from designing space to designing experience, the rise of smart buildings and occupancy sensors, why digital twins are changing how we operate and plan buildings, and the uncomfortable question: are return-to-office mandates about people or about protecting the value of real estate?Melissa also unpacks why HR, IT, and Real Estate speak entirely different languages, what new metrics like experience density actually measure, and why real estate is, in her words, "profoundly unprepared" for the organizational impact of AI.This is one of those conversations that makes you rethink what a building is, what an office is for, and who should be designing both.Subscribe for new episodes with the experts shaping the future of work.Leave a comment — what's your biggest challenge with the workplace right now?Download our State of the Workplace Report → https://workdesign.beehiiv.com/industry-report

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  Episode #9

  Your Office Is Obsolete Before You Move In — Here's How to Fix It | Celeste Tell

  Jun 2, 202648 minS3

  <p>Are we designing offices that are already obsolete before anyone moves in? Workplace strategist and circular economy advocate Celeste Tell joins Bob Fox to challenge one of workplace design's most embedded assumptions — and make the case for a fundamentally different approach.Celeste Tell, co-founder of Epicycled, argues that in an era of constant organizational change, designing a workplace for a fixed outcome is designing for failure. Instead, she makes the case for treating the workplace like a kit of parts — think original Lego, not the themed sets — that can be reconfigured again and again without tearing everything out and starti...

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