Gensler reveals the hottest design trends of 2025: mixed-use districts, affordable housing, better offices

On Thursday, US company Gensler presented its “Design Forecast,” which identifies the trends it believes will shape design in the coming year. These trends include a focus on how design must adapt to changes in city life – the ongoing shift to working from home, the resulting disruption of city centers and shopping districts, and increasingly unaffordable housing.

“Our cities are organizers,” Gensler co-CEO Jordan Goldstein said in an interview with Assets Mid-November. “This is where we see the power of design to really shape this experience for the better.”

The COVID pandemic triggered a change in urban life that is still visible. Despite appeals from companies to return to the office five days a week, hybrid working appears to have become established in urban working life, reducing the need for office space and in turn reducing foot traffic through city centers. This, along with higher interest rates, has contributed to a massive global downturn in the commercial real estate market as office and retail tenants downsize their physical footprint.

“The issues we saw post-pandemic are driving a lot of (these design trends),” Goldstein said. Then add what he calls “crisis multipliers” – like technological change and sustainability, to name a few.

However, he notes that planners are now much more willing to consider experimental redevelopment in the city center. “There is an opportunity to have these dialogues (with planners) that, frankly, weren’t necessarily happening on a regular basis before the pandemic,” he said. And in some markets like India, these discussions “didn’t happen, period.”

In one example, Gensler is working with the Philadelphia city government to transform South Broad Street into a 10-block art park with green spaces, outdoor entertainment areas and public artwork. The company is pursuing a similar project on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, building new green space, event venues and a new cafe in the Jane Byrne Park water tower.

“Most of our cities know that they can’t be successful in the future just by doing things the way they’ve been doing. Embracing design really drives innovation (and) experimentation,” Gensler co-CEO Elizabeth Brink said in mid-November.

Unique and unpredictable

In its “Design Forecast,” Gensler identifies five trends it calls “the most important and actionable insights our customers need to know,” drawn from dozens of offices around the world.

“We reach out to all of our locations and ask: What do you see? What need do you see at your location?” said Brink in mid-November.

Several trends relate to the need to rethink the city post-COVID as the boroughs move away from the more traditional mix of separate office districts, suburbs and shopping and entertainment districts that characterize most modern cities.

Gensler, for example, predicts that mixed-use districts “will take center stage in 2025” as cities look to “foster community engagement and bring people together through emotional shared experiences.”

Both Brink and Goldstein referred to the idea of ​​the “20-minute city,” or an urban environment where people can get home, work and entertainment in just a 20-minute drive.

But beyond that, Brink pointed out that there is a desire to create a “more immersive and participatory type of experience,” citing sports as an example. “People want to have experiences that are unique and unpredictable. They do it together and there is a sense of community,” she explained.

How to fix the office

Another key design trend that Gensler highlights is the need to redesign the workplace. Instead of sending employees back to the office, employers must instead make it a valuable place to work. Offices will be all about “employee experience” and “inspiration,” the company predicts, as tenants continue to pursue a “flight to quality” that meets the “professional demands” of their employees.

“We know that the workplace is still very important,” Brink said in mid-November. “It’s really important for organizations. It’s really important for creativity. It’s really important for connection, it’s really important for the human experience,” she explained.

Gensler’s global workplace survey, released in May, found that almost all workers in a high-performing office have access to a space for focused concentration, compared to just 26% in low-performing workplaces.

Some companies have successfully revived in-person presence after moving to a nicer office. British bank HSBC doubled the number of times New York-based employees entered its office after moving into the Spiral Hotel, designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels.

Still, the slump in commercial real estate caused by hybrid work isn’t going away. Gensler predicts that low prices will provide developers with the opportunity to create “valuable new real estate.” Rate cuts could also encourage developers to take the plunge and convert their unused office space into something more in-demand. The architecture firm says the “adaptive reuse boom” will go beyond a mere office-to-residential transition, as developers instead seek “creative conversions” in areas such as healthcare, scientific laboratories and senior living, among others.

But Brink found that the transition from office to home is easier said than done. Offices cannot afford the traditional apartment layout due to the need to add plumbing and kitchen areas.

She suggests a co-living model with smaller units and shared bathrooms and kitchens will be an easier convection for developers. The construction costs were reduced by a third because the conversion resulted in three times as many units being available.

“It’s a creative way to look at some of these conversations that could be great for different urban populations: students, retirees, good for anyone who maybe just needs a place,” she suggested.

Converting unused office buildings into residential complexes could help with another of Gensler’s design trends for 2025: a push toward “affordable, market-rate housing” as changes in zoning laws and building codes encourage the creation of all types of homes.

“One plus one equals three”

Founded in 1965 by architect Art Gensler, Gensler employs over 6,000 designers in 17 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Gensler’s many projects include Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, the still-under-construction Terminal One at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and the Shanghai Tower, the third tallest building in the world. The company reported fiscal 2023 revenue of $1.84 billion.

Brink and Goldstein took over as co-CEOs of Gensler in April. Her predecessors Diane Hoskins and Andy Cohen ran the architectural firm together for almost 20 years.

Courtesy of Gensler

Gensler is an unusual example of a company that has adopted the co-CEO model. Other companies have tried having two CEOs with mixed success: Salesforce and SAP each had one of their two co-CEOs step down within a year. (On Monday, chipmaker Intel adopted the co-CEO model, naming David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus as interim co-CEOs, replacing outgoing CEO Pat Gelsinger.)

But successful co-CEOs say the structure allows executives to support each other, check a particular executive’s biases, or simply allow the C-suite to do more every day. “Most CEOs have 24 hours in a day, we have 48 hours in a day,” Hoskins continued Assets‘s Leadership Next Podcast last year.

“The two of us can work together and create a ‘one plus one equals three’ scenario,” Goldstein said. “Each of us has certain passions, and when we bring those together it really resonates within the company.”