Sameness by Design: why do all workplaces look the same?
New research from Dr Agustin Chevez explores why workplaces today are converging around the same ideas, aesthetics and measures of success, and argues that sameness might not always be a bad thing
Has workplace design lost its individuality? This is the core question explored in new research by workplace provocateur, Dr Agustin Chevez, entitled ‘Sameness by Design’. The research draws on five years of Australian workplace interior design awards from 116 deign firms and 181 shortlisted projects, to understand why workplace design feels increasingly homogenous.
The research investigates the shared language, practices, benchmarks, and market expectations that are contributing to a convergence of design. The central thesis is that workplaces today increasingly feel the same.
Chevez isn’t alone in this thinking. To test his theory, he polled audience members at the WORKTECH Melbourne 2026 conference where 78% agreed that workplaces today tend to feel like variations of the same template. But Chevez argues that this is not simply a failure of creativity. Instead, sameness can emerge from the way the industry itself operates.
Six forces driving sameness
The research proposes a ‘Workplace Design Sameness’ (WDS) model which identifies six forces behind convergence: the influence of design media and awards; increasingly similar workplace strategies and benchmarks; designers relying on familiar precedents; shared measures of success such as wellbeing and utilisation; widespread access to the same design technologies; and common market expectations about what good workplace design should address.
The effect can be self-reinforcing. Chevez found remarkably similar language used to describe projects from different sectors and design firms. While this language is recognised as formulaic, it’s widely used because individuals believe this is what clients and the industry expect. The research describes this through the concept of ‘pluralistic ignorance’, a concept where people can privately question a norm while continuing to reproduce it because they assume others expect it.
The research also points to design awards reinforcing this cycle. Chevez analysed 181 workplace projects from 116 design firms recognised in an Australian interior design awards programme between 2021 and 2025. Just 13% were design firms’ own offices, yet these accounted for four of the seven winning projects. Recognition was also concentrated among a relatively small group of practices, increasing the visibility of particular interpretations of good design.
There was remarkably little overlap between workplaces recognised for interior design, architecture, employee experience and being a great place to work. The finding exposes a fragmented picture of workplace success where different professional lenses are converging around their own definition of ‘good’.
When sameness makes sense
While the evidence points to a convergence of workplace design, Chevez stops short of arguing that every workplace needs to be completely unique. Familiar environments can reinforce professional identity, make spaces easier for employees to understand and potentially enable more reusable fit-outs. The question is therefore not how to eliminate sameness, but to recognise when it is useful and when it prevents design from responding to genuine organisational difference.
On the counter argument to workplace sameness, Chevez introduces the idea of ‘competitive overshoot’ which is the point at which designers pursue difference primarily to distinguish themselves rather than improve outcomes. In this regard, novelty can become just as problematic as sameness.
The report explores how to incorporate purposeful innovation into today’s workplace design projects. The underlying sentiment is that innovation is less about creating completely distinctive versions of an established workplace model, and more about recognising what the problem is that design can help to solve.
Read the full report, Sameness by Design, by Dr Agustin Chevez.
