Signal File: design finds its purpose in movement
From record office utilisation and behavioural science in space planning furniture built for a more mobile life, this week's signals show design responding to how people live and work
This week’s signals range across the workplace and beyond it, from data confirming that offices are working harder than they have in years, to a furniture collection built for renters who move house without a van. Together, they suggest a design conversation that is less about statement spaces and more about purpose – whether between a team and its floorplan, a building and its city, or a piece of furniture and the life someone is living.
Office utilisation hits a renewed high
New research from CBRE finds that peak global office utilisation has climbed to 80%, above the pre-pandemic average of 65% to 75%, while average utilisation surged to 53% in 2025, the largest annual gain since 2021. The findings point to attendance policies, desk sharing and rotating schedules doing the work of matching space to demand, and suggest organisations are managing density with more precision than before.
In action: As peak attendance rises, space planning will need to account for genuine crowding, not the averages of a quieter era.
Office design borrows a page from behavioural science
JLL Design has launched a new service, developed with an organisational and leadership development consultancy, that applies behavioural science and evolutionary psychology to workplace layout. Rather than starting from desks or policies, the approach designs space around how teams focus, collaborate and perform together, treating human cognitive limits and social behaviour as the constants that space should be built around.
In action: Bring behavioural evidence into early-stage briefing. Team performance may have more to do with sightlines and proximity than with headcount or square footage.
Architecture’s top prize rewards the redesigned commute
The Royal Institute of British Architects has revealed the six project shortlist for its 30th anniversary Stirling Prize, including Paddington Square, a redevelopment that reimagines the public realm above one of London’s busiest transport interchanges. Only one office-led scheme made the final six, but workplace-related projects featured strongly among the wider RIBA National Award winners, reflecting the growing prominence of mixed-use and transport-led regeneration in British architecture.
In action: The most celebrated projects this year are judged as much on connection, movement and public value as on the architecture itself.
Furniture makers chart the forces reshaping the workplace
A new report from Kimball International draws on more than 200 signals across culture, technology, design, economics and society to identify five forces shaping workplace design, including human sustainability, slow connection and systemic flexibility. The research argues that the greatest design opportunity now lies less in technology itself and more in environments that help people perform, connect and adapt as work continues to change.
In action: Design for adaptability as a baseline, not an upgrade. Spaces built to flex with changing patterns of use will outlast those built for a single way of working.
Furniture built to be carried, not delivered
Swedish brand IKEA has launched Kompishäng, a portable furniture collection developed after designers studied how renters and students in London actually move flat. The 12-piece range includes a wardrobe organiser that doubles as a rucksack and a side table carried like a handbag, each designed to feel settled in a home rather than temporary, despite being built to be carried rather than transported by van.
In action: As more people live in shorter-term or frequently changing spaces, durability and portability are becoming equally important design briefs.
