Coronavirus lockdowns will have a profound impact on how creative businesses work in future, according to architects and designers including Carlo Ratti Associati, BIG, Snøhetta and Pearson Lloyd.
Over the past couple of weeks a huge shift in office culture has occurred, with teams spread across multiple houses instead of one studio. This has forced architects and designers to adapt.
"The scale of this shift is just unprecedented and will surely lead to new ways of working," said Sheela Søgaard, partner at BIG.
Søgaard hopes that the studio will learn positive lessons from the current situation.
"We are learning new styles of management that depend on the ability to disperse assignments efficiently across team members and rely on their deliverables without as much supervision or guidance as normal," she said. "We are approaching this situation as an opportunity for growth for our leadership and BIGsters alike."
"To make this 'new normal' more acceptable will require an extra effort"
In Italy, practices were forced to make changes to the way they work early on, as it became one of the countries to be most severely affected by the pandemic. A nationwide lockdown came into effect on 9 March.
Carlo Ratti, founding partner of Carlo Ratti Associati, told Dezeen the current situation reminded him of the promise digital communications brought when they were first introduced.
"Until a few weeks ago, despite having the technical capacity to work remotely, people overwhelmingly chose to sit in an office, or at least in a cafe," Ratti told Dezeen.
However, Ratti believes that remote working will not be as many imagined.
"In fact, working from the top of a mountain – or at your kitchen table, most likely – might not be that exciting after all. To most of us, working includes social relations and communication," he added. "To make this 'new normal' more acceptable will require an extra effort."
"It's time to question if it's really necessary to always be travelling"
Studios around the world have had to adapt to the situation quickly. For some, it has been an opportunity to trial different ways of working.
"This is such a great moment to reevaluate the concept of the home office, which started to be practiced in the 90s but, in fact, has never happened on a global scale like this until now," Brazilian architect Arthur Casas told Dezeen.
"It's time to question if it's really necessary to always be travelling, far away or not, in order to carry out our work. While we've got 21st century technology, we still maintain last century habits."
"In Colombia, no design studio works online," David Del Valle, founder of Medellin Design Week, told Dezeen.
"Traditionally, all projects are directed from a physical study. You can work with some online collaborators but not the entire remote organisation."
"Curiously, I have discovered the professionalism of my team and the willingness to do their job even better. This has allowed us to see that Google Hangouts can develop our creative, technical and administrative sections in an easy and flexible way."
"Our use of technology has amplified"
While working remotely has long been an option for architects and designers they are now much more dependent on technology. Architecture firm Woods Bagot, which has 16 locations worldwide, has long-established processes and protocols to stay connected, but the firm has still noticed a huge increase in the reliance on technology.
"There's no question our use of technology has amplified during this unprecedented time," Woods Bagot global CEO Nik Karalis told Dezeen.
"Our London studio has set up a local teams group for informal updates," he continued. "One hundred and fifteen people dialled in for Sydney's Monday morning meeting this week – our biggest ever virtual attendance, as it is usually a combination of physical and virtual attendance."