Communities of work: Creating place in the workplace

As we have all observed, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our relationship to work and where work happens for the foreseeable future. With this understanding comes the need to re-evaluate how we use the workplace and what the workplace means to the people using it. While people have found they do not need the workplace to necessarily do all of their work, they have come to acknowledge that they do miss people and the social interaction and collaboration enabled through physical closeness in a shared place — their community of work. In rethinking the workplace, other design-related fields and areas of scholarship can provide important insights regarding the intersection of people and place in communities, organisations and companies. For instance, it is possible to look to the fields of both urban planning and urban design for insights as to how to structure and sustain communities while creating experiences that support connections, reflect culture and bring people together through shared meaning. Tied to these fields is the practice of community design, which looks to use physical design to truly support and celebrate the sociocultural aspects of communities. Lastly, the theory of place provides an understanding of why the difference between generic space and a community-reflective place is critical to the success of communities. Together, these three lines of thought have helped inform a burgeoning theory of communities of work. Fifth Third Bank’s transformation of its mid-20th-century campus in the heart of downtown Cincinnati serves as an early, real-life example of this theory in action.