Design Forecast 2016 From the Co-CEOs We always look ahead. For 2016’s Design Forecast, we challenged ourselves to look out 10 years. Design shapes the future of human experience to create a better world. This credo is the basis of our Design Forecast. For 2016, we asked our global teams to consider how people will live, work, and play in the cities of 2025. Their insights will give our clients an insider view of the issues design will confront in the next decade. Finding opportunities requires insight and imagination. Our newly opened Shanghai Tower speaks to how we help our clients reframe the present to meet the needs of tomorrow. Design is how we do it. It makes insight actionable, creates meaningful innovation, and calls a thriving future into being. Andy Cohen, FAIA, IIDA Diane Hoskins, FAIA, IIDA, LEED AP Co-CEO Co-CEO Shanghai Tower, Shanghai on the cover: The Tower at PNC Plaza, Pittsburgh ii 1 Gensler Design Forecast 2016 Metatrends Embracing shaping the our iHumanity. 1 Digital will be such an integral part of daily life that world of 2025. we’ll leverage it much more fully. We’ll accept how it interacts with us, consciously feeding its data streams to make our lives better. Our iHumanity Looking across our markets, will be a shared, global phenomenon, but different we see six metatrends that will locales and generations will give it their own spin. transform how we live, work, and play in the next decade. Leading “smarter” lives. 2 We’ll live in a “made” environment, not just a “built” one. Buildings, settings, and products will integrate connectivity and “know” that we’re present. Most aspects of our everyday lives will reflect this, enabling us to make real-time, just-in-time connections to people, places, goods, and services. 2 3 Gensler Design Forecast 2016 4 Urbanity creates an abundance of Urbanity, human networks to drive urban economies. To Designing support new life- not just styles, real estate will innovate its forms and means. Walkable, transit- urbanization. served hubs that offer a rich, dense both time mix will absorb new growth. Many of them will be in and space. former suburbs. Cities as 3 Hungry for experience and hooked on ultra- convenience, we won’t tolerate “dead time,” whether it’s long commutes, less-than-seamless transactions, or places devoid of interest. Design will reflect the reality that people will expect innovation everything to justify their time commitment. engines. 5 Look for the emergence of neoindustrial cities that support thriving digital/artisanal maker cultures. Consumers will expect to co-create the goods and services they purchase. Makers—including freelancers and robots—will look to cities to provide tools and settings to speed innovation. 4 5 Gensler Design Forecast 2016 Resilience 6 In times of disruption, cities bear the brunt— disasters, epidemics, and security threats. They will take the lead in managing this, but citizens will play a role, armed with data and a mindset tuned to wellness, safety, and resilience. Smart cities will gets engage them and give their local efforts scale. scale. 6 7 Gensler Design Forecast 2016 A closer look at the metatrends’ Live impact on how Community Forecast Contemporary life’s disruptions and we will live, work, opportunities form the working agenda for cities and their community-facing and play. institutions and infrastructure. iHumanity New priorities Growing is redefining give resilience complexity livability. a new math. demands synergy. No journey, treatment, or curriculum is Resource shortfalls spur across-the-board Proximity is less of a requirement as remote fixed, as digital tools and open resources rethinking to increase supply, temper medicine, education, and convening ramp encourage people to shape their experiences demand, and prevent waste. Pollution, up. At the same time, research, practice, and own their destinies. As they reclaim sea-level rise, and other manmade and natural and education are increasingly combined, their cities, people are redefining livability— threats to community life lead to a “new implying more integrated facilities. Crossing with sharing and wellness at the core. The math” about priorities. How resilience is boundaries is necessary in a complex, growing capacity for personalization cont- defined will vary, but investing in it is seen distributed, and interconnected world. inues to generate the kind of disruption that as a communal responsibility. Collaborative synergy that generates holistic challenges tradition’s sclerosis and high cost. solutions is widely valued, and communities of practice that deliver it will thrive. Creativity Adaptability is fueling an and versatility urban revival. are the norm. Grassroots artists and artisanal activity, Community life evolves through trial, leveraging low rents, meld with startups error, and new solutions. If a key part of to revive depressed neighborhoods. For the system falls short, there’s an app for cities, accommodating them is a challenge, that. If public space isn’t available, curbside but also a necessity to reap cultural and parklets pop up. Large venues will support economic benefits. Look for companies and intensive and varied use, orchestrating institutions to step in where rents are high smaller settings that activate the city as a to provide shared workspaces that spur whole. Low-tech, mobile venues will well innovation. Urban agriculture has similar up around them—creating micro-markets benefits as a means of community-building. for entrepreneurs and quickly-deployed platforms for spontaneous local events. San Francisco International Airport Terminal 3, Boarding Area E, San Francisco 8 9 Gensler Design Forecast 2016 Work Workplace Forecast Liberated from old constraints, prepared to go where their talents are best supported, an urban workforce will reshape work and its settings. Making choice and Engagement It’s time to connection higher is the new get serious priorities. differentiator. about wellness. As organizations adapt to accommodate Rising expectations for engagement among New tools will allow people to monitor workers’ personal devices, a customer-like customers, organizations, and teams will spur not just their personal wellness, but mindset will transform internal business the growth of “open” collaboration spaces also the health of their work settings. In processes. Faced with this new imperative, that welcome outsiders, including autono- response, organizations—including building companies will encourage their people to mous teams. They especially will want to owners and managers—will have to take use these devices to connect to each other work across organizational and professional wellness seriously. The issue reaches deep and to their customers and markets. They boundaries, so they will gravitate toward set- into workplace culture, prompting the will also offer people more options as to tings that engage them as full participants expectation for health-supportive options, where and how they choose to work. and support their direct interaction. both on-site and in the neighborhood. A new ethos Day-to-day work gives rise to new is blurring time types of space. and space. The emphasis on making and prototyping, Top performers will become experts at along with the rise of a project-centered managing states of flow as they shift gears workforce, will change the nature of between complex, work-related problems workspace and how it’s provided. Look for the and lifestyle pursuits. As everyday habits emergence of just-in-time settings designed change, uniform workplace solutions will go to support the activities of fast-moving, by the wayside, replaced by a collage of constantly changing teams. A workforce that’s settings and approaches that help people detached from organizations will also make transition from mode to mode within dense “third places” more important in cities. marketplaces of spatial variety. Microsoft Building 17, Redmond, WA 10 11 Gensler Design Forecast 2016 Lifestyle Forecast Leisure’s need for a customer experience that’s real, authentic, and seamless is a challenge for tech/media integration. Settings are Peer-to-peer: Customers seek responding to Sharing is the out destinations one’s own reality. new owning. that matter. Environments will automatically welcome and App-driven sharing platforms continue to Transit-oriented destinations will grow. respond to an individual’s likes, dislikes, and disrupt established businesses, from hotels Mixed-use developments will become the desires in overtly personalized ways. Artificial to retail stores. Peer-to-peer marketplaces norm, but they will take a more compact intelligence, wearables, geo-location tools, facilitate renting, sharing, and borrowing, form. With compactness and density comes biometrics, and predictive technologies will rather than owning or purchasing. Consumers an active street life. Whether for health, anticipate consumer needs based on user seeking real-time, communal, meaningful environmental, or economic reasons, behaviors and preferences, offering tailored experiences are prioritizing access over people are walking, biking, and shifting from messaging and curated experiences that can ownership, driving the focus away from cars to public transit to shorten commutes augment and enhance human expertise. personal space toward community and and avoid the hassles of parking. collaboration space. The nuances matter Having leisure close Online-to-offline: more in identifying at hand commands Consistency is consumer types. a premium. critical. Traditional