For leading design studios Charles & Co, Ash, and Elicyon, the future of the workspace is looking distinctly residential.
As the world prepares to wind down from the working year, it’s an apt time to reflect on the nature of work itself – and where we do it. And while the tide has now turned away from working at home, an unexpected quid pro quo is emerging: home is coming to the workplace.
The Midtown supertall tower 520 Fifth Avenue – the avenue’s tallest mixed-use building – is a prime example. Its owner and operator, Rabina, turned to the renowned residential design studio Charles & Co to transform 25 of the tower’s floors into workspaces. Charles & Co was co-founded by Vicky Charles, who as Soho House’s longstanding Global Head of Design was largely responsible for igniting the home-from-home revolution in private members clubs; and while tenants at 520 Fifth Avenue such as Texas Capital Bank are most definitely corporate, the boardrooms and offices are taking their aesthetic cues from the home.
“Our goal was to create a workspace that feels both refined and personal – more like a sophisticated residence than a traditional office,” says Katie Miller, Creative Director of Charles & Co. “The use of warm, natural materials, thoughtfully scaled furnishings, and layered lighting – these elements help foster a sense of comfort, calm, and well-being, which is often missing in commercial environments.”
“Our goal was to create a workspace that feels both refined and personal – more like a sophisticated residence than a traditional office.”
Katie Miller, Creative Director, Charles & Co.
Thus, Pierre Jeanneret chairs, curated lighting, sculptural ceramics and contemporary art replace the cold impersonality of more traditional workspaces. Boardrooms appear more like living or dining rooms, while domestic-looking kitchens contain inviting corners for impromptu meetings. “Employees now expect a variety of work settings beyond the traditional meeting room,” says Miller. “We’ve incorporated small tables throughout the space, specifically designed for laptop use, giving employees multiple options for informal meetings and small group collaboration.”
It’s an enlightened move by Rabina, which has taken a cohesive approach to foster an entire vertical neighbourhood that blurs the divisions between its residential, social and corporate environments. The 25 floors of workspace are sandwiched between 100 residential condominiums above and a private members’ club, Moss, below.
Charles & Co are not alone in leading this trend. Ash – the residential design and staging firm co-founded by Andrew Bowen – has recently been bringing principles from residential and home design into corporate projects from New York to L.A. “The last few years really shifted how people think about work and home, and that overlap shows up in design,” says Bowen. “Clients want spaces that feel inviting, lived-in, and if they’ve developed over time. The line between ‘office’ and ‘home’ used to be so defined; now it’s blurred – and in some cases, one and the same. We see more natural materials, art collections, even gestures of imperfection.”
Their Sunset Boulevard office project has a space-age residential vibe, with Eero Saarinen tulip chairs in the boardroom, bottle-green jewel-toned velvet armchairs in the reception, gregarious round tables and mid-century lights – all of which impart a feeling of elevated comfort more usually associated with home or private members clubs. “For us, it always starts with how a space is going to make you feel,” explains Bowen. “In homes and hotels, that usually means creating a sense of ease and place through the devices available to us – lighting, textures, proportions among them. It’s crucial for us to bring that same emotional register into the workplace.”
“When you introduce residential cues, people behave differently… they connect more.”
Andrew Bowen, Co-founder, Ash
While this is, of course, understandable from an aesthetic perspective, it’s also sound business: “Offices don’t have to feel sterile or overly designed,” Bowen says. “When you introduce residential cues, people behave differently. Their guard is down and they connect more. The adaptation for commercial use is mostly then about durability and flow: finishes that hold up, layouts that work for teams, and so on.”
The same tectonic cultural shifts are being seen across the Atlantic in London. Charu Gandhi is the founder and director of the award-winning design studio, Elicyon. While the studio is primarily known for its residences across the world, it has recently completed a private office in Mayfair that owes much more to the home than to the corporate world.
“We approached the project very much as we would a residential interior, beginning with the question of how should this space make people feel?” says Gandhi. “We wanted to move away from the traditional, corporate sterility often associated with offices, instead crafting a space that felt layered, tactile, and deeply personal to the individuals that would be using it every day.”
Materials and finishes such as lime-washed walls, linen drapery and fluted wood panelling bring a domestic warmth and texture to the space. “The bespoke joinery and tailored furniture pieces throughout the office are a nod to how we also approach the detailing of our private residential projects,” says Gandhi.
These properties are a world away from the impersonal corporate tropes of previous decades. And while they are outliers for now, there is little doubt that where these influential studios are going, others will follow – particularly as they are manifestations of cultural change. The work-from-home revolution fostered by the pandemic might not have lasted, but it broke down the walls that separated the worlds of work and home. With the perspective that comes from distance, it is now accepted wisdom that for all its comforts and convenience, the downsides to remote working are just too great – from the disappearance of the osmosis-like way that skills are passed between people, for example, or the sparks of creativity that come from momentary encounters.
Yet the era also gave doubt to the great misconception that work demands austere surroundings – that comfort and familiarity are somehow decadent distractions.
“Comfort, atmosphere, and sensory experience have become as important as ergonomics and technology – there’s a newfound appreciation for spaces that are not just functional but restorative,” says Gandhi. “Commercial design that draws cues from residential design isn’t a fleeting trend; it’s a redefinition of what ‘professional’ environments can be.”
“Commercial design that draws cues from residential design isn’t a fleeting trend; it’s a redefinition of what ‘professional’ environments can be.”
Charu Gandhi , Founder and Director, Elicyon
Bowen agrees with this. “It’s definitely a long-term shift. Workplaces are moving away from being purely functional to being experiential and key to a firm’s success. The office of the next decade probably feels more like a well-designed clubhouse than a bland floor plate. We predict that we’ll continue moving toward a future that is increasingly flexible and personal, paying real attention to how people live, not just how they work.” Bowen has staked a claim on this future with a dedicated décor company Room Service: “Room Service grew out of exactly that intersection,” he says. “We have been furnishing hotels and private residences for years, all while getting inquiries from developers and management firms who wanted their offices to feel similarly. So we built a platform for that: quick, design-driven furnishing that brings hospitality-level comfort and detail into any space.”
For Gandhi and her Elicyon studio, the shift represents a response to a broader cultural desire for workplaces that support human experience, not just efficiency. “We’re entering an era where the workplace is less about formality and more about fostering connection, creativity, and a sense of ease,” she says. “The design language of the home is perfectly suited to that. We see this as a natural evolution of our ethos: creating spaces that are deeply attuned to the people who inhabit them, regardless of function.”
Bowen believes that by borrowing more from hospitality and home, the offices of the future will be “places you actually want to spend your time in.”
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