The office market has spent the better part of four years trying to answer the wrong question. Most of the post-pandemic conversation has centered on how much office space companies need. The more important question: the one that will determine which office buildings thrive and which ones continue to struggle, is what kind of space knowledge workers actually require to do their best work.
And yes, there’s a difference. Moreover, as a landlord or tenant, understanding that difference is worth real money.
At Van Vlissingen & Co., and on the real finds podcast, we watch occupancy patterns, talk to tenants daily, and negotiate renewals and relocations across a wide range of industries. Here’s what we’ve learned about designing spaces where knowledge workers genuinely want to be and where they actually perform.
Start With What Knowledge Work Actually Is
Knowledge workers: attorneys, engineers, financial analysts, marketers, software developers, consultants are paid to think, make judgments, and produce ideas. Their raw materials are attention and cognitive capacity. This is a fundamentally different operating model than, say, a distribution center, where throughput and labor efficiency are the primary metrics.
The implications for space design are significant. A warehouse optimized for movement and storage is designed around predictable, repeatable tasks. An office optimized for knowledge work has to accommodate a much wider range of cognitive states: deep solo focus, collaborative problem-solving, informal conversation, video calls, and presentations, sometimes all in the same afternoon.
Most offices built before 2010 were not designed with this range in mind. The open office trend that followed overreacted, trading excessive private offices for excessive noise and distraction. The best office design today threads the needle between those two failures.
The Three Zones Every Knowledge Work Environment Needs
The most effective office layouts we’ve seen, whether in Lincolnshire, Schaumburg, or the Fulton Market corridor, share a common structural logic: three distinct functional zones.
The first is the focus zone: This is where individual deep work happens. It requires acoustic separation, predictable lighting, and enough visual calm to reduce cognitive load. This doesn’t mean rows of assigned cubicles. It means a portion of the floor plan, sometimes private offices, sometimes semi-enclosed workstations with higher panels, sometimes dedicated quiet rooms that are understood to be a low-interruption environment. Workers self-select into this zone when they need to think.
The second is the collaboration zone: This is the area most companies got right in the open office era, and then undermined by making it the entire floor. Collaboration zones should be active and flexible: moveable furniture, writable surfaces, good A/V integration, and enough density to feel energizing without becoming chaotic. These spaces work best when they’re centrally located and visually open to signal that they’re available.
The third is the transition zone: the informal connective tissue between focused work and structured collaboration. Think lounge seating near the coffee station, a casual touchdown spot near the window line, and a short walking loop around the perimeter. These spaces facilitate the unscheduled, low-stakes interactions that organizations consistently undervalue until they lose them. One of the most common things we hear from tenants leaving downtown Chicago for suburban space is that they miss the organic collision of the hallway. Good design builds that back in.
Acoustic Design Is the Highest-ROI Investment Most Tenants Ignore
Let’s be honest… Noise is the single most consistent complaint we hear from office tenants, and it is almost always an afterthought in both building design and tenant improvement budgets.
For knowledge workers, acoustic disruption isn’t just uncomfortable; it’s operationally expensive. Research consistently shows that it takes over 20 minutes to return to a state of deep focus after an interruption. In an open office environment, workers can experience dozens of interruptions per day. The math is not in favor of productivity.
The good news is that acoustic treatment does not require tearing apart a space. Sound-absorbing ceiling clouds, fabric panels, carpet in high-traffic areas, and strategic use of soft furnishings can dramatically reduce ambient noise. White noise systems, now increasingly sophisticated and affordable, mask conversational bleed between zones. Acoustic phone booths and focus pods, which have become standard in Class A suburban product, give individuals a low-friction escape from open environments when they need to concentrate.
Landlords who invest in acoustic infrastructure at the base building level: better ceiling systems, improved mechanical noise dampening, thoughtful HVAC placement command measurably better retention in our portfolio.
Biophilic Design Isn’t an Amenity. It’s an Occupancy Strategy.
Natural light, views of greenery, indoor plants, and access to outdoor space are not luxury add-ons. They’re directly correlated with employee wellbeing, cognitive performance, and reduced absenteeism; outcomes that translate into lease renewals and reduced vacancy.
Technology Infrastructure Is Table Stakes But Most Buildings Are Still Behind
Knowledge workers depend on seamless connectivity and intuitive room technology. This sounds obvious. And yet we continue to see buildings, including some built in the 2000s, where conference room A/V requires a 10-minute setup ritual, Wi-Fi dead zones persist in corners and stairwells, and power access in collaborative areas is an afterthought.
The baseline expectation for a Class A suburban office in 2025: building-wide high-density Wi-Fi with coverage in all common areas including outdoor spaces, standardized and simple video conferencing hardware in all meeting rooms (most tenants have standardized on one platform, Zoom or Teams, and expect it to just work), and ample power access in every zone including floor boxes in open areas and USB charging integrated into furniture.
The next level of differentiation, increasingly common in the best suburban product: smart building systems that give tenants visibility into space utilization and occupancy data, EV charging in the parking deck, and lobby and amenity spaces that are technology-enabled for tenant use outside of traditional hours.
The Chicagoland Suburban Market Is Positioned to Win This Moment
The flight-to-quality trend is real, and it’s not reversing. Tenants are consolidating into less space, but they’re consolidating into better space and a significant portion of that decision-making is playing out in favor of well-located suburban product that can offer the environment downtown cannot: lower density, easier commutes, parking, outdoor access, and proximity to where a significant portion of the professional workforce actually lives.
Lake County, the North Shore corridor, O’Hare / Elk Grove Village, Schaumburg, and Naperville, these markets have the ingredients. The work of landlords, architects, and brokers is to translate that structural advantage into spaces that knowledge workers actually want to inhabit.
That work starts with understanding what knowledge work demands. Not just how much space but what kind?