Schiavello Systems' Arron Durham peers into the future for CityMag and reveals how our city will work and what our workplaces will look like in 2040.

By 2040 the definition of the office space will be redefined dramatically. No longer will the office space be fundamentally outlined by four walls, rather it will be underlined by the addition of the digital dimension.

This digital dimension, emerging before us now, will equip us to be further apart from one another but closer together at the same time. People will literally be able to be in two places at once; working in one location and interacting with another place as if they were there as well. Working from home will increase, however communal work villages, in close proximity to people’s residences, will serve as the so called third space for people to engage during their working hours. These villages may not be owned by the employees, but rather akin to flight lounges, where friends come together to travel less and socialise more; trader alongside Government official next to Insurance salesman beside University lecturer.

Our tendency to blur working hours with home life will continue as business opportunities require immediate responses. Biometrically, our time spent thinking about issues pertaining to work will be better understood. Employers will seek to acknowledge this and compensate accordingly. Employees will, in turn, be allowed to bring their home lives deeper into their work lives, and integration of domesticity into the work environment will continue.

Fashionable soft spaces will replace hard commercial finishes and environmental biosphere simulations will start to prevail in recognition of the desire for the human to interact with nature. Of course, the underlying business case will be deeper than the care for state of mind. Business will understand that retention of the best minds, of those imbued with ingenuity and perception, will not come at the cost of a salary only but at the cost of the quality of the experience that they can sell to the employee for the hours that they buy their time. The right professional employees will not be buying a job but rather selling their time in exchange for what they value to be the best experience that businesses can offer.

Technology will no longer require us to relate with screens, but rather projections of 3D dimensional images. Desks with screens will be a thing of the past and our engagement will begin with intelligent surfaces in the horizontal. We will cease to have to learn to interface with software as the software will have already configured with us in an instant. Leads will have left the workspace and power will be transferred by induction. Office furniture will be liberated and floorplans will organise to suit business needs in real time.

People will swarm and conquer business challenges like ants over a carcase. A new world order!