A new question for the office: what needs to happen here?
Start with activities and relationships before jumping to square footage.
Begin with the activity
An office is a setting for work. If the work changes, it makes sense to revisit what that setting should support. But an announcement about AI adoption is not, by itself, a brief for a smaller office or a different seating plan. There are several steps between a new tool and a real estate decision.
A chain of questions
First, what tasks are changing? Next, how does that affect collaboration, concentration, learning, and decision-making? Then, where are those activities best supported? Only after that should we ask about the mix, location, and amount of space. Every link in the chain needs evidence.
Several futures can be plausible
A team might need more time together to review complex output. Another might become more distributed because information is easier to access. A third might see little change in how it uses the workplace. These are competing hypotheses. Treating them as scenarios can be more useful than choosing one confident prediction.
Watch behavior, not only intentions
A policy tells us what an organization wants to happen. Interviews, workflow observations, and appropriately collected occupancy information can help reveal what does happen. None of those sources is complete on its own. Pairing them can help separate a temporary reaction from an enduring change.
Keep the decisions proportionate
A short experiment can inform a reversible change to a team setting. A long lease or a major construction project deserves stronger evidence and a range of assumptions. The goal is a workplace that can adapt as we learn, with the confidence in a decision matched to the confidence in the evidence.