BCO Conference 2026 insights: Not every building needs to be a monument. Churches, yes. Schools and universities, sometimes. But offices? Offices just need to serve a purpose. A successful workplace is one filled with productive people who are happy to be there. Everything else is just detail.

“How well an office supports human interaction should be the measure of its success,” said Bennetts Associates’ James Nelmes. “We should not be judging these buildings on aesthetics first and foremost.”

“If we all agree with the sentiment that success stems from the quality of life these buildings enable rather than the object itself, why do we put so much emphasis on photography alone? Imagery can’t accurately tell us how well a building actually performs,” added Peter Kerr of Cameron Kerr.

Egotistical architecture

This, he said, is the epitome of egotistical architecture. When workspaces are designed to look good rather than feel human-centred, function often fails to follow form.

Ironically, this image-driven culture that has shaped modern architectural critique is now creating demand for exactly the opposite, however. Buildings are gradually being valued less for how they photograph and more for how they perform in reality.

“Our whole culture is becoming more superficial,” said Andrew Leiper of engineering firm Max Fordham, added that there was a growing need for recognition, celebration and validation.

But in this time of digital overload, Fordham says people are looking for spaces that help them feel connected. And the trick to designing them successfully? Check the ego at the door and focus on the end-user, rather than awards, accolades or certifications.

Certification overload?

“Is certification really that important?” queried David McGowan, director of architectural practice Corstorphine & Wright. “Who does it really serve?”

It is an often asked question that no-one can really answer. Blame for pushing certification is more easily laid at almost everyone’s doorstep, however.

Could there come a point when commercial office space no longer needs an ever-growing collection of badges to attract tenants? Perhaps. But only if everyone values buildings in the same way.

“If agents thought more about the tenants, rather than needing a stream of accreditations to make it easier to benchmark a building, that would really help,” said Kerr.

That’s not to say modern office buildings shouldn’t aspire to high standards. Sustainability, inclusivity and accessibility are fundamental to workplaces where people feel safe, comfortable and welcome.

Accessibility is fundamental

Indeed, when questions were raised about accessibility for wheelchair users and others with different needs, the answer was unanimous: the industry still has a long way to go.

Many buildings, said one audience member, have become victims of narcissistic one-upmanship as developers and architects pursue statement projects that may achieve cultural status, but won’t always serve the people who use them every day.

So how can the ordinary, but not mediocre, office building deliver the kind of authentic, human-centred design that so many occupiers are looking for?

“The vast majority of the buildings we spend our lives in are the background to our cities rather than statements,” said Nelmes.

“The challenge comes when everybody wants to stand out. What we actually need are wonderful containers and that doesn’t mean they have to be bland, just easily adapted.”

Words by Emily Wright

BCO Conference 2026 insights: With tenant experience driving occupier demand more than ever , the right facilities can make or break a building’s leasing success.

But what happens when those added extras aren’t financially viable? Can today’s office buildings command competitive rents without offering everything, including the kitchen sink?

There is little to no budget for “bells and whistles” in the regions where prime rents hover at around £50 per sq ft, said Make Architects founder Ken Shuttleworth.

“Rental values in London are four times what they are in the regions,” said Shuttleworth. “Outside the capital you have to cut your cloth and keep things simple. It’s great to have terraces in London, but further afield they add cost without necessarily adding value.”

A question of viability

Paul Curran, chief executive of Edinburgh-based Qmile Group, said the the list of challenges for regional developers around commercial viability is extensive.

“We are dealing with build costs, inflation on build costs, significant interest rates increases, issues around holding costs, prolonged planning processes, funding difficulties, valuations on buildings making them unviable despite rents increasing,” he said. “And, of course, the additional challenge of getting occupiers to commit to space.”

While rents may be higher, viability remains a much of an issue in the capital, added Helen Hare, director of projects at GPE.

“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if London’s higher rents offset increased construction costs?” she said. “Unfortunately, it is not as simple as that. Everything is relative and we have much higher land values in London and around a 50% cost increase.”

That said, when it comes to attracting occupiers, many of London’s office buildings – particularly ground-up developments – do have an elevated amenity offer on their side.

But while occupiers are irrefutably on the hunt for workspaces they can leverage as branding statements and recruitment tools, the scaled back approach to office design required for viability in the regions is not necessarily a bad thing.

Simple isn’t boring

“Everyone looks to London when it comes to office development,” said Shuttleworth, “but some of it has got a bit over the top. It’s become about who can provide the most stuff. When things are pared back, people use the environment around them; the local coffee shops and bakeries, the sandwich shop on the corner. Otherwise, you can quickly create a fortress that no one ever leaves.”

And simple buildings don’t equate to boring ones. Brand identity is a powerful tool, said Shuttleworth, adding that all of Make’s commercial office designs in the regions are fully let, not because of a raft of amenities, but because people like the feel of the building itself.

“The buildings we’ve done outside London are simple, super-efficient and have very strong identities,” he said. “One has a garden outside, one has cross-bracing, one has distinctive brickwork. The tenants have come because of these details; people want a building that reflects the values of their company.”

And there are ways of achieving this on a lower budget, added Shuttleworth, including working directly with suppliers.

“The quantity surveyor will tell you, straight up, you can’t afford one-off details,” he quipped to a ripple of laughter. “You sometimes have to prove them wrong by getting hold of the contractors and suppliers yourself.”

While the office amenity clearly race isn’t over, it does look to be entering a new phase where thoughtful design, strong identity and commercial realism carry more weight than a rooftop yoga studio.

And for regional developers, it seems that success may be less about trying to match the capital’s ever-expanding offer and more about proving that a well-designed building doesn’t need every bell and whistle to stand out.

Watch the session in full here:

Words by Emily Wright

BCO Conference 2026 insights: How do we build for an uncertain future? How do we create spaces for a society that doesn’t know what it will need from workplaces in a year, let alone a decade? How do we design for a revolution?

Three complex questions with one simple, and maddening, answer. We just don’t know yet. The good news, though, is that we can start to hazard a pretty good guess by following the money. All $5.2tr of it.

So said the University of Strathclyde’s Gillian Docherty as she challenged us to consider what might be the building that holds the most value in a city by 2040. Not the most expensive, not the tallest, either: the one that creates the greatest economic value.

The building that attracts the best talent and becomes the defining asset of its generation. And while we still might not know exactly what that building will be, or look like, we can be pretty certain what revolution it will be built to serve.

“McKinsey predicts that $5.2tr will be spent on AI processing infrastructure by 2030,” said Docherty. “Whenever humanity spends trillions of dollars on something, it doesn’t create a new market, it creates a new era,” she added.

Offices will need to earn their existence

“AI has changed the rules completely, not incrementally but fundamentally. It is changing everything and while most of our careers have been built on analysing what already exists, the most valuable building of the future probably hasn’t been built yet.”

Every technical revolution leaves behind a dominant building type. A manifestation of economic power. The industrial revolution created the factory, the rise of the corporation created the office tower, the internet created the data centre. And while the building that will go on to become the defining asset of the AI generation might not yet have emerged, that doesn’t mean the real estate sector can’t start to prepare for it. And that starts with asking the right questions.

Most conversations around AI still focus heavily on jobs. But while questions around whether AI will replace people and productivity and how and when it will automate work are important, Docherty argued that the real estate sector would be better served by focussing instead on how AI will change where value lives. “When value moves, capital moves,” she said. “And where capital moves, property, cities and infrastructure move.”

Offices will need to earn their existence more than ever as AI makes working from home increasingly productive, she said. If people are going to travel and spend £7 on a coffee to sit next to someone they could have called on the phone, the experience when people get there has to be worth it.

We will see a battle between destination and experience workplaces where average, forgettable space becomes increasingly vulnerable and workspaces that become less like factories and more like universities and laboratories thrive.

AI will increase the net worth of collaborative workspaces

The value propositions at universities and in education settings will also need to shift to make sure future generations are ready for this new era. “Revolutions like this essentially take a layer of white-collar occupations out of the system,” added political scientist Sir John Curtis.

“AI will place a premium on creativity. So, not only do universities and academic institutions have to embed AI into the curriculum, but they also have to emphasise the power of new thinking and the ability to be creative.”

It is this creativity, Docherty said, that best-designed workplaces of the future will foster. Far from sounding the death knell for the office, AI is likely to increase the worth of collaborative workplaces that are fit for modern purpose.

“We have spent years building technology that eliminates distance; railways, telephones, computers, the internet. Every one of them made cities stronger because technology repeatedly increases the value of human interaction. Talent attracts talent, ideas attract ideas and innovation attracts innovation. Build buildings that will help people perform better. That’s the value.”

Watch the session in full:

Words by Emily Wright