What will the commercial office building of the future look like? To answer that question, we can focus on cutting-edge cladding systems or an updated core layout, but we shouldn’t overlook the possibility that the office building of the future might not be a new building at all.

Mobility, advances in technology, and an ever-more global workforce have dramatically changed the way workers inhabit workspaces. Some estimates place office-space levels in 2015 at 30 percent of what they were in 1970. This means that we won’t need more office buildings in the future, but we will need to “hack” the ones that already exist if these spaces are to better meet the needs of future workers.

 …