A common pin-up and dining area is the hub of Perkins&Will’s Toronto office.
This summer, Canadian Architect?s owner made the decision to give up the magazine?s physical office space. It follows a precedent set by many other magazines and accelerated by the pandemic. Several of Canadian Architect?s staff worked partially from home pre-pandemic; with the complete transition to WFH over the past year and a half, the publication has continued to come out with few changes to how it?s produced.
The magazine business is a perfect candidate for a permanent remote-work model. Canadian Architect is produced with a tight team, using established cloud-based software tools?Adobe Suite, Office Suite, Dropbox. Production is digital from beginning to end: long gone are the days when we?d annotate physical photos with wax crayon crop marks, and courier packages to the printer?s for final typesetting. Each issue of the magazine is different, but also the same: it has consistent deliverables, a regular production timeline, and predictable interactions between team members. Architecture is more complex?with larger teams, fluid team structures, and a complex mosaic of deadlines. Moreover, architects have an acute awareness of how shared space affects communications and working dynamics.
Many smaller offices have taken a flexible approach to returning to the office, based on individual staff needs and preferences. Christine Leu is a founder of LeuWebb Projects, a husband-and-wife prac...