FIRST DRAFT LIVE: Deconstructing The Modern Office With Industrious Co-Founder Jamie Hodari
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This Halloween, the commercial real estate industry is being haunted by the ghost of the prepandemic office market. While U.S. vacancy has finally ticked down for the first time since 2019, attendance remains stalled around 45%, and new construction has plunged from nearly 50M SF to just 6M SF.
That doesn’t mean office is meant for the graveyard, however, just that it’s time to redefine the asset class and shift focus to what’s most important for today’s tenants.
To find out what that might look like, Bisnow Editor-in-Chief Mark Bonner sat down with Industrious co-founder and CBRE Building Operations and Experience CEO Jamie Hodari on this week’s First Draft Live. They discussed the changing design landscape of the modern office, productivity both in and out of the workplace, and what defines a successful office in 2025.
"At a philosophical level, the offices that work right now are democratic," Hodari said. "They're not built in a coercive, top-down, 'what's going to impress the CFO or what's convenient for the CEO?' way. They're built from the point of view of 'what does the deputy head of performance of marketing want when they walk in the door?'"
He said that employees are less focused on square footage or design and more on the office experience: lectures at lunch, good food, music and conversations that they couldn't have at home.
Hodari said he determines the success of an office space based on whether people have their heads up and are talking to each other.
"If people are interacting with each other, if people are learning from each other, I don't care what the lighting is," he said. "I don't care if the windows are 13 feet or 10 feet or whatever — that's a commute-worthy office."
View the full conversation here:
