A consulting firm spent 18 months designing the perfect workspace. Six months after move-in, they tore it out. That one moment launched Adam Morgan on a mission to rethink everything about how offices get built — and why most of them are still getting it wrong.
Adam is co-founder of Bureau, a company that designs and builds soundproof booths for modern workplaces. But his perspective goes far beyond the product. Coming from a finance background, Adam thinks about the office as a performance system — and the data he’s seeing tells a clear story: focus spaces are running at 56–57% utilization while open collaborative areas sit at 25–30%. Workers aren’t broken. The spaces are.
In this conversation, Bob and Adam dig into:
- Why the open office was built for a way of working that no longer exists
- What CO2 levels are quietly doing to your afternoon productivity
- How AI companies are reshaping office demand — and what the rush to spec suites signals
- Return-to-office mandates: what actually works, and what quietly backfires
- The real reason people come to the office (hint: it’s not the ping pong table)
Credits:
- Created & Directed By Bob Fox
- Produced By Work Design Studios
