This magazine is one of four print issues of Vitra’s e-magazine, which were published digitally in the summer of 2020. The magazines are the concept of Vitra CEO Nora Fehlbaum and contain suggestions for new ways of designing offices and domestic interiors in light of the health concerns brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Claiming that the pandemic has ‘fundamentally altered the way we work’, each issue focuses on a different aspect of the changing workplace. Working between disciplines, Vitra leveraged their network of scientists and designers to help inform their design decisions based on empirical evidence from research in public and personal health. Collectively, all four issues contain valuable information on workplace design and serve as a bellwether to the lasting changes in work in a post-pandemic society. 

Issue 01, ‘The Road Back to the Office’, covers both temporary and long-term solutions to offices. Comparing the change to that of airport security following 9/11, Vitra notes increased hygiene standards, contactless zones and team-specific environments as structural changes in the workplace that are likely to remain permanent. In addition to these long-term solutions, Vitra also has measures that can be quickly implemented to make an office ‘corona-safe’ including one-way transit systems, decreasing office density to ensure social distancing, the use of dividers and screens and having teams work in shifts. Open-plan layouts are shown before and after, with examples including Vitra’s Joyn and Tyde products as model workstations. The issue also includes an essay by Alice Rawsthorn on the evolution of the home office and comments on working from home by designer Jonathan Olivares.