History of Office Design in Ontario: From Paper Desks to AI-Ready Workplaces
When Sensyst started in 1977, an "office design project" in Ontario looked very different from what we do today.
Workplaces were optimized around paper and hierarchy. Filing rooms ate up valuable square footage. Managers sat behind closed doors. Drafting tables, typewriters, and massive equipment rooms filled the centre of the floorplate. The job was simple: fit people, storage, and furniture into a predictable layout and keep everyone close to their files.
Fast-forward almost fifty years, and we're talking about something completely different:
Hybrid offices, workplace strategy, AI-driven space planning, and flexible layouts that can survive multiple versions of a business.
Sensyst has lived through every stage of that shift. Here's how Ontario's offices got from there to here—and what the next decade will likely bring.
1. 1977–Early 80s: Paper, Partitions and "Business as Usual"
Our earliest projects were for companies that lived and died by the filing cabinet.
You'd see:
- endless rows of lateral files
- private perimeter offices for executives
- clerical staff packed into the core
- dedicated rooms for typewriters, copiers, and mainframes
"Flow" meant walking a stack of documents from one department to another. Collaboration was an impromptu conversation at someone's desk. Comfort and culture were secondary to storage and status.
Looking back, those offices did one thing very well: they accurately reflected how work was done at the time. Everything revolved around paper and proximity.
2. Mid-80s: The Personal Computer Sneaks In
Then the PC arrived on desks across Ontario, and the floorplan started to buckle.
Suddenly offices needed:
- deeper work surfaces for bulky monitors
- more outlets and power distribution
- secure spaces for servers and IT equipment
- less filing, more technology
Companies came to us for what we'd now call office space planning, even if they didn't use that term yet. The question shifted from "How many people can we seat?" to "How do we support all this new technology without rebuilding the whole office?"
For the first time, the office wasn't just a container for work. The office was now significantly influenced by technology.
3. 1990s: Ontario Discovers the Cubicle
By the mid-90s, a lot of our drawings featured the same thing: rows and rows of systems furniture.
Cubicles took off because they solved several problems at once:
- Employees got modest privacy
- IT teams could standardize power and data across an entire floor
- Office space planning became modular and repeatable
- Workplace density went up without feeling completely chaotic
Banks in the Financial District, insurance companies in Mississauga, engineering firms in Kitchener, global tech companies in Waterloo—all leaned into the cubicle grid. It wasn't glamorous, but it matched the work: individual, screen-based, and task-heavy.
From a design standpoint, it gave us a lot of control over how departments grew and shifted. From a human perspective, it didn't do much for culture—but that conversation was still a few years away.
4. 2000s: Email, Internet and the First "Open" Offices
As email, intranets, and faster internet became standard, work in Ontario got more connected and less confined.
Teams didn't need as much storage. Leaders didn't need a door to be reachable. Younger companies started questioning why offices had to feel so formal.
We began to:
- Shrink private offices
- Pull managers out onto the floor
- Add cafés, lounges, and training rooms
- Design larger collaborative team zones instead of just individual stations
The open office trend arrived—not because everyone suddenly loved noise, but because collaboration and speed became more important. Done well, it created energy and broke down silos. Done poorly, it created distraction and frustration.
Either way, the office had officially become more than a place to "do tasks." It was now a social and collaborative environment.
5. 2010s: Activity-Based Working and the Flexible Floorplate
Once smartphones and cloud tools became ubiquitous, the traditional "one person, one desk" model became obsolete.
We saw more clients ask for:
- quiet rooms for heads-down work
- small project rooms instead of oversized boardrooms
- touchdown spaces for staff who were in and out
- soft seating, benching, and informal collaboration areas
- wellness rooms and quiet retreats
This was the rise of Activity-Based Working (ABW) in Ontario. Rather than assigning seats, we designed choice into the floor plan.
At Sensyst, our work shifted from simply arranging departments to orchestrating different types of spaces, allowing staff to select what they needed throughout the day. Offices began to look less like grids and cubicles and more like working ecosystems.
6. 2020–2023: Hybrid Work Forces a Hard Reset
Then the pandemic hit, and the office disappeared overnight.
When teams started coming back, they didn't return the same way. Two or three days a week became the norm. People came in for meetings, collaboration, and connection—not to quietly answer emails.
Almost every Ontario client we spoke with had the same issues:
- Some days, the office felt empty
- Other days, meeting rooms are packed!
- Video calls were happening from rooms not designed for hybrid
- large areas of the floorplate no longer had a clear job
For the first time, companies stopped planning space based on headcount and started talking about purpose:
- Where does collaboration actually happen best?
- What does onboarding look like now?
- How do we maintain our culture when not everyone is on-site?
- How much space do we really need—and what should it be doing?
Hybrid wasn't just a scheduling change. It was a fundamental reset of how office design in Ontario needed to work.
7. Today: AI and the Rise of the "Thinking" Workplace
Now we're heading into the next significant shift: AI.
We're not talking about robots in boardrooms. We're talking about fundamental, practical changes to how we plan and support work:
- AI tools that help us study meeting behaviour, occupancy patterns, and how different teams actually use the office
- More innovative ways to model test fits and scenarios before a client commits to a layout
- Better hybrid rooms where lighting, cameras, and audio adapt to the meeting in real time
- Digital collaboration tools that reduce the gap between people in the room and people on screen
As AI takes on repetitive knowledge work, the human side of work—strategy, creativity, problem-solving—becomes more valuable. That means more demand for:
- Focus rooms with acoustic privacy
- Project spaces where teams can live with a problem for weeks
- environments that support deep concentration as much as quick collaboration
In other words, the workplace has to be smarter—not just prettier.
Where Ontario Offices Go From Here
After almost five decades of designing workplaces across the province, a few things are clear to us:
- Office design in Ontario has always followed the work.
- Every major technology shift—the PC, the internet, mobile devices, now AI—has changed how space needs to perform.
- The best workplaces aren't the trendiest; they're the ones built to evolve and adapt.
By 2035, offices will not disappear. If anything, they'll matter more—just in a different way. We expect to see:
- Smaller but higher-performing footprints
- More modular layouts that can be modified without major construction
- Deeper integration between technology, culture, and space
- Workplaces are measured less by square footage and more by how well they support people's best work
Sensyst has been part of this story since 1977, and the through-line hasn't changed:
Design the office around the work, give it room to adapt, and ensure the space continues to earn its keep as the business evolves.