Why the office lobby is becoming the new town square
As buildings compete for tenants who no longer have to show up, ground floors are being redesigned as genuinely public rooms. The commercial logic is stronger than the civic one.
Words Sofia Bergman 20 Aug 2026 9 min read
Photography courtesy of the studio
The corporate lobby was designed to filter: marble to impress, turnstiles to exclude, a desk to interrogate. That model assumed workers had no choice but to pass through it five days a week. They now have a choice, and landlords have noticed.
Across new commercial stock in London, Amsterdam and Toronto, ground floors are being reprogrammed as semi-public territory — cafés without tenant discounts, libraries anyone can sit in, auditoria lent free to local groups on weeknights. The turnstiles retreat to the lift core, out of sight of the street.
The commercial logic is straightforward. Occupancy data shows buildings with active, public ground floors lease faster and retain tenants longer; the lobby has become the amenity that markets all the others. One Amsterdam agent describes the shift bluntly: 'Ten years ago we sold the view from the top floor. Now we sell the street.'
‘Ten years ago we sold the view from the top floor. Now we sell the street.’
There are honest questions about how public these spaces really are — security still profiles, programming still curates a certain crowd, and the espresso is priced as a filter of its own. A town square owned by a pension fund is not a town square.
But the direction of travel matters. For half a century, office buildings extracted value from their cities while sealing themselves off. If competition for reluctant commuters forces them to give their ground floors back, remote work will have accomplished a piece of urban repair that planning policy never managed.