Yikes – nearly one-quarter of all U.S. office space could be vacant in a scant year, according to a recent Moody’s report. Meanwhile, a Forbes article pegs 20% of the American labor force as working remotely in 2024, and that’s expected to increase slightly in 2025. But office vacancies could peak in early 2026, as Moody’s recent compilation of studies and surveys concludes. Will more people hit the freeways and subways and fill up the skyscrapers in the cities and the buildings in the ’burbs?
Almost five years since the pandemic began – and subsequent stay-at-home directives supercharged the work-from-home trend – these remain perplexing times when planning an office move, space increase or reduction. What’s a company to do? Sit tight on a bunch of unused real estate and bank on growing back into a space, or shrink the footprint now and shift to a larger office if the need arises?
NELSON Worldwide helped the Chicago-based National Futures Association (NFA) solve this problem with a unique third option: move to a smaller space but design and outfit it in such a way that – if more employees decided to return to onsite work or as the organization grew – the space and furnishings would flex to accommodate. This option also presented the NFA with an opportunity to create an environment commute-worthy to even the most home-bodied of employees.
The process began during the height of the COVID lockdowns in 2020 and was completed mid-2023. Let’s look at how NELSON helped the NFA get ahead of the office downsizing trend and embrace a smaller but more agile workplace.
Into the Fold
Founded in 1981, the nonprofit NFA is the self-regulatory body of the U.S. derivatives industry. For a super-simple visual of what the industry does, picture the scene in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (don’t even tell me you haven’t seen it!) when Ferris and his friends visit the bustling Chicago Board of Trade. The people “in the pit” are dealing in derivatives and futures trading. Of course, nowadays, much of the industry’s work is online, electronic.
To support and regulate these traders and their firms, the NFA employs compliance examiners, analysts and information systems specialists. Since 2007, they’d been headquartered in Chicago’s West Loop near Union Station. The pandemic accelerated their already-changing work patterns and needs and presented a unique opportunity for the rather lowkey 40-year-old organization to make a fresh, forward-looking statement.
The NFA engaged NELSON for the multi-year project. Spearheaded by Regional Design Leader Kristin Cerutti and Design Project Manager Andrea Brandt, the NELSON team put meticulous research and planning at the core of the transformational process.
A series of workplace strategy sessions with the NFA and their commercial real estate firm CBRE aided in understanding the NFA and its people, and in assessing their current and future needs.
“We had many discussions with employees and leadership about how they felt in their existing space, which hadn’t been updated in a while,” Cerutti said. “When you stepped off the elevator, the NFA name wasn’t visible in the lobby, and, once in the actual office space, the interior was vanilla. It wasn’t energizing to employees or reinforcing the organization’s mission and vision.”
Employees and leadership said they wanted their new space to speak to who NFA is, the importance of what the organization does, and visually convey innovation and how members are supported.
Additionally, conversations included what about the office inspired employees to work onsite versus from home, the amount of time spent in the office, and what new features and amenities might encourage more onsite presence and assist employees in their daily work.
“We determined assigned seating wasn’t needed for every person because a number of people still wanted to work hybrid, and the NFA wanted to continue to offer this flexibility,” Cerutti said.
To further engage employees in the decision-making process and narrow down the specific neighborhood in which to relocate, the NFA held fun scavenger hunts and tours of various parts of the city. Ultimately, everyone wanted to stay in the West Loop.
NELSON and CBRE poured over the feedback as well as the extensive data they’d collected; together, they determined that the NFA could reduce its footprint by about 26,000 square feet. Suitable properties were identified, and design options began to take shape.
One property the team considered – and a top choice among many employees – was Chicago’s nearby Old Post Office. The iconic structure had undergone an historic renovation after having sat vacant for years.
However, a brand-new 50-story building at 320 South Canal Street, literally across the street from the NFA’s existing location, proved the winner.
Outside, the property boasts the largest greenspace in the West Loop. Inside, many of the skyscraper’s floors offer sweeping views of nearby Lake Michigan, downtown and beyond. The upscale Class A building boasts the latest in health, wellness and lifestyle amenities. The NFA locked in a total of about 44,000 square feet of space on all of Floor 24 and part of Floor 23.
320 South Canal’s glass-clad exterior mirrors the city’s energy and soars with sharp, geometric shapes converging in vertical lines that draw the eyes upward – a neo-futurism aesthetic that helped inspire the design concept for NFA’s new space.
This concept, which NELSON dubbed “The Fold,” borrows from origami – the Japanese art of folding a flat sheet of paper into a three-dimensional sculpture – and the art form’s philosophy of endless possibilities. The idea of “paper” is also a nod to the NFA’s and the derivative industry’s pulp-laden past, before computers and the internet.
“The Fold emphasizes the potential for a fresh perspective to transform any space into something entirely new,” Cerutti said. “Playing with the angles of walls, ceiling and flooring elements, we created a space that helps employees and guests see different perspectives and guides them toward strategic intersection points designed for interaction.”
Let’s take the elevator up and explore how the NELSON team coalesced thousands of ideas, opinions and options into a nexus of human connection and innovation.
Into the Future
“Neo-futurism,” according to ChatGPT, “ … [pushes] the boundaries of traditional architecture and design to create structures and spaces that reflect an optimistic view of the future.”
Exiting onto Floor 24 of 320 South Canal Street, it’s like stepping into such a place and time.
A bright elevator lobby displays bold geometric shapes (like the building’s exterior), executed in white and gray tones on the doors, floors, walls and even ceiling. And then, your eyes can’t help but go to what looks like a trillion twinkling lights shimmering against a silver canopy. Backlit metal creates the effect and is meant to represent financial transactions happening in real time – it’s a metaphor for a stock ticker and a hint of things to come. This mesmerizing motif draws us into and then throughout much of the office, where it’s replicated along various ceilings in the space.
Additionally, the flooring materials, and how they’re applied, direct and guide us, leading first to the open reception area. Here, the NFA logo and mission are prominently displayed.
Directly ahead, the main executive conference room offers floor-to-ceiling views of the Chicago skyline and Lake Michigan.
In fact, nearly every space on an outer wall offers unobstructed views, allowing natural light to flood in. These are communal, collaborative areas with unassigned “plop-yourself-down” seating. A lot of the soft seating in these spaces has been oriented toward the windows for enjoyment of the incredible views, an experience not as ubiquitous at the NFA’s previous location.
NELSON designed the floorplate to accommodate a wide range of team and individual workflow needs, from home-away-from-home experiences like the above-described living-room lounge areas, to traditional meeting rooms, private offices and flex spaces.
Private offices (including the CEO’s) and assigned desks are in the inner portion of the floorplate. All private offices except the CEO’s are 10 feet by 10 feet – smaller than what’s typical in the financial-services industry, Cerutti said. NELSON designed them to be the same size as various “huddle rooms,” a strategy that offers the flexibility to swap furniture between these two kinds of spaces if needs change.
Adjacent the reception area, wide corridors lead to an expansive kitchen / coffee bar / corner-café area with tables and soft seating. Sophisticated shades of orange and blue inject energy in the white-and-gray palette. Along the café’s ceiling runs not only the “shimmering transactions” canopy but also an actual electronic ticker that provides a real-time, continuous display of market information.
On a wall in the café, employees’ photos are incorporated into the design, reinforcing the human element in this Star Trekian-looking lounge. A nearby history area honors the NFA’s contributions to the futures industry. A large training room is also nearby with moveable walls and furniture.
“We intentionally placed NFA’s main training room near the café in order to create opportunities for serendipitous encounters and to provide ample space for after-hours events,” Cerutti said.
Other corner areas of both floors occupied by the NFA were designed for flexibility in the long term. Currently, they’re soft seating and breakout areas but have been wired for the possibility of future workstations.
For the NFA’s many compliance examiners, NELSON designed special team rooms with furnishings, monitors and other technologies that flex for the situation.
“When teams come back from audits, they get together in a room to work through all the data that they’ve gathered, and sometimes they’re in those rooms for weeks. They didn’t really have a great space [for this type of work] in their last office. Now, they have the flexibility they need,” Cerutti said.
Based on employee feedback, NELSON chose an overall color scheme that reflects the seriousness of their work while stimulating the senses. Color also is used to define spaces. For example, a light green is used in the team rooms. A muted orange is applied in a smaller café area on Floor 23 and in some smaller private workspaces. Various floor, wall and ceiling materials and coverings contribute soft, complementary colors of gray, white and light wood tones. The one area where color is intentionally bold – in this case, a vivid royal blue – is in the reception corridor where a lenticular wall is the backdrop for the NFA’s mission and the words “WE ARE NFA” popping in white. It’s a powerful statement.
Into the Office
A few months after the NFA moved into its new space, the NELSON team got a call: A group of employees who had been 100 percent virtual wanted to be in the office four days a week.
“This shows that we need to design with flexibility and agility because things can change very quickly. How a space is designed really does affect people’s motivation to come in and collaborate with colleagues,” Cerutti said.
The NFA was so pleased with the results that NELSON was tapped to redesign its smaller New York City space – and wouldn’t you know, this space also has been designed to flex for the future.