Picture yourself living in the manicured, walkable suburbs of Bethesda, Maryland. You work full-time at a multinational corporation, but your two children and two dogs require seemingly constant attention. Pandemic lockdown was tough, but it forced you to pull together a home office that now fits like a glove.

Sure, it’s frustrating to be interrupted by your sick 3-year-old when you’re pitching a bold new idea to VPs. But life is better when you can be more accessible to your children, make lunch at home, and take the dogs for a walk around noon.

And yet … sometimes you catch yourself dreaming of a few hours of deep-focus time. You really do need a haircut and to hit the gym more often. And it would be nice to have some more casual time with your boss not via scheduled Zoom call. But going to the office isn’t worth the time and hassle of driving and arranging childcare, and no one can have it all. Or can they?

If your fictional suburban avatar works for Marriott International, then the solution to their problems may in fact be to spend more time at the office. The company opened a new 785,000-square-foot headquarters in downtown Bethesda late last year that was designed to compete—and win—against the allure of work-from-home. The first floor has a public plaza and coffee shop, the second a dining hall with outdoor seating, and the third a gym and childcare center. A doggy daycare and a spa sit just blocks from the building. You can eat, exercise, shower, and meet with your manager all in a space that feels more like a hotel rather than an office. 

Marriott’s headquarters, constructed almost entirely during the pandemic, was designed by Gensler, one of the world’s largest architecture and design firms. Gensler helped define the cutting edge of what the office used to be, through projects with clients including Adobe, NVIDIA, and Airbnb. Now that it has become clear that many workers prefer home over the offices of 2019, Gensler and Marriott are among a swathe of companies attempting to launch a new concept of the office that can prosper in the WFH Covid era.

What does this new version of the office look like? A kaleidoscope of hotel, spa, restaurant, library, and home. “During the pandemic, when all of a sudden we’re all sitting at our dining room tables, Marriott didn’t blink. They said, ‘You know what, we agree with the strategy that an amenity-rich environment is going to draw people back to work,’” Jordan Goldstein, an architect and managing principal for Gensler, tells WIRED.