And now where is the office?

In the Crystal Tower, the tallest building in Spain, which housed around 4,000 office workers before the pandemic, voices and footsteps reverberate in the immense lobby. There is no one, except a worker of Latin origin who cleans the huge windows and the security employee who asks for the DNI, also of foreign origin. Not a trace of the barrage of suits, the white-collar workforce, the habitual inhabitants of this financial district of the Cuatro Torres, north of Madrid. The multinational audit and consulting firm KPMG, which occupies about half of the skyscraper's 52 floors, sent its 2,800 employees home in March. Two months later, they are planning the return. "The critical point is the elevator," says Montse de Osa, head of the department that deals with the set-up of offices in this post-coronavirus era. At the time there were traffic jams. Now the maximum capacity has been reduced from 21 to 3 people.

It is Thursday, May 14, and this 41-year-old architect, hardened in Dragados' works, is a hostess on a visit to the building. They have been preparing what they call “clean plants” for weeks, to which they will be able to return employees little by little and voluntarily. They have had a hundred requests. The first will arrive the following Monday. Before they will receive at home a bag with hydroalcoholic gel, an FFP2 mask, gloves and safety and hygiene instructions. They can only go to the skyscraper by private car or taxi. They will need to have completed a health survey for days. They will be assigned a position in one of the five "clean" plants. And they will be given an exact arrival time. A "slot" is called De Osa, as the holes for the takeoff of aircraft. In this way they believe that they will be able to save the "critical point". With the help of the ThyssenKrupp company, the capacities and transfers of the elevators have been recalculated to avoid plugs and guarantee physical separation. Some stickers on the floor indicate the point where one has to wait for the elevator, with the message: "Keep the safe distance." Inside the elevator, other footprint stickers indicate where to put it. But the button still requires finger pressure.

Ángel Fernández, a 41-year-old KPMG executive expert in digital development, works in his son's room. He says he misses the office, on the 28th floor of the Torre de Cristal in Madrid. Sofia Moro

The elevator shoots out and its doors open on the 28th floor, one of the floors already equipped, where operators touch up more stickers on the floor. They've been at it for days. They have placed hundreds. They have many others. They have also dealt with Renfe signage. "We are not short of work", they contribute with a touch of humor. On the left, when crossing the mechanical doors, the offices are displayed. You receive a garbage, in which to drop gloves and masks at the end of the day, and a large screen that loops a video with instructions for the “new normal”: “Do you know when to use the mask? (…) Wash your hands with water and soap". It also suggests a change in the dress code. Traditionally auditors came in suits. Now more informal clothing is requested, washable at home, which does not require going to the dry cleaner. Behind the screen are rows of jobs in an open space with stunning views of the ground zero of the pandemic in Spain. Your previous users' belongings have been stacked and collected. There is some lonely poster. Of each island with eight computers, at the moment they will only enable one site. In slot P28S09.1, ready for return, a card gives instructions to the newcomer: “1. This position has been assigned to you having been cleaned and disinfected. 2. Remember to use gloves and mask according to the instructions received. 3. Remember to leave the post fully collected, just as you found it upon arrival ”.

Through the large windows you can see the Madrid airport languid and lifeless. Also the interior of the adjoining skyscrapers: nobody. Montse de Osa clicks between the furniture and continues his explanation. There will always be a cleaning person on each floor. The bathrooms will be for individual use and will be cleaned every two hours. The copier area can only be visited one by one. The use of the gel will be mandatory before and after contact with the reprographic machine. The meeting rooms have been closed. The informal chat areas now sport a sign: "Space out of order." Eating in a place other than the workplace itself is prohibited, contrary to what was previously required for decorum and respect. You will not be able to freely move around the building or sit in a different place from the one assigned, so that it is possible to “map” the route and contacts of an employee who tested positive for covid-19. If there is such a positive, the entire plant could be closed, to sanitize it, and a reinforcement would be opened.

Cristina Hebrero, a KPMG executive specialized in change management, says that many companies have discovered that productivity has not fallen with teleworking. In the image, at his house on the outskirts of Madrid. Sofia Moro

One of the most complex problems will be going up to the highest floors. As none of the elevators make the complete journey from the ground floor to the 50th, the 35th floor functions as an interchange. In it, one gets off the fastest elevator in the country - 8 meters per second - and gets on another that takes it higher. "There are pitotes there ...", remembers an employee who works in the upper third. Now a circuit has been marked on the ground, a "gym" called De Osa, with arrows and directions between some elevators and others that enforces the two-meter distance. Impossible not to imagine it full of stressed people and with a mask. Sabina Domínguez, head of the cleaning service, passes through this 35th floor with a disinfectant in her hand and sprays each button that we have been touching. At the end of the day, he says, go over everything with a mixture of bleach and 50% water: "Come on, the bug is not here." Before concluding the visit, Montse de Osa adds that the idea is to return with 15% occupancy and gradually increase. Although it may never return to the previous model at all. In his opinion, "the tendency is to go towards more collaborative spaces".

"Temporary hybrid forms", is called by Jesús Silva, general director of the Cushman & Wakefield real estate agency, whose headquarters in the Salamanca neighborhood has already been renovated for the new era. Among its novelties are the bathrooms with traffic lights, the paper tablecloths to place under the keyboard (at the end of the day they are thrown away), the inlet and outlet flow circuits, and a dizzy signage on the ground that traces a perimeter of two meters around each job, a kind of bubble that marks the worker's distance from his colleagues and automatically invalidates three out of four desks. In the offices, which we visited on May 8, there is no one either: 100% have been able to go home to telework. The rest of the building houses investment banks and law firms, among others. These days a hundred workers come out of the 1,400 that used to be. The only thing that hasn't stopped working are the servers. Perhaps this is the future of buildings? Huge containers of data processing? Is there a decline in demand for offices? A shock in the market? "The buildings are going to have a different use," Silva dodges the answer. "They will adapt to the needs," adds María José Cantón, CEO of Vyosa, the company that owns the block, which already values ​​proposing "lung spaces" to tenants, to accompany growing or waning needs, according to possible outbreaks. "This goes on for a long time," he says.

Pepe García Quintana, director of corporate services at Indra, 44, is responsible for the company's information systems. He is part of the team that organized the "big bang": sending almost 30,000 employees to work home overnight. Sofia Moro

Olga Núñez, secretary of the financial company Arcano, based in the building, thinks similarly. He is at the exit winches (now contactless ) with his computer screen under his arm. He has come to pick her up. Initially, he took the laptop home. But two months later the view begins to pay for it and no one knows how long this life will continue remotely.

A detail of Indra's empty headquarters in Alcobendas (Madrid), as it was left when 90% of the company began to telework in early March. Sofia Moro

Until March 2020, Spain was a country "allergic to teleworking," says Arturo Lahera Sánchez, full professor of Ergonomics and Sociology of Work at the Complutense University of Madrid. "In our organizational culture it was not well regarded because it was a loss of control." Only 4.8% of people teleworked in 2019, according to the INE; below the European average (5.3%) and far from countries such as Luxembourg (11.6%) and Finland (14.1%). The forced confinement has blown the numbers up: about 34%, a third of the Spanish workforce, have been teleworking on average throughout March and April, according to the study The impulse of telework during COVID -19 , from the Valencian Institute for Economic Research. "It was an experiment," says José María Peiró, professor of Social Psychology at the University of Valencia and co-author of the report. "But we have done it in an improvised, unexpected and unplanned way." It has helped keep the job, right. And it has avoided contagions and facilitated the care of children without school in an extraordinary situation. But the step has been taken without the tools, the training, or the adequate spaces. The situation generates stress, breaks time; The functions, hours, objectives, the limit of work and the beginning of private life are unclear; It opens gaps between those who have children or older dependents, household employees, a good chair, better Internet connection, a big screen or simply a room with views and well ventilated. "The next step," he concludes, "will be to see what we can learn from this situation."

Silviano Andreu, 58, runs the consulting business of Minsait, Indra's information technology subsidiary. He has only returned to the office once (in the image above, Alcobendas headquarters, Madrid) to get his old Casio calculator. Minsait has developed an 'app' to track infections on the way back to the offices, a kind of health passport. Sofia Moro

Helena Salvadó, a 39-year-old architect, a partner at the Batlle i Roig studio, says that these days of forced confinement have made her see that she was leading a life “very busy”. "My children have never spent so much time with their two parents at the same time," he says from the office that he has improvised in the study room of the oldest of them. He also believes that offices, such as low cost flights , were going too high "densities" in that search for profitability. "From one person for every 10 square meters it had been changed to one for every 6". He believes that the "new normal" will not be telematic or face-to-face, but a mixture of both. And that somehow the baggage of these days will provide wisdom to alleviate the "climate emergency". Although the contact, he believes, is irreplaceable: "The grace of going to the office is talking to the team and sharing things."

She returned to her workplace for the first time in mid-May. He coincided with a handful of colleagues whom he had not seen in person for two months. But, due to videoconferencing, the feeling was paradoxical: "It was as if we had seen each other yesterday." The Batlle i Roig studio, which employs 115 people, is based in an elegant concrete building projected by themselves at the foot of the Collserola mountain range (Barcelona). During this time, only three people have been coming to the headquarters, among them Joan Roig, one of the founders, 65, who lives alone, nearby, and has thus alleviated the weight of confinement. "It's better than being at home," he says. Accustomed to walking among the team in the previous era, these days with the solo studio Roig followed the dance of the screens, guided by remote employees: “It is magical. An office in motion but with no one. It reminded me of pianolas ”.

Helena Salvadó, partner at the Batlle i Roig studio, 39 years old. These days of teleworking have made him realize that perhaps he was leading a "very busy" life. In the image, working in the living room of his house, with his children. Caterina Barjau

The empty headquarters of the architecture studio Batlle i Roig in Esplugues de Llobregat (Barcelona). Caterina Barjau

Enric Batlle, the other founding partner, explains that the return will be "voluntary" and will take into account the personal situation: if one is apprehensive or in charge, let's say. Batlle, 63, is a survivor of the coronavirus. He went through the hospital, ICU included, and says that the disease has given him "another perspective." He believes we will go to a world with fewer two-hour dating trips in another city, another country, another continent. But he does appreciate that talent comes together under one roof. "We are still old, but I think contact is important." The pandemic, he adds, will accelerate trends that already existed, such as free sitting and “healthy” spaces with natural furniture and ventilation.

Joan Roig, co-founder of the architecture studio Batlle i Roig, is 65 years old and has continued to go to the office on a regular basis during the pandemic. Caterina Barjau

An empty office produces a strange feeling of suspended time. At Indra's headquarters in Alcobendas (Madrid), strolling among modern white tables, we discovered a calendar with the days crossed out until March 8, a bag of half-sized chocolate pearls, an entry in an agenda: “Map Barna Expenses ”, A plane ticket to Bilbao for March 10 that perhaps nobody took. But someone has been turning the pages of the page calendars on some desks. The date is up to date. A mystery. In the hallway, cut out against the light, the María del Amo mop from the cleaning team passes by. "It was my harvest," he says. "It was to update it, it seems that this is desolate."

On March 11, with the state of alarm on the doorstep, the Spanish technology and security multinational began sending employees home. Within 48 hours, 90% of the 30,000 wage earners in the country were teleworking. The “big bang” is called by Pepe García Quintana, a 44-year-old engineer, responsible for Indra's information systems. "There were complicated moments," he says in a video conference from his home, to which he connects with the PlayStation headphones. “But we have not had any critical incidence. It has been a success". They distributed some 6,000 laptops to those who did not yet have them. And the change was immediately noticeable. Landline to landline calls fell more than 50% globally between January and March. Video calls grew 100%. Part of the secret for the system to have endured lies in what García Quintana calls the “great bug”: a data processing center that occupies 1,600 square meters of technical flooring, has a storage capacity of about 20 petabytes and maintains up to 192 million simultaneous sessions.

Enrique Gato, a 43-year-old filmmaker, has gone from directing the movie 'Tadeo Jones 3' from animation studios to doing it from his basement (pictured). "We have made it work," he says, "but it is not the same." Sofia Moro

The return, says the engineer, "will be progressive de-escalation." They will launch their own application, a kind of health passport whose algorithm will take into account health variables and contacts with humans, spaces and objects to prevent infections. It will also tell you where to sit when you go to the office. At the moment, at the Alcobendas headquarters, the receptionist receives the few visitors after a bottle of hydroalcoholic gel and extends to the newcomer a questionnaire with questions about his health in the last 14 days: fever ?, cough ?, pain muscular?

Marta Segurola, animation director of 'Tadeo Jones 3' during a video call with part of the film team. Sofia Moro

Nico Matji, a 45-year-old film producer and co-founder of the animation studio Lightbox, from which the Tadeo Jones films have come out, says that he misses "so much spontaneity", when suddenly someone shouted "How good this!" and a circle formed around it. "That illusion, that energy shows in a movie," adds an 800-square-meter plant full of computers in the gloom of the studio. The first thing he asked when he arrived was: "How are we going to get dust?" In the room there is only the computer, who has been dropped to replace hard drives and improve the speed of data transfer. In an animation tape, which advances to five seconds of footage per animator per week, every thousandth counts. The padded sound of fans is heard cooling the render farm . The state of alarm caught them with the pre-production of Tadeo Jones 3. The curse of the mummy. They are one of the few survivors of the cultural industry. "In the animation industry," says Matji, "we can weather it better than anyone."

Marta Segurola is the animation director of 'Tadeo Jones 3'. He is 43 years old, works from the living room and sleeps children late to take advantage of the mornings. Sofia Moro

These days, Enrique Gato, the creator of Tadeo, a 43-year-old from Madrid, is directing the film from what his wife calls “el zulo”, a basement of his chalet in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), where his table and computer enter with double monitor, his musical instruments, a screen to project movies (and play the game console with his son), two Goya awards, another good number of awards and countless dolls. "My life today is doing meetings at Hangouts," says Gato. On Mondays he meets with the supervisors of each department. And almost the rest of the week is spent with individual dates. "We have managed to make it work," he explains. "But seeing through a screen is not the same as being under the same roof with an artistic team."

One morning we are allowed to attend one of your virtual meetings. More than 10 faces appear on the screen. Gato is giving the word to each participant. They speak in an incomprehensible language of "tools", "nodes", "props" and "rigs". One says, "I need textures for facials." Another's son appears from behind. They argue about Tadeo's hat and finally someone asks: "Do you know when we are going to return to the office?" The producer Matji replies: “At the very least the alarm state should overcome, you have already seen the recommendations to remain confined. I think at the end of June we can start thinking about how we are going back. ” Matji believes that the best date to return will be September. Although half jokingly, he adds: "We still have to finish the film remotely." A colleague then confesses: "I am suspiciously well at home." Gato, the director, closes the videoconference: "We are still working hard."

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