In an earlier post I have already described how a hospital in the Netherlands is attempting to revolutionising healthcare (by organising – among other things – a flexible working environment that actually works). In this post I want to elaborate on a different aspect of the hospital design of Orbis and investigate how the spatial…
I’ve recently had the pleasure to visit a hospital in The Netherlands on a research trip and was very impressed with the ways in which the Orbis Medical Centre in Sittard was organised – spatially as well as culturally. Orbis clearly aims at doing things differently in Healthcare and as such can teach us a…
I have recently thought a lot about evidence-based design and wanted to share some of these thoughts here. Doing things in an evidence-based way means systematically considering results from rigorous research when taking decisions in any professional practice: medicine, design, management, HR, education, policy and governance. It is meant to improve outcomes: better treatments and…
I cannot remember when it was or in which context exactly. But some time ago, somewhere, somehow, someone mentioned to me how odd it is that architecture is always photographed and presented under certain conditions: 1) perfect weather, i.e. blue skies, or alternatively: 2) at night or dawn, 3) no trace of usage, 4) no…
On twitter (thanks, Colin!) I recently stumbled upon a wonderful video produced by ARTE, in which the German designer Erik Spiekermann sketches his ideal office. It is fantastic to see someone sketch their ideas live (and funny as well to see Spiekermann struggle to draw a cool looking espresso machine – he later admits it…
I still clearly remember how odd I found the typical British lunchtime routines, when I first moved to London a few years ago. On my first day at work I joined my colleagues out of the office at lunch, only to find they just went across the road to the local Tesco supermarket to buy…
Schools are interesting as a building type for a variety of reasons: they have a clear function, i.e. accommodating children and organising teaching and learning; there are clear temporal patterns in usage and stark differences between classroom activities and the times before, after and in between; and the interface of schools is complex, too, in…
Like hundreds of other Londoners, I was curious to see the insides of The Bank of England at this year’s London Open House. And like hundreds of others, I thought it would be a good idea to come early to avoid the historic queues. Well, arriving a mere 7 minutes after official opening on Saturday wasn’t…
The idea of the coffee house as the place to be if you want to get good work done is not new. In his informative TED talk, Steven Johnson highlights the role of the coffee house in the era of enlightenment: a place for people to meet, engage in discussions, think, read and write. Ideas…
Or: Why Architectural Research is Still So Difficult. One of the beautiful aspects of being involved in inter-disciplinary research is that you are a member of different and sometimes quite distinct research communities, each with their own practices, policies, cultures and behaviours. It means being exposed to different ways of doing things, and this can…
spaceandorganisation 