A couple of recent trips to Germany (Munich and Stuttgart) made me think about airports and how they create very diverse experiences for travellers. Obviously, each airport is unique in its size, location and its spatial configuration. However, it struck me how conceptually different airports are. How you experience an airport certainly depends on your own…
A tweet in my timeline yesterday made me think about the relationship between buildings and their effects and implications, or in short: what buildings do and don’t do. Here is the original statement: Chinese game company’s HQ – beautiful + encourages serendipitous interactions = awesome wired.com/design/2013/01… — Ben Waber (@bwaber) March 17, 2013 Now, there…
I recently stumbled upon a series of photographs I took last summer, on a gloriously sunny day, visiting the Serpentine Pavilion 2012 in London, which was constructed by the architects Herzog de Meuron and the artist Ai Weiwei. It was nice to be reminded of summer in the current winter gloom, but I was also…
A recently published research paper on ‘A holistic multi-level analysis identifying the impact of classroom design on pupils’ learning’, written by Professor Peter Barrett and his team at Salford University has created quite a stir in mainstream media and received lots of attention. Among other outlets, it featured prominently in the Guardian, on dezeen, Wired…
How healthcare can be delivered differently and how hospital buildings can play a crucial role in this has been subject of two earlier blog posts discussing aspects of flexible working in a hospital setting and the patient – caregiver interface. In this final and third post (for the time being at least…) covering Orbis Medical Centre in Sittard…
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…
Several months after the opening of the new concourse of Kings Cross Station, now that the initial hype is over, I’ve finally had the chance to go and have a closer look at how the new station works. Designed by John McAslan and Partners and engineered by Arup, the new station was mostly praised for…
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…
spaceandorganisation 