In this post, Julie Zook and I sit down to discuss some key headlines of our recent co-edited book, The Covert Life of Hospital Architecture, which was published open access with UCL Press on 22 March 22. Health as social, hospitals as social We conceived The Covert Life of Hospital Architecture in late 2019, just…
This blog post was born out of serendipity. Which is only fitting, since it also covers the idea of serendipity. It all started with a typical day in my life as an academic: I did about ten different things at the same time and two of them suddenly created an unexpected connection in my mind;…
In this fourth instalment of my blog series ‘Five Things You Might Not Know About Offices’ I want to look at common layout choices and the consequences these choices have. A very popular myth in office design asserts that an open-plan office accommodation is preferable because it increases communication among colleagues in contrast to a…
This week’s blog post of the series ‘Five Things You Might Not Know About Offices‘ will look a bit closer at the activities of people in offices; more specifically, it will focus on movement. There isn’t really a myth to be dispelled this time, I rather want us to take a fresh look at how…
While last week’s post “The Office Is Not Dead” established that we still need the physicality of a shared workplace in order to create awareness, co-presence, encounter and identity among employees, this week’s second blog post in the series 5 Things You Might Not Know About Offices will focus on patterns of communication. The myth…
Myths and common preconceptions about offices and workplaces abound. We are almost constantly bombarded with supposedly new ideas about management, workplace design, workplace trends and the general debate on the ‘future of the office’. Quite often it is merely terminology that is reinvented (‘Agile Working’), attempting to add a new sparkle to old (and possibly…
Last week saw the opening of the newly refurbished Tate Britain, which was much acclaimed by art and architecture lovers alike. The Millbank riverside main entrance was re-opened and the central entrance space underneath the rotunda was transformed by Caruso St John Architects into a stunning three-storey space connecting the lower ground floor via a spiral…
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…
Commuting via public transport in London can be an unpleasant experience: overcrowded trains, bad-tempered fellow commuters, stuffy air – not to mention all hell breaking loose when trains get delayed (for whatever reason). So how does the daily commute feel when you are in special circumstances? To make life easier for pregnant women, Transport for…
Latest figures from a large survey of workplaces (the so called Leesman Index) suggest that tea, coffee and refreshment facilities are important to 91% of employees. This sparked a debate on Twitter among some of the workplace consultancy community and made me think again of one of the workplaces I studied in depth for my…
spaceandorganisation 