Design dialogues about space and work

Abstract

Workplace Architecture and workplace design no longer follows fixed templates for good or effective work. Today, companies use architecture and design to show how they are special both in what they deliver and in the way they work. This development has provided an increased attention to the concrete everyday work practices, as it is expressed through for instance User Surveys, but employee involvement focusing on the interaction between space and work, is still not very common in building projects. Based on a concrete case, the first part of the article discusses how such involvement can be strengthened through the establishment of so-called Design Dialogues stemming from a participatory mapping of the employees existing work practices. We conclude that through the Design Dialogues the employees appropriate the future workplace as a resource that can support a work in change, even though the Design Dialogues in the concrete case only to a limited extent affect the construction process and the result. In the second part of the article, we raise the question, of how Design Dialogues about space and work may have greater significance for the actual building project. In a study of a technical development center created based on a comprehensive user dialogue, we find that the Design Dialogues between design professionals and employees has led to new and more workplace related typologies for space and interior design. At the same time, the study shows that there was only limited opportunity for employees to work with the spaces, after they occupied them. Based on a series of workshops with project engineers and architects, we propose that Design Dialogues that involve both employees and designers are not limited to the construction project. Instead they should be open towards a workplace architecture and design that to a much greater extent than today is based on co-production and rethinks the spaces of the workplace as shapeable and constantly changing.