Workplace design – with ethnographic methods and employee

Abstract

To design new office environments that work is not only a design challenge. It is to at large extend also a matter of devel- oping organizations and creating new perspectives of the relation between work and office space. In this article we want to explore how we can use ethnographic methods and employee involvement in a process for the design of workspaces. This includes processes that provide architects with input for the design of better office spaces, processes that provide the organisations with a new foundation for discussions that go beyond the classical management-employee conflict about noise in open office environments and processes that give the organization a basis for developing a new conception of work and strengthening employee welfare. The purpose of this article is to present and discuss a number of methods we have developed in recent years to investigate whether it is possible to find new ways to stimulate the working environment through ethnographic observations and employee involvement. In the article we will present a set of methods that we use in our research and consultancy in organisations and show how we have applied them in our collaboration with three different organisations.