This document summarizes a lecture by Dr. Kerstin Sailer on designing spaces for people. Sailer discusses how major tech companies like Samsung, Apple, Facebook, and Google are designing new headquarters campuses, and questions whether physical office space is still needed in an increasingly digital world. She cites theorists who argue that co-presence in shared physical spaces fosters awareness of others, community, and opportunities for serendipitous encounters. Sailer also analyzes how different types of spatial layouts like connected, compartmentalized, cellular and open-plan shapes social relationships and interactions. She advocates using data rather than just opinions to understand how people behave in and experience different workplace environments.

1. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015@kerstinsailer
Designing Spaces for People
Dr Kerstin Sailer
Lecturer in Complex Buildings, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
Social Business Salon, British Academy, London, 1 July 2015

2. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
?

3. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
SOCIAL
THE OFFICE
AS A
SPACE

4. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
Do we still need the physical space of the office?
Samsung HQ, San Jose, under construction (NBBJ)
Apple HQ, Cupertino, under construction (Foster + Partners)
Facebook HQ, Menlo Park, opened 2015 (Gehry)
Google HQ, Mountain View, planning stage (BIG & Heatherwick)

5. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
Do we still need the physical space of the office?
ROUTINESCO-PRESENCE ENCOUNTER
“Co-present individuals may not know each other, (…) but co-presence [still] is (…)
a social fact and a social resource. Co-present people are not a community, but
they are part of the raw material for community. (…) Even without conversion into
interaction, patterns of co-presence are a psychological resource, precisely
because co-presence is the primitive form of our awareness of others.”
Bill Hillier (1996): Space is the Machine
Awareness, community, atmosphere Proximity, serendipity, easy access Habits, usage, shared identity

6. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
Technology is just one more way to connect to those important to us...
Media Agency: email contact patterns Media Agency: face-to-face contact patterns
Overlap between electronic contact and face-to-face contact:
80% (Media Agency) ↔ 64-69% (Cambridge University) ↔ 90% and 30% (two different
hospitals in NL and CA)

7. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
Designing
Spaces for People

8. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
Robin Evans:
“If anything is described by an architectural
plan, it is the nature of human relationships.”
Evans (1997): Figures, Doors and Passages

9. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
Robin Evans: Figures, Doors and Passages
Family Prayers by Samuel Butler (1864)
Coleshill House by Sir Roger Pratt (1650-1667)Villa Capra ‘La Rotunda’ by Andrea Palladio (1567-1592)
Madonna dell’Impannata by Raphael (1513-1514)
RENAISSANCE
19THCENTURY
Inter-
connected
rooms
The birth
of the
corridor
‘habitual
gregariousness,
passion, carnality
and sociality’
‘society aimed at
avoiding human
contact’

10. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
4 types of layout choices
CONNECTEDCOMPARTMENTALISED
CELLULAR OPEN-PLAN

11. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
Designing spaces for people – layout matters!

12. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
Designing spaces for people – layout matters!

13. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
Designing spaces for people – layout matters!
SegregatedIntegrated

14. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
The new science of the workplace
“If we have , let’s look at data.
If all we have are - let’s go
with mine.”
Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO
DATA
OPINIONS

15. Designing Spaces for People Sailer, July 2015
Dr Kerstin Sailer
Lecturer in Complex Buildings
Space Syntax Laboratory
Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
140 Hampstead Road
London NW1 2BX
United Kingdom
Thank you!
k.sailer@ucl.ac.uk
@kerstinsailer
http://spaceandorganisation.wordpress.com/
http://tinyurl.com/kerstinsailer