Is the open-plan office closed?
Office design evolves with neuroscience to improve well-being and productivity
Published 21 settembre 2024 – © riproduzione riservata
‘But something is happening here, and you don’t know what it is,’ Bob Dylan prophetically asked (1965) in ‘The Thin Man Ballade’, ‘do you Mr. Jones?’ After the pandemic crisis, but also well before, there started to be a surge in the request to spatially wrap daily cycles inside workplaces, taking more seriously the account of humans inhabiting those rooms. As Byung-Chul Han stresses in ‘The Burnout Society’ (2015), our age is featured by ‘neuronal violence’ with mental disorders of many types increasingly detected, particularly in younger generations, caused by a self-exploitation for the sake of self-realization only grounded in the productive dimension. Workload rhythms are not the only ones, nor the worst elements causing an improvement of this risk. Beyond the ‘meaning deprivation’ permeating daily routines, the too-frequent absurd fragmentation of the tasks, and the daily hierarchical pressure on the labor-time extension ‘thanks’ to always active digital devices, rooms’ architecture is conquering the foreground. Workplaces are one of the principal boosters of this harmful outcome. Appropriately, on this threshold, neuroscience and design are working to create environments that are more capable of attuning the space to all the various users’ needs, almost permanently unconscious.
Meaning & Purpose, Body and Playfulness, New Work, Territory & Personalization, and Slow Productivity are key topics guiding our exploration in this upcoming issue. Through four pieces, we aim to render the state of the art of how human sciences are nourishing this crucial irrevocable shift in workplace design:
We will start with a book review that opens the discussion, focusing on the intersection of neuroscience and office design. Secondly, through a case study, we will investigate the application of neuroscientific findings to spatial design and the implied challenges. Then, an interview will bring together experts from different disciplines—design, office development, and neuroscience—to discuss current trends and common misconceptions. Lastly, an article will expand the investigation, focusing on practical experiments and research on office environments viewed through a neuroscientific lens.
On the cover: frame from the film The Apartment, by Billy Wilder (1960)
Autori
Architetta e ricercatrice a Vienna. Ha studiato architettura presso l’Università Tecnica di Vienna dove si è laureata nel 2018. Durante e dopo gli studi ha fatto esperienza in diversi studi di architettura. Nel 2022 ha completato il master “Neuroscience applied to Architectural Design – NAAD” presso l’Università Iuav di Venezia. Attualmente è tutor e dottoranda presso il Dipartimento di Teoria e Design degli Edifici dell’Università Tecnica di Vienna e lavora nell’ambito del progetto interdisciplinare “BUILD CARE – Building Support for Children and Families Affected by Childhood Stroke”, in cui si indaga il ruolo dell’ambiente costruito nella vita quotidiana dei bambini e delle famiglie colpiti da questa rara malattia.
Architect and researcher based in Vienna. She studied architecture at the Technical University of Vienna and graduated in 2018. During and after her studies, she gained experience in various architecture firms in Vienna. In 2022, she completed the postgraduate course “Neuroscience applied to Architectural Design – NAAD” at the IUAV in Venice. Currently, she is a project assistant and PhD student at the Department for Building Theory and Design at the Technical University of Vienna, within the interdisciplinary project “BUILD CARE – Building Support for Children and Families Affected by Childhood Stroke”, where they investigate the role of the built environment in the everyday life of children and families affected by this rare disease.