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Academic work, in common with most other forms of knowledge work, requires a combination of solitude and interaction. The question of how to achieve an appropriate balance between these two conflicting demands presents a significant challenge to HEIs.
One of the traditional strategies was to lure academics out of their individual cellular offices for coffee breaks in the common room, although with teaching loads and other commitments, finding time for daily get-togethers has become unthinkable in many departments. Instead, organisations are increasingly looking to the design of their office environments to bring occupants together. Some alternative approaches are considered below. Open office environments Inspired by examples from the corporate sector where the move to open offices has been associated with improved knowledge flow, a common aim of open plan office environments in HE is to boost interaction and collaboration between occupants. The Paul O’Gorman building at Newcastle all but one senior member of academic staff work in the open-plan office areas. There was a widespread view that the open plan layout does make it easier to initiate conversations. If somebody’s entrenched in their office, it’s a bit harder to go and talk to them without actually organising a formal meeting. So in terms of initially speaking about an idea, I think this sort of open plan area does facilitate that However, it can be difficult to find somewhere to hold a conversation in the building. In order to avoid disrupting colleagues’ concentration, occupants have adopted a ‘library quiet policy’, and so conversations in the office space are limited to very brief, work-related discussions. A particular problem was felt to be the limited provision of meeting rooms, or space in which to hold impromptu meetings. If you want to have a quick word with someone, you’re huddling and whispering, or you’re trying to find somewhere to do that The Research Exchange at the University of Warwick is a cross-school facility for researchers, which aims to foster inter-disciplinary collaborative working. It is an open plan environment, and includes hotdesking computer workstations, study desks, break-out areas and an enclosed seminar space. There is considerable variation in the way the Research Exchange is used, ranging from those researchers who work there for several hours every day, using the facility as their main work location, to those who call in for a couple of hours once a week or so. Some of the users (including some of the frequent users) have allocated office space in their department, others do not. The Research Exchange provides a very good opportunity to meet other PhD students, not for academic purpose, but as friends A large proportion of both the frequent and occasional users specified the opportunity to engage with other researchers as one of the attributes that they value. Yet others specified the quiet environment and opportunity to work without disruption from others as being central to their decision to work there. I don’t come here to interact with other researchers – quite the opposite Noise levels in the Research Exchange are, for the most part, extremely low. In common with the Paul O’Gorman building, there is an established convention of keeping conversations short, or sotto voce. Most interviewees, when asked, reported that they value interaction with peers. However, research-related conversations were generally held to be formal, organised intra-departmental events. Even those researchers who cited informal interaction with other researchers as being one of the attractions of the Research Exchange indicated that the benefit of this interaction was largely social – staving off the loneliness that arises from solitary PhD research. Furthermore, this seems to be achieved mainly by quiet working in the presence of others, interpersed with the occasional brief conversation. Cellular office, with communal foci In the Chaucer building at Nottingham Trent University, academics and research staff in the Psychology department have cellular offices (some senior staff have individual offices, others share with two or three colleagues), with large glass panels being used to increase openness. The glass panels do add to a sense of community and ‘togetherness’. Although some people keep their blinds resolutely closed, in offices where they are left open, people wave as they walk past, and stop by if it looks as though the occupants aren’t busy.
Other design features aimed at aiding interaction are the wide corridors, in which it is possible to hold a 3 or 4 person conversation without blocking passing traffic. The photocopiers are located just off the corridors, which means that otherwise dull copying and printing tasks become opportunities for impromptu interaction.
Whilst there are several breakout areas located off the corridors, but these are not particularly popular locations for holding discussions (one of the issues that occupants raise with the break-out areas is they’re not a particularly comfortable place to sit, either in terms of the furniture, or their location.
Probably the most successful tool for promoting interaction is this space though, is the kitchen. When Psychology moved to their new offices in Chaucer, the Head of Department banned the previously accepted practice of having kettles and coffee machines in offices. Whilst this was the source of much grumbling, particularly for those located in offices furthest away from the kitchen, it has meant that the kitchen is a great place for bumping into colleagues.
The combi-office The combi-office at the Sir Frank Gibb building at Loughborough University takes the idea of a cellular office with communal foci a step further. Each academic has their own small study office, located off an open space that includes an array of breakout areas, additional storage, and a kitchen and printer hub on each floor. There are also a number of bookable meeting rooms. Glass panels in the study office walls, and the light well (which affords visual access to the Research Hub, as well as to the floors below), provide a sense of openness. It seems that this combi-office may be an ideal solution to the solitude/interaction dilemma: Occupants report a high level of satisfaction with their new environment, and the support it offers for conducting individual concentrated work, as well as fostering interaction. One of the reasons why this design seems to work so well is that the default location (i.e. the allocated study) provides the necessary auditory privacy for occupants to carry out both noise generating and quiet work without needing to account for/coordinate with their colleagues’ activities. Staff can hold small discussions (i.e. involving 1 or 2 others) at their desk, and easily relocate to the breakout areas just outside their study for larger conversations. As staff assume that a discussion held in a breakout area is informal, as they walk past they often stop to say hello and are drawn into the conversation, which adds to the sense of community and serendipitous knowledge sharing. |
