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Architecture Research (MPhil) (PhD)

Imogen Privett

I originally studied undergraduate History at Cambridge. With a long-standing interest in design and the built environment, I applied for work experience in architectural practice during my second year, making the decision to start training as an architect following my graduation. I moved on to a Bachelors degree in Architecture at the University of Westminster, then to the MA Architecture course at the Royal College of Art.  

Having spent some time in architectural practice working on education, domestic and workplace projects, I joined The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design after graduating, workingon a research project exploring what workplace design could learn from other typologies of space, including theatre design, urban pop-up events, and extreme team environments. This culminated in the publication of a book called Life of Work: What Office Design Can Learn from the World Around Us, co-authored by Professor Jeremy Myerson.  

With a long-standing interest in working across research and practice, I then took up the opportunity to return to studying,applying for a sponsored PhD studentship at the Royal College of Art. This allowed me to explore my interest in how spaces are designed, occupied and experienced, with a focus on the then emergent typology of coworking.  

This research used coworking and the values associated with it as a lens through which to look at the design of the broader workplace. It examined the ways in which people behave in these new working environments and how these designed spaces are planned, briefed, commissioned and evaluated. The study responded to a continuing gap in the knowledge around the spatial constitution and behaviours of coworking despite a growing interest from corporate organisations. 

Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, the thesis was rooted in both academia and industry, presenting four design studies that mapped the development and spatial manifestations of coworking and explored user behaviour in space.   

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Degree Details

School of Architecture

Architecture Research (MPhil) (PhD)

2 Coworking Quant data

The thesis explored the values and spatial strategies of coworking through the quantitative analysis of 100 coworking home pages and 73 floor plans, placing coworking in the wider context of historical and current workplace development. In addition to quantitative analysis of the spatial allocation across different work settings over time, specific spatial strategies (for example, the location of communal areas) were also of interest.

Coworking was conceived of as a participatory and decentralised movement in which information was freely shared, and the principle of sharing experience and best practice has been described as a core value. The prevalent sharing of best practice and tendency to adapt space to members’ needs would suggest that commonly occurring elements or strategies have been loosely identified as suitable to support coworking practices. The research therefore also explored whether common design strategies could be identified. No attempt was made to develop distinct spatial typologies, but rather to identify whether there are any common strategies or design elements while recognising that there are detailed differences in spatial arrangements across the market as a whole.

3 BHub Activities

The research drew on design ethnography techniques to explore user behaviour in space at three different sites: the Impact Hub in Birmingham and Second Home in London - both coworking spaces - and Sony PlayStation in London, a commercial workplace seeking to build a more creative community. Each site used different strategies for managing change and co-creation, but with the same aims of prioritising user experience and building and supporting collaborative relationships.

In addition to the design ethnography, the research adopted quantitative mapping techniques to identify patterns of occupancy, movement, and interaction.

4 Floorplate cards

The design briefing game in use

The research highlighted gaps in existing workplace design processes around user input and experience, with consideration of user experience often lacking in organisational workplace design processes. Conversely, the first two design studies pointed to member experience as a central component of coworking. Although employee experience has increasingly become part of organisational dialogue in recent years, coworking would seem to represent a bottom-up model of space provision with a responsiveness to member needs that is distinctly different from traditional organisational provision. If workplaces are to be designed more closely around user experience, this points to a need to understand what experience means to the people who inhabit them.

The design toolkit was developed as a way of approaching and understanding this kind of contextuality and more clearly articulating end user perspectives. It had two components: a design game that related to the briefing process, and an evaluation tool based on customer journey mapping. Both were designed to be easy to implement and to produce actionable and highly visual results that could be easily understood by both practitioners and organisational stakeholders. These were intended to supplement more conventional quantitative mapping techniques with multi-faceted information about user experience in ways that can be easily integrated into existing design processes.

The design game was deliberately structured to be played without ‘expert’ involvement; it could therefore be used either by a designer seeking to engage with end users but lacking the time to develop customised tools, or by facilities managers who wish to involve end users in design proposals but do not know how to go about it.

5 Four pillars of coworking

While different aspects of coworking were explored in the study, ultimately, it cannot be defined by any single aspect; as with other forms of organisation, it can be viewed as a complex ecosystem of interlocking variables. The research identified that the success of the experience which coworking spaces create for their members relies on inter-related and evolving interactions between space, support and service infrastructures, brand identity and ethos, and community management. This resulted in a new model for thinking about coworking as an experience of work that is member-centric, based on a sense of shared ethos, community engagement, and user-centred spaces and services.

The research therefore resulted in a new definition of coworking that identifies these aspects and highlights coworking as an experience of work that is defined by its membership community:
‘An experience of work that is defined by the members, based on shared values, engagement with others, and user-centred services and space provision’.

These key aspects can be described as ethos, engagement, space and service, with member experience as a central linking quality.

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