A grammar of creative workplaces (original) (raw)
Related papers
Memoires by eminently creative people often describe architectural spaces and qualities they believe instrumental for their creativity. However, places designed to encourage creativity have had mixed results, with some found to decrease creative productivity for users. This may be due, in part, to lack of suitable empirical theory or model to guide design strategies. Relationships between creative cognition and features of the physical environment remain largely uninvestigated in the scientific literature, despite general agreement among researchers that human cognition is physically and socially situated. This paper investigates what role architectural settings may play in creative processes by examining documented first person and biographical accounts of creativity with respect to three central theories of situated cognition. First, the embodied thesis argues that cognition encompasses both the mind and the body. Second, the embedded thesis maintains that people exploit features of the physical and social environment to increase their cognitive capabilities. Third, the enaction thesis describes cognition as dependent upon a person’s interactions with the world. Common themes inform three propositions, illustrated in a new theoretical framework describing relationships between people and their architectural settings with respect to different cognitive processes of creativity. The framework is intended as a starting point toward an ecological model of creativity, which may be used to guide future creative process research and architectural design strategies to support user creative productivity.
Enhancing Creativity Through Workspace Design
The Palgrave Handbook of Creativity at Work, 2018
Creativity and innovation has been discussed in the context of differing spatial dimensions; national, regional; from the perspective of localised clusters of innovation within places, and at the dimension of face-to-face contact (physical co-proximity). Creativity within an organisational context can be greatly influenced by the characteristics of the physical environment in which each stage of the creativity process is undertaken, whether this is providing the personal, private space for individual contemplation or working with others for elaboration and evaluation (facilitating physical co-proximity). The design and layout of the space in which this work is undertaken can be a key enabler or constraint of creative working and therefore creativity itself. Rather oddly, in an increasingly micro-level focus on space in the creativity and innovation literature, the most micro-level dimension (office space) has not been thoroughly examined through a synthesis between the facilities management literature and the innovation and creativity literature. The most micro-level physical space or environment for knowledge work is most often in the form of an office that is furnished with desks, chairs (workstations) and meeting rooms. Though the design and the allocation of this space can vary across organisations, for the purpose of this chapter, this most fundamental definition of the physical space will be referred to as 'workspace'. The Hawthorne experiments in the 1930s 1 were one of the first studies to identify the role of the workspace on creativity, innovation and work performance, and has since been studied in a range of fields including environmental psychology, ergonomics, architecture, sociology and human resource management. Organisations are increasingly regarding their workspace as a core element of their innovation strategy. For high tech companies, this is clearly evident when seeing images of the offices at Google or Facebook or watching the film The Internship to see the use they make of the physical environment to support creativity such as using chalet lifts for meeting spaces and providing bean bags and hammocks for individual work − using unusual design to stimulate creative thinking and dialogue.
The spatial context of organizations: A critique of ‘creative workspaces’
Journal of Management & Organization
This paper examines office design as a spatial context of organizations. Organizations increasingly invest in designing workspaces to support employee creativity, foster company innovation and communicate a positive company image. This paper takes a critical view of this ‘hype’ by describing and analysing images of the headquarters of allegedly ‘creative workspaces’ published on the internet across a broad range of industries and corporations. Our analysis shows how their design follows standardized or stereotypical approaches to nurturing creativity: playfully or artistically designed open spaces, environments reminiscent of home, sports and play, nature, past/future technologies, or culturally aligned symbols. We discern underlying connections between office spaces and creativity, suggesting that creativity flourishes in happy, relaxed and playful communities within close-knit teams. We then identify three contradictions in relation to the existing literature on creativity and wor...
Language and Creativity: A Construction Grammar approach to linguistic creativity
Linguistics Vanguard, 2019
Creativity is an important evolutionary adaptation that allows humans to think original thoughts, to find solutions to problems that have never been encountered before and to fundamentally change the way we live (e.g., Goldberg 2018; Kaufman 2016; Sternberg 1999; Turner 2014). One particular domain of human cognition that has received considerable attention is linguistic creativity (Hoffmann 2018a, 2018b; Turner and Fauconnier 1999; Turner 2018). The present paper discusses how the leading cognitive linguistic theory, Construction Grammar (Hoffmann and Trousdale 2013), can provide an explanatory account of creativity that goes beyond the issue of linguistic productivity. At the same time, it also outlines how Construction Grammar can benefit from insights from Conceptual Blending.
Some comments on the formalization of an environment-based creative methodology.
Here I propose within a theoretical-practical framework, an analysis of the creative process and how it resorts to the opportunities that environment offers. It is a proposal addressed to the formalization of a particular methodology based on personal experience as both an artist and a professor. I aim at presenting rationally the aspects that nurture the idea which will later trigger the real materialization of a set of pieces of art. It is not an attempt to propose a new creativity model but instead to bring out a process of analysis that establishes some decision-making criteria for all those aspects that are involved in the flourishing of productive thought. Environment, in this particular case is circumscribed to a spatial-temporal context with a particular set of environmental features. This aspect together with two vectors of analysis- one that tackles environment as a rather physical reality and the other that together with the subjective and perceiving creative subject makes it its own- constitute the core of analysis that will ultimately lead to the creation of a piece of art.
Creative and productive workplaces: a review
Intelligent Buildings International, 2015
The built environment affects our well-being and this in turn influences our effectiveness in the workplace. Poor environments contribute to absenteeism and to people not working as well as they might. This is an enormous cost to the nation. High-quality environmental design is an investment, as occupants are healthier, staff-retention rates are higher, productivity is higher and sustainability ideals are more likely to be met. Workplaces reflect the culture of companies and are places that are not just functional and convenient but give the occupant a wholesome experience in terms of body and spirit.
Natural elements in the designer’s work environment influence the creativity of their results
Journal of Building Engineering, 2020
It has been shown that the environment can determine the outcome of work that is carried out in it. Several studies have confirmed that an environment with natural elements can have beneficial effects on people's physical and psychological health and also improve their creativity. However, little research has addressed this effect on the creativity of design engineers within the specific context of processes involving the design of new products. The main purpose of this paper is to determine whether product design proposals developed in environments containing natural elements show higher creativity factors/parameters/values than those obtained in other environments. The results will also be compared according to whether the natural environment is real or simulated. To this end, an experiment was conducted in which designers in the final phase of their training worked in different environments to develop design concepts, which were then evaluated according to four creativity parameters. The analysis of the results suggests that environments that include natural elements, whether real or artificial, favour the creativity of the conceptual proposals for new products to a greater extent than environments without any natural elements. The conclusions of this research can help civil engineers and architects redesign design studios and workspaces, in order to improve the creativity of design engineers and the originality of their work.
A Workplace to Support Creativity
Industrial Engineering and Management Systems, 2014
The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the background information regarding to the role of workplace on affecting people's performance. In today's industry creativity has a very special and important place because of the dynamic organizational changes and rapid growth of technology. To support these new working styles and specifically, to support creativity within an organization, flexible workplaces are often suggested. Since open-plan office offers more flexibility when compared to completely closed and private ones, they are seen to have more capabilities and are highly valued in today's industry. So the result of this study will contribute towards enhancing the understanding of the effect office design to enhance employees' performance, especially in creative tasks.
The spatial and social constructs of creative situations
BITE: Recipes for Remarkable Research, 2014
This paper presents an alternative way of considering space in terms of situated activity. We suggest that the activity and human response to space are embodied in the situations we experience. This embodied interaction with space we argue to be an essentially creative act, providing a conception of space that we term the ‘creative situation’. Four characteristics of such creative situations are presented. These are followed by six descriptions of active creative situations with instances of these drawn from the recipes, case studies and papers in this book. These descriptions are a starting point, rather than a complete framework, and are an alternative way of viewing and reconsidering our understanding of space.
Pragmatics, Plasticity, and Permission: A Model for Creativity in Temporary Spaces
conference proceedings is the property of the author(s). Permission is granted to reproduce copies of these works for purposes relevant to the above conference, provided that the author(s), source and copyright notice are included on each copy. For other uses, including extended quotation, please contact the author(s). The meaning of a space to its users is influenced by the users' perception of that space and its potential to support – or otherwise – desired behaviours. This paper considers the case study of a three-‐day residential knowledge exchange event, exploring the meaning of the event's physical environment for impact on participants' creativity and design thinking. The event's mixed group of academics, design professionals, and entrepreneurs were encouraged to think and respond creatively together on a thematic call (to which they responded in the application process) and were observed within the space. We examine how an unconventional workplace environmen...