I forgot to mention- there is something so much more creative about a messy, less formal environment, than a super manicured and organized (clean-cut) office. I can’t put my finger on what- it just feela that way...

It's like those restaurants or food courts with fancy, overly curated interiors ("I want a food truck park meets hipster coffee shop kind of feel") but the food is shit and expensive.

The modern work environment that aims to promote "collaboration" is in fact a stage where the soloist is the manager and the team is the chorus echoing his voice. It is hard to be collaborative when there are politics at play. It is hard to be creative and innovative when you have to worry about whether or not your "out of the box thinking" will be shot down. Again- these "innovative work environments" are only as effective as the true culture of the firm that sponsor their construction. Otherwise they only symbolize an aspiration and do not translate into any kind of reinvention of company culture. 

The below images are hardly environments that speak "creativity" to me:

This, on the other hand, YELLS creative:

The question is why one, but not the other?

I think you're presenting only one aspect of work space.  Another aspect is that your work environment is a symbol of how you work - messy, chaotic, efficient, calm, etc.  Your office makes a big first impression. 

Not only that, but some of us are easily overstimulated and just want a 'calm' place to sit down and work - including collaboratively.

yes- but that is not how either the critics or the designers market the finished product. Therefore it reads as phony.

I agree with you on this one.  It's like the programming phase is completely being either ignored by the designers, or more likely being tightly constrained by the clients.  Real typological innovation is almost completely absent in contemporary architecture practice. 

architecture cannot save you. 

some good reading though:

I hate the open office trend. Give me door, a decent desktop with two big monitors, unfettered internet access, a small printer w/ 11x17 paper, a big table, a roll of trace, a box drafting dots, five pens, five markers, an open window and some cigarettes and I can achieve peak creativity.

I'm convinced privacy and creativity have a strong link. none of bulggers creative spaces above are shared. The architecture studio in my experience is a unique collaborative creative space. but creativity requires a certain freedom that generally is not conducive to shared spaces. 

I think the internet is an example of a creative collaborative space (loosely). And I would agree that creativity is fueled by a large extent through anonymous communication, like this forum. 

But open offices make for better pictures, and first impressions. The thing is companies don't actually want you to be creative. They want you to be a cog, in a well oiled machine. It's easier to oil the machine without the protective casing. 

Its about time we think of work as a verb instead of a place. I, too, can't work in a regular open office, it is too restricting. I prefer to move and make noise. Open offices are one of the reasons everyone takes medicines (drugs?) in order to just get through the day. It's a conspiracy.

So messy, less formal environments ARE innovative or inventive? So, now all those companies with their manicured front lawns will simply do that ;)

There is always going to be this divide between people who are after a certain image and people for whom the image is a result of other more important things in life.

(.gif from the brilliant show Happyish)

If you're trying to "look" creative" then you're not.

so there was someone wanting to work for a firm like HLW or TPg or CallisonRTKL and what’s funny is that those places tell you at an interview- “or we’ve been featured in. X Y Z magazine,” Or “published in.” Or “won an award for” and they will say - workplace environments or retail or blah blah. So if the concensus is that, that is all BS- why work there? Why contribute to the phoniness? 

I don't understand this discussion.

the discussion is about how design firms market their work environmwnts as these creative and functional spaces, yet they are just manicured interiors with color etc that promote anything BUT creativity. As you can see in the images above, many people don’t need that kind of space to do their worm. So why are those spaces “designed that way,” and why do potential hires of forms that make those work environments buy into that type of design direction? It is all phony.

I agree- but only if the original concept has merit; otherwise I will fall in line into follwing somethinng phony. The reason most people do that is because they don’t care- as long as they make their salary., it doesn’t matter weather the concept is brilliant, shit, or phony. 

There's a difference between a concept and a gimmick. The difference is that one is a representation, the other is an emulation or imitation.

Bulgar, I get you. For once.

One of the big things I notice in these hip creative spaces is how small they are. Creativity needs space, big tables (IMO) and that is what I see in the other pics even though they are cluttered. The woman sitting in the yellow booth is of a small stature but even she seems to be crowded by it. The pedestal tables block leg room, the yellow is too in your face, the size of the booths are the bare minimum. How would a guy who was 6'-4" sit there? Even a person who was 5'-9" would feel crowded. And then you write on that board by being where? Sitting in the booths? Climbing up on the table? (oh never mind, I see that there is a walkway behind the booth and that is where the white board is.) Do people use those white boards and if they do, is it annoying to others? Do people even know what you mean and integrate it into their work output (if that is supposed to be how it goes)? We used to have fridge poetry at one of my work spaces, I was the only one who ever used it. Also used to have a large empty table surrounded by massive open space and a large open room and I used to both and was the only one. Everyone else needed the computer or something I don't know. 

The saddest part is that we have people from all the "best" architecture schools who perpetuate this shit at a senior level. 

The best creative space is sitting outside in my backyard patio with a sketch book, a good cigar, a burning hooka, a single malt, and several craft brews.  That's my go to, you can't design that for a glossy magazine cover. 1 hour is that setting is worth a month elsewhere.

Is that wall sconce trying to tell me something? that door knob inspires me! I think it's all mktg B.S. just like the "green" movement was. The trend of today is the coworking space, AKA internet cafes in a warehouse.

A space that truly inspired creativity would need a pool or at least a hot tub. Or a babbling brook. At least a shower. And a campfire ring. Or really any place where you could build a fire. Not gas either, you need to be gathering kindling and nurturing a flame like a boy scout. Not going to happen. That's why the entire idea of a work "space" can die in my opinion. 

I think the issue I see with both the clean, carefully manicured "creative" spaces, and the cluttered, unkempt "creative" spaces is that they can both be equally creative and equally stifling depending on the person using the space. 

Unless you are all aware of some sort of study that has identified the ideal creative space that will work for the majority of the population that needs to be creative ... this all just sounds like a lot of opinion. 

As for me, the type of space that I find creative might not work for you or anyone else. As for my clients, I'll give them what they want because they are paying the bills. If it works for their employees, great. If not, they'll come back to me for the redesign (unless they didn't think I listened to them in the first place and I forced them into some type of space they didn't want). YMMV

Everyday Architect - isn't part of your job as an architect to tease out the underlying reasons for why your client wants something so you can better serve them? Do you get to know your clients or are you just a BOT that executes and doesn't think about what you do?

If there was actual research into this it would say plenty of opposing subjective things. A blank slate leads to creativity. A bunch of tools or a pile of books leads to creativity. So what does that mean for design?

Is this office space design meant to help retain/recruit employees not so much affect the work going on? I had a lot of offers for jobs talk about how attractive their office space is. The culture we work in has a changing idea of creativity and what that looks like. In the built environment this looks like wide open spaces where one can have collaboration over the cubicle walls, informal meetings, time away form work for brief mental breaks (game tables and other distractions) Natural light, an urban location, and trendy design focusing on comfort and amenities that may make it comfortable for you to remain at work for longer hours. Most people want to work in and be considered part of a creative environment/team projecting the culturally accepted image of a creative space is a tool for HR and marketing.

Most times I've been involved in office interiors conversations, it's about the image the firm wants to project (to clients, consultants, potential employees, and partially to its own employees) and function (comfort, efficiency).  Open studios seem to have come from a time when work in the studio was anything but flat, but was hierarchical.  While working around a common work space bouncing ideas around can be effective, it has more to do with individual's comfort in both the setting and in the team.  Newer software companies often have private spaces and common spaces to separate out the physical space with the work. 

I find open spaces nice when you have great collaborative and respectful colleagues.  Given senior managers who belittle and micromanage staff or sheer incompetence directing people rather than engaging in open dialogue, an open studio can become very toxic very quickly.

As for style of the interior design, it is often a decent indication of a firm's own self-image, which can be useful in assessing one's fit to the culture.  How much further a prospective candidate will need to dig in to find the day-to-day workings is another matter entirely.

There is research into office spaces and creativity.  See Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister, and "the coding games" (which found that working in isolation resulted in higher productivity and better quality work - for computer programmers - which is not to say the results would be the same for all industries.)  Also 1950s Solomon Asch experiments on the dangers of group think, and recent ones by neuroscientist Gregory Berns about the areas of the brain triggered by collaboration vs. isolated creativity.  These all found that creativity and both quantity and accuracy of output were usually hampered by in-person collaboration.

whats wrong with this

The (architecture) office where I work is exactly what you describe. The atmosphere is ultra cool in terms of the interior. Exposed brick walls, check. Large communal table, check. Hip location, check. 

The work, however is extremely corporate, dry and soul-sucking. On the other hand Ive worked at a very "corporate" looking office with cubicles etc. that was doing some extremely cool, fun work.

Lesson being, dont get fooled by outward expressions.

Imagining that you're going to rise to the top of the corporate structure is pretty much the same as wanting to join the space program so you can walk on the moon.

Cubicles are places to hide where nobody can see what you are doing.

In an open office everybody knows what everyone else is doing and the pecking order is clear. Kind of like a construction site - where everybody knows everyone else's strengths and weaknesses, and the speed and quality of execution are readily apparent.

That's how it used to be, anyway. This changed somewhat as the work became virtual instead of physical.

I think I mentioned this before but we're moving offices soonish. I haven't been impressed with the open plan currently on the table. Today a principal came upstairs and told me he was going to assume that I'll be making my own office in the basement, away from the chaos upstairs.

I have to say, he's not incorrect. I'll be doing exactly that. The current open office trend, as far as I can tell, is a way for owners to reduce capital costs and nothing else.

Reduce capital, yes. Then also reduce productivity and the top line. Then throw blame. So bowling ball didn't get it about half a page up. Changed your mind? 

Scale and tasking are critical factors to consider when building project-based work environments as well as the differences between variousconceptual environments and management styles, i.e. atelier vs. factory and the shades in between.

I had a private office for five miserable, lonely, mental- and physical-health destroying years. I never want that again. I work in an open office now, as I have in every architecture firm I've ever worked in, and it's wonderful. This one happens to be especially well-designed.

http://www.rowlanddesign.com/s...

I haven't read every single response above but what I didn't see as I skimmed the thread was the notion of not giving people "ownership" of a specific space or cubicle. The proliferation of various kinds of workspaces - the yellow cubes above being one - is based in part on offering a variety of spaces that people can choose to work in given their task and needs at the moment.  Open offices should *always* have lots of other options: huddle spaces, private phone booths, lounge furniture, etc. That way people can choose a space that is conducive to the work they are doing and not feel tied to an "assigned" desk.

For me, if I'm hand sketching, I can sit at our central reception area bar where I'll be surrounded by lots of activity and noise and the music is louder. If I'm hard-core CADing for a deadline I can put on my headphones and hide behind my rolling partition dividers at my desk computer for hours of isolated work.  For podcast recording I sit in one of the private phone enclaves.

And, we all know that staged photographs never reveal the quotidian appearance of a space, right? Rememebr how Dwell started out saying they were going to show "real life" in their photos? Real work is messier.

Donna - are you familiar with the concept of "informal space"? The minute you formalize something that is informal to begin with, it taints it with a formality you can never get away from. Sometimes one's best work is done in an informal environment where you can be as messy or neat as you want to be. Once you start marketing a space as being meant for something specific, it becomes formal and that is how I believe people lose their "ownership" of that space.

Have you ever roamed the streets of Europe or some American city and said to yourself (or your friends)- "Hey- I found this amazing little cafe, and no one else knows about it?" Well that's how I think creative minds work... they want to take ownership by not having their environment exposed. Hence, they turn to already formal places like cafes, lounges, etc where they can get lost in their minds. However, designers have formalized that concept by trying to replicate it in work environments, but I just don't think it feels the same or has the same effect. 

And it is precisely that commandeering of one's most intimate work habits, through the formalization of what would otherwise be his/her self-prescribed temporary or permanent "creative space", that is so disingenuous and deplorable. Designers and Clients may think they are actually doing good for their employees, but in fact they just  exposed their employees' work habits so they can have control over them while creating the illusion of freedom and openness. After all, as a boss, wouldn't it be nice to keep an eye on how your employees spend their time during work...? (that last bit really is the "creative" panopticon I'm talking about)

Here is an architect firm's office in Copenhagen repurposed from a boat shed. Plenty of light and views for everyone. Seems anything but corporate anal.

Further to kjdt's point:

https://www.archdaily.com/8841...

https://www.archdaily.com/5950...

Defined by a decidedly ‘disingenuous set of cultural imperatives’ (Ferrell, 2003)1 it is posited that these spaces, described by Chatterton (2002)2 as ‘corporate play spaces’ prioritise object over subject, exchange over use value, and ignore other social and aesthetic qualities, lead to the creation of spaces that are increasingly scripted and homogeneous. 

http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/__d...

While this paper addresses public space in the city, I think some of the ideas are also applicable to the workplace.

This all comes down to culture. 

It could be inclusive, or exclusive, or rely on internment. 

Or be none of these factors but doing the best in terms of the brief and the context.

back in the day, we had cubicles at least

I think the biggest mistake in this discussion is assuming that the interior design of offices is for the sake of the employee.  I don't believe they are or are not trying to stimulate creativity through workplace design. 

What is most likely happening is they are designing the offices to look this way for clients.  Clients perceive the edgy design, open work spaces, collaboration zones, much differently than employees and for a much different reason. 

It's all about the client. 

We have a very linar building with a small conference room in the front and a large one in the back (only places they could fit).  Any clients that come to our office typically have to wall through the 'trench' where all our desks are.  Because of that anyone not in an enclosed office isn't allowed to hang things on the walls and must keep their desk uncluttered at all times.  Personally I find this annoying and very restrictive to being creative.  Lucky for me I have a semi private office so my desk is full of stuff at all times.