serendipity machine, noun: a space (often workplace) that has been designed to maximize chance encounters towards beneficial, ideally innovative, results. This definition is Archinect's own wording, culled from a variety of "serendipity" citations in design briefs – but most notably, from Sebastian Olma's book, The Serendipity Machine (2013).

Self-described "consultant on all things to do with the creative economy", Olma is likely to be the originator of the term. He describes the "serendipity machine" as it pertains to the workplace in his book:

The importance of unexpected conversations and knowledge exchange in innovation has been noted in the management literature for many years. What is new is actually building a business – a machine – that systematically facilitates serendipity. This book presents a disruptive business model that allows you to do exactly that. It is based on a study of Seats2meet.com, the Dutch network of physical coworking, office and meeting spaces. By reinventing social capital as the currency of network culture and fusing it with the phenomenon of serendipity, Seats2meet.com has created a serendipity machine that increasingly looks like an appropriate platform for value creation in a network economy, fusing traditional monetary capital with social capital. It has effectively put into practice something academics have been feverishly looking for for the last two decades. And the key to it all is serendipity.

The desire to design for serendipity in workplaces has been previously documented in The New York Times and our "Aftershock #2: Serendipity Machines and the Future of Workplace Design". Examples of "serendipity machine" workplaces are rife in the tech industry, but also inform the design success behind such co-working places as WeWork.

Welcome to Archinect's Lexicon. Architecture notoriously appropriates and invents new language – sometimes to make appeals, sometimes to fill conceptual gaps, sometimes nonsensically. But once a word is used, it's alive, and part of the conversation. We're here to take notes.