The Hide and Seek of Workspace: Towards Human-Centric Sustainable Architecture

This contribution exemplifies how the study of space perception and its impact on space-use behavior can inform sustainable architecture. We describe our attempt to integrate the methods of user research in an architectural project that was focused on optimization of space usage. In an office building, two large office rooms were refurbished to provide desk-sharing opportunities through hot-desking. We studied the space-use behavior of 33 office workers over eight weeks in those two rooms as well as their occasional presence in ten other areas (cafeteria, atrium, meeting rooms, etc.). Quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed to understand the nature and nuances of space occupancy at the scope of the building and within the refurbished offices. While at the scope of building the patterns of movements between rooms were found to be related to the professional profile of the users, at the scope of office the occupancy patterns were influenced by the spatial design of workspaces. More precisely, certain visual attributes of a workspace, namely Visual Exposure and Visual Openness, could determine whether or not it was regularly used. In this paper, we describe our findings in detail and discuss their implications for sustainable building design.