Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration [Paperback]

Scott Doorley (Author), Scott Witthoft (Author), Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (Author), David Kelley (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2012 | ISBN-10: 1118143728 | ISBN-13: 978-1118143728 | Edition: 1

"If you are determined to encourage creativity and provide a collaborative environment that will bring out the best in people, you will want this book by your side at all times." --Bill Moggridge, Director of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

"Make Space is an articulate account about the importance of space; how we think about it, build it and thrive in it." --James P. Hackett, President and CEO, Steelcase

An inspiring guidebook filled with ways to alter space to fuel creative work and foster collaboration.

Based on the work at the Stanford University d.school and its Environments Collaborative Initiative, Make Space is a tool that shows how space can be intentionally manipulated to ignite creativity. Appropriate for designers charged with creating new spaces or anyone interested in revamping an existing space, this guide offers novel and non-obvious strategies for changing surroundings specifically to enhance the ways in which teams and individuals communicate, work, play--and innovate.

Inside are:
Tools--tips on how to build everything from furniture, to wall treatments, and rigging
Situations--scenarios, and layouts for sparking creative activities
Insights--bite-sized lessons designed to shortcut your learning curve
Space Studies--candid stories with lessons on creating spaces for making, learning, imagining, and connecting
Design Template--a framework for understanding, planning, and building collaborative environments

Make Space is a new and dynamic resource for activating creativity, communication and innovation across institutions, corporations, teams, and schools alike. Filled with tips and instructions that can be approached from a wide variety of angles, Make Space is a ready resource for empowering anyone to take control of an environment.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

From the Author: Hide & Seek Inspiration:

Visitors to the d.school frequently ask us where we find inspiration for the spaces we design. Here are a few places we look:

-- Retail Experiences

Restaurants, Hotels, & Stores
Restaurants & boutique hotel lobbies are almost unparalleled in the moods they create. Retail stores are full of display implementations that can be co-opted for display of creative work.

Specialty Hardware Retailers
Marine hardware outlets, antique hardware stores, and industrial kitchen suppliers stock all manner of novel gadgets to inspire new possibilities.

-- Public Gathering Places

Parks & Playgrounds
Endless interactions of all sorts occur in these spaces that provide insight into natural postures and the nuances of group interactions.

Airports & Parking Garages
Guiding travelers is a door-to-door experiment in designing way-finding. Parking garages in particular feature innovative uses of signage, color coding, and memory cues.

-- Places Where Things Are Made

Prep Kitchen & Food Trucks
Food prep is creative work that occurs under great time pressure. Cooks consitently invent ways to produce during the constraints of a mad dinner rush.

Sound Stages & Theaters
Sound stages are designed to support the realization of imagination. Everything about them is tuned to support the construction of novel designs.

-- Learning Environments

Museums & Galleries
Art is inspirational but so are the galleries themselves. Gallery spaces are constantly reconfigured to adapt for the needs of a show.

Pre-schools & Kindergartens
Learning environments for young kids are one of the few places where physicality is embraced -- kids love to move around. These spaces are also full of materials to engage in playful building activities.

-- Service Industries

Hospitals
Emergency rooms in particular are filled with clever solutions to coordinate action among staff and service the often complex emotional needs of patients.

Repair Shops
Bike mechanics, oil-change garages, tailors, and shoe repair shops all have unique tools & configurations for optimizing space, time, and money.

Review

"By actively thinking about the implications a space has on its inhabitants, we can create great experiences for those who enter. Make Space is an articulate account about the importance of space; how we think about it, build it and thrive in it." -- James P. Hackett, President and CEO, Steelcase

“If you are determined to encourage creativity and provide a collaborative environment that will bring out the best in people, you will want this book by your side at all times. You can browse it for tools to enhance teamwork, configurations to enable activities, insights about communal behaviors, design templates and first person stories. The way we design our spaces can help us or hinder us, inspire new ideas or stifle them, make it easier to work together or set us apart. Discover here how to improve team dynamics by altering your physical environment.”
— Bill Moggridge, Director of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 3, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1118143728
• ISBN-13: 978-1118143728
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,014 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > Professional & Technical > Architecture > Interior Design
  • #5 in Books > Professional & Technical > Architecture > Drafting & Presentation
  • #13 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Home Improvement & Design > Home Decorating & Design > Interior Design

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Creative space projects you can start on right now January 30, 2012

By Celeste Thoms VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Completely not what I expected to read, and that's a good thing. This book acts more like an instruction and construction book to creating the space that you work in. This is a book you pick up and start building the right space immediately. There are so many creative ideas about creating a space that encourages creativity, productiveness, organization, and collaboration. It's not just for businesses with large teams, I've found a lot of useful ways to organize my space when I'm working on a project alone and it's nice because you don't need a construction team to create spaces in your work space. These are projects you can implement on your own by just taking a trip to home depot. There is nothing like this book around that I've seen, I've absolutely loved it.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Some good ideas, but I don't actually want to work in any of these spaces June 16, 2012

By Esther Schindler TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

My job as writer-and-editor shifts from internally creative (I work inside my head) to actively collaborative (talk with the writers who work for me, learn what my clients want). I work with people all over the world from the comfort of my home office, and I depend on the wonderfulness of instant messaging, shared online storage, and e-mail. I prefer my quietly creative cocoon in which to do my thinking and lure the muse (Here kitty kitty... Well, the muse doesn't come when I call either). Yet, I'm inherently an extrovert. I love to go into create-mode with other people, so every time I've had the opportunity to visit the Home Office (for clients or employers, as the case may be) I actively notice how well their space is designed. How much does the office encourage people to work together? How does it help people to focus when they need to work alone?

As a result, when I saw Make Space on my list of Amazon Vine options, I was attracted to its premise: "an inspiring guidebook filled with ways to alter space to fuel creative work and foster collaboration." I love its goal. Its execution... not so much.

The book comes from the "d school" at Stanford University, and perhaps that academic background colors the way they think of colloborative space. The book has a few sorts of information: tools (stuff to build), situations (such as easy-to-reorganize spaces... think "use beanbag chairs draw people into a circle"), case studies. A section on the "design template" identifies the elements that go into a shared place, what they call "breaking down this spatial grammar into manageable bits" such as the actions that will take place there, the importance of thresholds and transitions, the need for everyone to have a "home base...."

The best part of the book are the tools: do-it-yourself inexpensive projects to create reusable objects that a team can use and move around. A "flip stool" can be flipped from an upright perch to a low bench. You're encouraged to create whiteboard sliders using dry-erase boards mounted on a trolley to instantly create partitions. Create a defined space (such as "where to keep everyone's bikes") using carpet tile or tape.

Some of the "situations" advice is useful food-for-thought, such as "The more flexible a space is, the more some things need to stay fixed. It is especially important to keep community tools (copiers, shared computers) and amenities (food, supplies) in prominent and fixed locations." But don't expect any advice about where to put the server room; there's not much for the geeks who have to think about wiring diagrams.

The authors like big cavernous rooms, I think, which are divided into smaller units... while I truly and passionately hate anything that looks like a cube farm. Maybe it's the effect of the startup communities near Stanford, but most of the designs shown are loft-like with moveable walls of one kind or another. There are a lot of hard edges; if they had a suggestion to hang quilts or other homey stuff in a conference area to relax people, I didn't see it.

In short: I didn't see a single space that appealed to me. (Please, just surround me with books. That's what inspires me, and it offers sound deadening as well.)

In case you couldn't tell by now, I didn't find this book especially inspirational. And I had to subtract an entire star for its oh-so-artsy layout, fonts, and colors which make the text almost wholly unreadable. White and black text on a dark blue or fuchsia background? Sheesh. I didn't like the flow of the book, either. At first I gave it the benefit of the doubt because, I thought, it's meant to be read in short inspirational bursts. But there's no narrative, no entry point or path for me as a creative designer.

But I'm not sure if my advice is useful to you. Maybe my opinion is affected by my preference for my solo writer-cave and my conscious preference to interact with people primarily in TCP/IP packets. But for myself... this book is <shrug> okay. I hoped for more. Read more ›

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, Interesting & Informative February 3, 2012

By Beth Saboori VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Until I got this book I'd never given any thought as to space in room design and how space and things like posture affected the way people interacted with each other. This square shaped book has changed all that for me.

There are so many insights in this book that you can go through in an evening or two. There are ways you can improve the space in your home to the various ways you can design a classroom to facilitate student participation or an office space so that employees are encouraged to bounce ideas off of one another, rather than keeping them bottled up and maybe never expressing them.

One thing I really liked about this book is that there is nothing intimidating about it. This book is insightful, interesting and informative.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A little "too cool" for the average person June 26, 2012

By H. Woodbury

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Each time I go to read this book, I feel inundated with coolness. Like I'm at a club that is so cool that you don't know what you're supposed to do. If you think the cover is a little confusing..as in "what is this book really about?" then a quick browsing the inside is not going to improve on that.

Instead of a table of contents, you get "instructions". And on the left of those is a dialogue of what the book is for, starting with "make space is a tool for using space to shape the culture and habits of a creative community."

The two sections of the book are
"tools: Make the useful things that fill up teh space--furniture, storage options, materials, etc" and "situations: Quick, repeatable configurations or patterns, usually at the scale of the room."

Honestly, I cannot get into this book. Each time I turn a page, I start reading a new idea and cannot get inspired. The idea flow from page to page is disjointed and it is not written by someone whose goal is to be as clear as possible to the average person.

Here is the start of "the white room" section. "An immersive experience is one of the quickest ways to transform behavior." what does that mean???? then following by "The White Room concept creates an environment with a singular finish and function that focuses on team members on particular activities. Their ideas become the only color that fills the space." Ok. reading it a few times, and looking at the picture of the white room, i can now understand it. But it's certainly not written in a way that the average person will understand easily.

There is some fun eye candy. The book is chock-full of creative endeavors to improve work areas both in function and appearance.... Each page is a little work of art with cool graphic design, and a generous amount of photos and illustrations. It's difficult for me to get into this book...but if you are a starter company or one that is trying to make your business environment more employee-friendly, more eco-friendly or more ergonomic...then this book could be a golden ticket to guide you. If you're an art/design student, this book can give you practical applications of furniture design goals. Read more ›