Space for Creative Thinking

Book excerpt: -Guiding principles for designing new work and learning environments, with the aim of enhancing and stimulating creativity -Twenty outstanding and wide-ranging examples, from offices and schools to research facilities -Interviews with the designers and users of these 'creative spaces' reveal their functionality in practice Businesses and schools today are looking for ways to spur the kind of creative thinking that leads employees and students to generate innovative ideas. Many are finding that the physical spaces in which people work and learn can provide a strong impetus to follow a creative train of thought. Space for Creative Thinking puts this trend into the knowledge-work context, discussing the underlying design concepts that factor into making a space that stimulates original thinking. The book follows this outline of theory with twenty compelling examples, which range from offices and schools to research facilities. Each case study is presented through photographs, as well as interviews with both designers and users. It concludes with a brief set of guiding principles for designing spaces that capture the essence of a Creative Thinking Space.