Creative environments for design education and practice: A typology of creative spaces

Critical Analysis

In this text, the authors claim that creative spaces can be characterized in terms of type (or use) and quality.

Personal spaces allow for “heads-down” work, while collaboration spaces afford group work and discussions. Presentation spaces are used to share and consume knowledge in a one-directional way. Making spaces permit students to play, make noise, and be “dirty.” Intermission spaces are connection places, often in transient areas (like stairs or hallways), which afford casual interactions.

Qualities define a space in terms of teaching and learning purpose. A knowledge processor space supports the transfer of information and knowledge, and a process enabler is a space that provides infrastructures to guide (or hinder) creative work. Some spaces suggest particular behavior—they are indicators of culture. Spaces have social dimensions, and spaces themselves can act as sources of stimulation.

The spatial delineation provided by the authors is only superficially accurate. It does provide a typology and organizing structure for thinking about spaces, but does little to investigate the actual uses of the space themselves in any real way; the typology relates more to facilities management than to facilities usage. This is likely a result of the methodology selected. Cultural probes asked students to visually and diagrammatically describe a space as a static container, and so they did, but that is not how space is used. Others have shown the space of studio to be many of those mentioned in the typology, but with almost no physical delineation: the delineation occurs naturally, over time, and in a partially controlled, partially organic manner.

It is telling when the authors claim that creative environments “need all five types of spaces, albeit in different shapes, proportions, and alignments. A lack of a particular space type resulted in unsatisfied users, leading them to improvise adaptations to the space.” The improvised adaptations they present as negative likely are evidence of the real, negotiated usage of the space, not the sterile and autocratic provision of facilities.

The authors begin their investigation through a literature review, yet they dismiss the findings with little explanation. Doorley and Witthoft’s work is described as “rather unrelated to the spatial configuration (e.g. actions and attitudes”), Meinel et al’s work, that makes a distinction between relaxing space and engaging space, is discounted by the authors as “in our view, does not justify a new category,” and when referencing studies that discuss the behaviors of people in space, they state that “we do not consider relevant categories for the physical creative environment.”

Research Value

The value of this work in informing my own research is that it:

• Creative spaces are thoroughly studied, and at least in this case, studied poorly.