ABSTRACT
The situation at a university is a paradox: while students embrace new collaborative ways of working and learning outside of traditional spatial typologies, their tutors work and research in a traditional office environment. Academic workplace design offers a huge potential for space efficiency. Up to 28% of a university’s area is taken up by office space. A study at Loughborough University came to the conclusion that the academic staff spend only 30–40% of their time in the office. Loughborough University undertook a pilot of a ‘club’ for mainly PhD researchers and junior academics. A former divided-up part of the Freeman Centre was converted into an open-plan space that offered a differentiated set of workplaces, including cubicles for concentrated work or phone calls. The result was positive and most of the participants liked the atmosphere and communicative culture. Interestingly, the cubicles were hardly used and the more senior participants preferred to carry out concentrated work at home.
