ABSTRACT
Faced with a changing workforce and eager to address the deficiencies of the past, the architects, developers and specifiers who shape the contemporary landscape of workplace design have not been short of new ideas over the past decade. Office buildings and environments around the world have been the focus of intense design investment mainly pointing in one general direction towards the primacy of collaboration and work as a social activity. The real progress has been patchy and a standard body of evidence on best design practice in relation to organisational productivity has stubbornly refused to take shape. The study reinforced what was already widely known and acknowledged by its authors British business has a lot of ground to make up in office design to improve levels of satisfaction and productivity. The editorial concluded by saying that as open-plan working had been adopted by most areas of the economy, so it was bound to be part of the solution at universities.
