ABSTRACT
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once remarked: ‘We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us.’ It is an aphorism that workplace designers have been slow to heed. However, as managers, architects and others wake up to the contribution office design makes to an effective work environment, they are also presented with a host of new possibilities in the way work is organised. The key development has been the use of advanced information technologies (IT)—particularly those based around the Internetto support innovations in business processes and customer services. Added to this has been a growth in corporate call centres, as well as mobile communications (which themselves are increasingly ‘Web-enabled’). The result has been a rise in new forms of organisational collaboration, combined with greater spatial flexibility in work and customer interactions.
