Conference Agenda

Coworking spaces transitioning to proprietary offices face significant challenges in balancing flexibility, collaboration, and shared resources while maintaining their unique brand identities. Early-stage startups require the adaptability and networking opportunities of co-working spaces, but long-term growth requires customization and branding. However, proprietary offices risk sacrificing the collaborative benefits of shared environments in exchange for privacy, tailored design, and alignment with company goals. In this study, we explore how startups can navigate these transitions by integrating the benefits of both workspace types to enhance creativity, innovation, and organizational alignment. Through a case study approach, the research examines Spotify's transition from RocketSpace, a co-working environment, to its proprietary New York office. They contrast the functional but generic layouts of co-working spaces with the brand-centric and adaptive features of proprietary offices to illustrate the broader dynamics of workspace transitions. Research methodologies include systematic literature reviews, case study analyses, and thematic synthesis of pre- and post-transition data supported by visual and descriptive analysis. Organizational identity, employee engagement, and cultural alignment are strengthened by brand-centric spatial design in proprietary offices. The use of collaborative zones, flexible layouts, and creative installations demonstrate how tailored spatial strategies can support productivity, innovation, and well-being. Startups can use these strategies to design adaptive workspaces that balance collaboration, privacy, and brand reinforcement. This study provides practical insights into how to create environments that inspire innovation and align with strategic objectives by exploring the evolving dynamics of workspace design.

The design disciplines typically create spaces designed on the basis of providing for biological and functional needs but rarely acknowledge and validate the psychological and emotional needs of inhabitants. Insofar as the disciplines attempt to address trauma and grief, the approach has typically fixated on providing savioristic solutions to complex socio-ecological problems, which often promise a radically altered and repaired future, even in cases where this may not be possible. This research addresses this oversight by offering a new direction for architectural and landscape design practices to augment their capacity for addressing pain, trauma, and grief—the fractured states in which many environments, communities, and individuals exist today. The research identifies several examples of use cases and practices where a trauma-informed approach can be meaningfully implemented. This includes use in participatory design settings and pedagogical models where the use of rituals, aesthetics, and anti-racist methodologies are foregrounded. Trauma-informed techniques such as these are urgently needed today where designers regularly interface with marginalized communities and individuals who have experienced violence and/or been subject to irreparable emotional or physical damage. Lastly, this paper asks design professionals and educators to reexamine the reasons why we build, arguing that we should expand our mandate beyond the fulfillment of biological needs to acknowledge the trauma we carry in the current moment through architecture. This investigation demonstrates that design can meaningfully hold space for the emotional pain and needs of the socio-ecological communities where our work is embedded.

This paper explores how lessons from community design efforts can inform architectural education, focusing on service-based learning studios as a tool for developing future architects. By examining the history of community design in the U.S. from the 1960s to the present, through the lens of activism, advocacy, and participatory processes, we can understand how initiatives like the Architects Renewal of Harlem and the Real Great Society connected design professionals, academia, and communities to work on people-centered design and development.

The community design movement of the 1960s, shaped by the Civil Rights and Women's Liberation movements, provided marginalized communities with much-needed technical and design support. Amid political unrest, designers, architects, and planners began to recognize their responsibility to advocate for those excluded from the design process. This led to the rise of participatory design, where community voices became central to decision-making, catalyzing social change. In today's politically charged climate, marked by increasing social divides and calls for equity, the principles of community-centered design remain highly relevant, offering a vital framework for addressing contemporary social justice issues.

Community design asks critical questions about who architecture serves. The research builds on the school's “community engaged learning” efforts and offers recommendations for implementing community-engaged learning in architectural studios, highlighting potential challenges and opportunities. Ultimately, this research aims to serve as a resource for architectural educators and community-based organizations engaged in future community design projects. It also aims to contribute to ongoing research by the author on the role of “public research infrastructure” as a tool for connecting communities and bridging academia, practice, and community engagement.