23 Apr Personal Space: Should It Still Exist In The Office Of Tomorrow?
With all the hyped talk of open office trends and shared workplaces, we have to ask, where did the personal space go?
Our environments and the people who occupy the space with us will always influence us as humans. We also understand that “team work makes the dream work,” and businesses’ are structured as such. This has influenced office trends for years, resulting in walls coming down, figuratively and literally.
Proxemics, a term coined by Edward Hall, an anthropologist is defined as the capability to self-discipline and live the social dynamics inside the workplaces. So, it relates to the study of how human beings involuntarily arrange the micro-spaces and the messages that the body sends out in different contexts.
This means that office design and layouts need to put in perspective so that the current trends of the open floor plan can be counter-balanced with private spaces that speak to the inherent needs of the individual.
