Workplace making ‐ A strategic activity

Making a workplace entails two essential factors: the physical action of designing, and the design of the work space itself. This paper illustrates how building stock can be used as a vehicle to create new, small and medum‐sized enterprises in which a participatory and learning process gives users control of their costs and stimulates creative channels between tenants. Workplace making can be the source of new understanding and communication between disciplines that do not usually cooperate in innovative situations ‐ demonstrated by the Volvo case study, which resulted in a totally new production system for the final assembly plants. In conclusion, it is paramount that the company itself leads the design process. To outsource workplace making is to outsource the knowledge and ability to use space as a long‐term production resource, which can restrict space productivity. To ensure the best use of future production space it is vital that a company listens not only to the architects but to its own employees.