Organising design in the wild: locating multidisciplinarity as a way of working

Abstract

The workplace ecology of a multidisciplinary design team is studied to better understand how design work is organised in the wild. Reported is an ethnographic account of the events and practices that were seen, in patterned and subtle ways, to organise the design work for a project. Design events and activities were distributed in nested contexts throughout the office setting. The design work was seen to be planned, self-organised and coordinated through a series of practical actions and events that occurred in different locations. There was no single, identifiable event, interaction or communicative medium in which the coordination of the design work occurred. From these insights, multidisciplinarity is proposed as a way of organising design work that cuts across some design interfaces. This way of procuring design services is contingent on the appointment of a design firm with multidisciplinary expertise, in an arrangement where the design work is undertaken collaboratively in a co-located setting with underpinning information systems. IntroductionAt a point in time when technologies that support distributed working are pervasive, being able to justify the space and places for co-located working is increasingly important. Design service organisations make strategic decisions: in the place of work for design teams, the configuration of workplace settings and the information systems that support collaborative work. These decisions are complex, multifaceted and are interwoven. These are design management 1 concerns that impact the ways that design services are delivered and essentially the competitive performance, sustainability and the survival of a firm (Emmitt, 1999(Emmitt, , 2007. It is a particular mode of design service delivery, multidisciplinary that is detailed in this article, to reveal some of the routine, yet significant practices in the workplace that organise the design activities for a multidisciplinary design team.Complex relationships exist between the organisational design of firms, the structure of the construction sector and the configuration of work in project-based organisations (Bresnen, 2005). Increasingly construction projects are configured as globally distributed design teams and there is a trend towards mega-scale international conglomerates of design service provider organisations (Emmitt, 2010, p. 18; Winch, 2008). This distributed way of working is possible given the multiple information systems that underpin e-business and commerce and the collaboration technologies, groupware and digital tools that support design work specifically. Given the potential for networked collaborative work, the procurement of design services has advantageously explored the outsourcing of design work internationally and the export of high-value design services to global markets (Tombesi, Dave, Gardiner, & Scriver, 2007). To competitively provide design services the local and global are linked. Decisions concerning the location in which design work is undertaken and then how it is organised and coordinated...

The characteristics to consider in municipal shared spaces

“…As also mentioned in the theory section, the aspects of flexible working and agile workspaces, which are important elements in shared space and one of the key elements from the workshop, are described by a number of authors such as (Luck, 2015), (Bell & Anderson, 1999) and (Hewitt, 1997), not to mention the many guides on designing open space offices from for example (Duffy, Craig, & Gillen, 2011) and many others.…”

“…Over the last couple of decades an increasing amount of literature has been published on the topic of shared space in the workplace, with (Duffy & Powell, 1997) describing "The new office", (Khamkanya & Sloan, 2009) writing on flexible working and shared workspace and (Luck, 2015) writing on co-location for design work. Following from the space management approach, agile working and the field of workplace management provides insights in to how to manage an organisational change such as transitioning to shared space must be considered to be (Bell & Anderson, 1999).…”

Assessment of the design–construction interface problems in the UAE

“…Errors in contract documentation have been identified as a major cause of disputes within construction projects (Lopez & Love, 2012;Love, Cheung, Irani, & Davis, 2011). Luck (2015) recommended the co-location of multidisciplinary design teams in order to improve the design coordination process.…”

Space as organisational strategy

“…Research has shown that there is a need for organisations to be more concerned about how to create spaces for interaction (Paludan, 2010;Luck, 2014). This is supported by Hatch and Cunliffe (2012) who indicate 'loose ends' in organisation theory concerning learning, knowledge management and identity in relation to organisational culture and physical structure (p. 303).…”

“…The importance of investigating space has been seen in different settings such as office layout (Grangaards, 2009;Leonard, 2012;Luck, 2014), urban spaces (Munro and Jordan, 2013) spaces in the educational sector (Oblinger, 2006;Nussbaumer, 2014). More and more international companies use physical space as a way to enhance creativity, create change and stimulate interaction among employees (Kristensen, 2004;Doorley and Witthoft, 2012).…”