What WeWork Teaches us About Space
What is your favorite coffee shop? What do you like about it? I once spent a total of 16 hours in coffee shops observing their clients, function and design. What I saw led me to the study of place. I learned that coffee shops are so successful because they have created what’s called a third place. The third place is the social environment separate from the two usual social environments of home (“first place”) and the workplace (“second place”). Coffee shops, lounges, clubs or public parks are all great examples of third places.
WeWork has perfected the idea of the third place and has monetized it like no one has before. They have created productive work environments that draw people in with the gravity of productivity.
If we use WeWork as a case study, we can see the acceleration of many industries. I’m making the case for education here, but you can apply this to any field of work. Here is what WeWork teaches us about productive spaces.
Productive Spaces have Gravitational Pull
One of the interesting things about third places is that people are finding they can be extremely productive. I recently went to my favorite coffee shop to work. As I walked in I immediately took in the sight of faces lit by laptops or cell phones. It looked like everyone was working really hard. That made me want to come in and get right to work so I did!
I call this the gravitational pull of work. This is when the environment and the people in it encourage work just through the action of working.
Schools should redesign their learning spaces to capture the gravitational pull of work! What does this mean practically? It means getting rid of desks, adding tables, couches and, buzzword coming, flexible seating.
Productive Spaces are Comfortable
The thing you will notice about WeWorks and good third places is that they are comfortable. The success of WeWork, I believe, has come from the combination of all three types of place. They take the comfort of your home, the productivity of a workplace and the social environment/gravitational pull of a third place. This means that comfort becomes an important part of the equation.
Schools need to create comfort in the classroom. I have been in and worked in schools where I have heard school leaders encourage teachers to keep classrooms cold and make sure that kids are sitting up so students do not fall asleep. In other words, keep kids uncomfortable to make them work and learn. Dr. Sheryl Reinisch, Dean of the College of Education at Concordia University-Portland, in her work notes a study in which 775 surveyed students identified “comfort” as the “most necessary” component of high productivity and learning in their classroom.
We have got to make school environments more comfortable.
Productive Spaces are Collaborative
I don’t work for WeWork or know anyone on their executive team but it seems clear to me that collaboration is in their DNA. They have designed spaces that make it easy for teams to work together towards the completion of complex tasks. This is evidenced by the large number of startups that office out of a WeWork.
School learning spaces should foster collaboration. Learning and work in the “real world” is collaborative. The Brookings Institution argues that third places are community builders. Community building as a skill maps directly to success in the professional world because it allows people to be real and human with one another. As AI and machine learning develop, human moments will become more important.
Schools should build more collaborative spaces.
