Open Campus Design
Interaction on campus is crucial for collaboration between companies and knowledge institutions. Being part of the campus innovation ecosystem, and having opportunities to meet and collaborate, helps companies to innovate and knowledge institutions to valorise scientific knowledge.
This research examines to what extent interactions between companies and knowledge institutions can be deliberately supported by facility management: the organisational function that provides, and can integrate, the design of spaces and services. After all, end users experience space and services as one whole environment.Through four consecutive studies, this research shows that chance (serendipitous) or unplanned interactions can be influenced by a range of factors. Seven factors identified in the literature were compared with six interrelated categories identified through interviews with facility directors of Dutch university campuses. These factors and categories are interconnected and embedded in a layered system. As such, the campus can be understood as an interconnected (sub)system operating within a broader environment. A subsequent survey identified the campus locations where these encounters actually took place, as well as the characteristics that influence the opportunities for action (affordances) and limitations (constraints) of these locations. Focus groups were then used to explore why there appeared to be little connection between the characteristics identified earlier and the locations where interactions were most successful. The findings showed that, despite three themes of attraction factors, ‘Function’, ‘Space’ and ‘Organisation’, the limiting factor ‘Time’ strongly influenced user behaviour. Based on these findings, the 5-minute campus concept was introduced. On a 5-minute campus, basic facilities such as coffee and toilets are located less than five minutes from the workplace, while lunch facilities are available at approximately five minutes. For events, users were willing to travel more than five minutes, depending on the expected knowledge value.
This PhD research therefore shows that the integrated design of spaces and services can support the everyday interaction behaviour of campus users. It positions facility management as a strategic and integrating function that can actively shape the conditions for interaction, precisely because it connects two mutually dependent domains: spaces and services. In summary, this research shows that unplanned interactions between knowledge institutions and companies on university campuses are not simply random events. They are context-dependent and can be deliberately facilitated