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Building design can make entrepreneurial behavior easier to start and sustain when it does three things at once: supports several kinds of activity, puts different disciplines in visual and physical contact, and leaves enough structure and governance flexibility for the organization to change. These are design principles, not a proven formula for producing companies or inventions. They are the central argument in CannonDesign’s February 9, 2023 Building Design + Construction essay by Mehrdad Yazdani, director of the Yazdani Studio.
The strongest example is Lassonde Studios at the University of Utah, where students live, prototype, learn and launch projects in one five-story entrepreneurial center. A second example, the Gates Vascular Institute and Clinical Translational Research Center in Buffalo, applies a related collaborative idea to research and clinical work. Together, the projects show how floor plans, equipment, circulation, access rules and long-term adaptability can either invite bold use or quietly suppress it.
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The three design moves at a glance
The essay organizes its argument around three connected decisions. Each can be discussed separately, but the cultural effect depends on how they reinforce one another: varied activities create reasons to gather; proximity exposes people to unfamiliar skills; and adaptable construction keeps the environment useful as those activities evolve.
| Design move | What it means in practice | Intended cultural effect | Evidence in the cited projects |
|---|---|---|---|
| Make “and” spaces | Allow learning, making, relaxing, meeting and informal work to overlap instead of assigning every room one narrow function. | Lower the threshold for trying an activity and make unplanned interactions more likely. | Lassonde Studios combines living, collaboration, prototyping, café, gaming and communal areas. |
| Connect disciplines | Place people, tools and visible work from different fields along shared routes and common areas. | Expose users to capabilities they would not encounter in a specialized or isolated department. | Lassonde places learning and prototyping near 3D printers, game systems, communal tables and a café. |
| Design for change | Separate durable structural decisions from interior arrangements that may need to move, combine or be replaced. | Keep the building relevant as teams, technologies and programs change. | Lassonde’s concrete structure is described as independent of its interior living-space arrangements. |
These are organizing principles rather than independently ranked interventions. The source is a project-based design essay, not a controlled comparison of buildings or a statistical study of entrepreneurship. Claims that a building “elevates” culture should therefore be read as the designers’ thesis and reported experience.
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1. Create “and” spaces instead of single-purpose rooms
What an “and” space does
A single-purpose room tells occupants what is expected: classroom, office, lounge or workshop. An “and” space permits more than one legitimate mode of use. A student might attend a lesson, continue a prototype, meet a collaborator, eat, play a game or simply observe other work without crossing a psychological or physical boundary each time.
This flexibility matters because early entrepreneurial work is rarely linear. A concept may move from conversation to sketch, from sketch to test, and from test to a new conversation in the same afternoon. If each transition requires booking another room, obtaining permission or carrying materials across a building, the environment adds friction before the idea has momentum.
Lassonde Studios as the case
CannonDesign describes Lassonde Studios at the University of Utah as a five-story center where students live, create and launch companies and projects. At its center is a 20,000-square-foot “garage” for collaboration and prototyping, alongside café, gaming and communal areas. The arrangement does not prescribe that every square foot be used in only one way; it makes different forms of activity visible and adjacent.
The article reports that students encountering the building asked, “Where do I sign up?” and “What am I supposed to do here?” Those lines are anecdotes, not a systematic survey, but they illustrate the intended invitation: the building should make participation feel possible before a user has a fully formed project.
How to apply the principle in a new project
- Map activity sequences, not just room names. List how people move from idea, to discussion, to making, to testing, to recovery or social time. Look for transitions that can happen without a formal doorway or reservation.
- Use robust, neutral zones. Open areas with durable power, lighting, acoustics and furniture that can be rearranged support more combinations than a room fitted for one event type.
- Make work observable without making it exposed. Glazed fronts, internal windows, low partitions and display surfaces can let passersby see progress while retaining places for concentration and confidential conversations.
- Provide both energy and retreat. Entrepreneurial cultures need lively exchange, but users also need quiet corners for analysis, calls and recovery. Flexibility is not the same as constant noise.
- Plan storage and reset routines. A multi-use area fails when every activity must clear away another activity’s materials. Lockable storage, charging points and clear reset responsibilities protect the next use.
The aim is not to make every room multipurpose. Specialized laboratories, clean areas, secure rooms and acoustic studios may require strict control. The design question is where overlap creates value and where separation protects safety, concentration or compliance.
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2. Connect disciplines so skills become visible
Proximity creates opportunities, not guaranteed collaboration
Entrepreneurial ideas often emerge when someone recognizes that another field has a useful method, tool or perspective. A building can increase the chance of that recognition by putting different activities along the same routes and around shared resources. Seeing a prototype, a game system or a team working with unfamiliar equipment can prompt a question that would never arise in an isolated department.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchLassonde Studios illustrates this strategy by placing learning and prototyping spaces near 3D printers, game systems, communal tables and a café. The equipment is part of the social landscape rather than hidden in a room that only specialists enter. The source does not identify a printer model, vendor or performance specification, and it does not claim that a 3D printer by itself produces innovation. Its role in the example is to make making visible and accessible.
Designing the connective tissue
- Put shared resources on natural paths. A tool wall, materials library or demonstration bench has more cultural reach beside a common route than at the end of a corridor marked for experts only.
- Mix formal and informal settings. A seminar room opening onto a café, lounge or project zone allows a scheduled lesson to spill into an unscheduled conversation.
- Display process, not only finished work. Prototypes, failed tests, annotated drawings and works in progress communicate that experimentation is normal and invite specific questions.
- Design for short encounters. Standing tables, generous landings and small collaboration niches support a ten-minute exchange without requiring a meeting booking.
- Offer clear orientation. Signage and visible hosts should explain what a space contains, who can use it and how to begin. Openness without wayfinding can feel like trespassing.
Applying the idea beyond universities
The Gates Vascular Institute and Clinical Translational Research Center in Buffalo is presented as an example outside higher education. CannonDesign describes a “sandwich” arrangement in which research and clinical functions are connected by a collaborative core. That core is the spatial proposition: people working on different sides of the research-to-care pathway can encounter one another rather than operating in completely separate buildings.
The article attributes claims about transformation and lives saved to its project account. Those outcomes are not independently established by the source, so the defensible lesson is narrower: a connective layout can express and support a desired relationship between disciplines. Owners should still define how collaboration will be governed, measured and protected, especially where patient privacy, safety or regulated information is involved.
3. Design for change before the first occupants arrive
Separate long-life structure from short-life fit-out
Adaptability starts with recognizing that a building’s structural frame may last for decades while teams, technology and room requirements change much faster. Lassonde Studios is described as using a concrete structure independent of its interior living-space arrangements. That separation allows interior configurations to change without treating every change as a structural reconstruction.
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This strategy is not a promise that any future alteration will be cheap or easy. Mechanical systems, fire protection, accessibility, acoustics, equipment loads, plumbing and permits can all constrain a renovation. The project example demonstrates an adaptability strategy, not a universal guarantee.
Questions to resolve during design
- Which elements must remain fixed? Identify the structural grid, shafts, egress paths, fire compartments and heavy-service zones that are expensive or impossible to move.
- Which elements are likely to change? Forecast changes in team size, teaching formats, equipment, privacy needs and residential or workplace patterns. Treat those forecasts as scenarios, not certainties.
- Can services reach multiple layouts? Use accessible distribution routes, spare capacity where justified and connection points that do not force one permanent furniture plan.
- How will a change be approved? Document who can authorize reconfiguration, what safety checks are required and how costs will be funded.
- What can be reused? Select demountable partitions, movable furniture and durable finishes where they genuinely reduce future waste and disruption.
Adaptability also has a cultural dimension. If occupants believe the building can respond to a new project, they are more likely to propose one. If every experiment appears to require a capital project, users may protect the status quo even when the organization says it values innovation.
Governance is part of the design
Floor plans alone do not create an entrepreneurial culture. The CannonDesign discussion extends to how people are invited to use a building. It cites freer movement through door placement and describes trusting students to use equipment without first asking permission. These choices reduce the symbolic message that tools and knowledge belong only to an authorized few.
Turn openness into workable rules
- Publish access conditions. State who may enter, when, what training is required and how to get help. Ambiguity makes users either overly cautious or unsafe.
- Use proportional controls. Reserve strict permission systems for hazards, privacy and high-value assets; avoid applying the same friction to low-risk collaboration areas.
- Make stewardship visible. Assign staff or peer hosts, provide maintenance channels and explain how users can report a damaged tool or propose a layout change.
- Design for inclusion. Access hours, furniture, acoustics, lighting and circulation should support people with different schedules, bodies, sensory needs and levels of confidence.
- Review rules with users. A quarterly or term-based review can reveal when a rule blocks the behavior the space was intended to encourage.
Trust does not mean abandoning safety or accountability. It means matching oversight to risk and giving users enough ownership to act before an idea has formal institutional status.
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Use the following sequence when planning a new entrepreneurial center, research facility, school, library or workplace. It converts the three principles into decisions that can be documented and reviewed.
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- Define the behaviors you want to see. Write observable statements such as “a researcher can demonstrate a prototype to a clinician without booking a separate venue” or “a resident can move from a social area to focused work within the same floor.” Avoid vague goals such as “increase innovation.”
- Map communities and dependencies. Identify disciplines, user groups, tools, confidential activities and peak periods. Note where two groups could benefit from contact and where separation is essential.
- Lay out an activity gradient. Arrange public, shared, focused and controlled zones so users can move between them. Put common resources and visible work where different groups naturally pass.
- Test multi-use scenarios. Walk through a normal day, a busy event, a messy prototype session and an unexpected change in team size. Check power, storage, acoustics, cleaning, security and circulation in each scenario.
- Document the adaptability strategy. Record what is intended to stay fixed, what can move, what spare capacity is provided and what approvals a future change will require.
- Write the operating model alongside the drawings. Set access rules, training, booking, host responsibilities, maintenance response and a process for user feedback. Governance should not be an afterthought.
- Establish a learning loop. After opening, collect evidence such as space-use patterns, participation by different groups, time from idea to prototype, requests for access and reasons people avoid a space. Use the findings to adjust layouts and rules, while recognizing that correlation is not proof that design caused an entrepreneurial outcome.
What the available evidence does—and does not—show
The source behind these examples is an industry essay published by CannonDesign on February 9, 2023. It presents Mehrdad Yazdani’s design argument and project accounts; it does not report an independent study, a controlled evaluation or a causal estimate linking any feature to the number of companies, patents or lives saved.
Several figures illustrate the scale and interest reported by that article. It says Lassonde’s garage covers 20,000 square feet, that users consume 20,000 cups of free coffee per year and that 1,000 people were on a waiting list before groundbreaking. The article supplies no measurement method for the coffee figure and no independent verification or definition of the waiting list. Treat all three as attributed project anecdotes, not benchmarks for design effectiveness.
Dr. Nick Hopkins, identified as Chief Scientific Officer of the Jacobs Institute, is quoted describing the Gates Vascular Institute: “You gave us a building for the way that we should be working today, and we will be working tomorrow.” The statement captures the aspiration for a building to support evolving practice; it is not a quantified outcome.
For a construction brief, that distinction is useful rather than limiting. The three principles provide hypotheses to test: overlapping activities may reduce friction, visible cross-disciplinary work may create more encounters, and adaptable construction may lower the cost or disruption of change. Owners should define their own success measures and revisit them after occupancy instead of assuming that a celebrated project will perform identically in another climate, budget, governance model or user population.
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