The Tool Desk
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Design for paths that cross
Interdisciplinary work rarely begins with a scheduled meeting alone. It often starts when a chemist, biologist, musician, engineer or librarian sees someone else’s work, overhears a problem and has a natural opening for conversation. Kent Duffy, FAIA, a design principal at SRG Partnership, puts the principle plainly in the June 9, 2016 article Designing for interdisciplinary communication in university buildings in Building Design + Construction: “First, you need to provide opportunities for paths to cross.”
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That does not mean making every room open-plan or eliminating specialist spaces. It means locating circulation, amenities, work areas and social spaces so that people from different disciplines can meet without needing a special invitation. The strongest plan also protects concentration, confidential conversations and specialist safety requirements. A building becomes a communication infrastructure: it creates encounters, supplies shared resources and gives those encounters somewhere useful to go.
Six design moves and what each one does
The following comparison is a planning lens drawn from the article’s examples. It is not a tested ranking of interventions.
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| Design move | Primary interaction setting | How it invites participation beyond one discipline | Privacy or control to provide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connection zones | Daylighted corridors and circulation nodes | Whiteboards and seating let people stop, display ideas and start informal conversations. | Keep a clear walking route and separate quiet work from through-traffic. |
| Shared amenities | Technology rooms and specialist facilities | A valuable instrument or expertise can serve several fields instead of one department. | Manage booking, training, safety and secure access. |
| Welcoming common areas | Atriums, lounges, cafés and nearby services | A broadly usable destination attracts people who have no office in the building. | Offer varied seating, acoustic choices and routes that do not force participation. |
| Selective wall removal | Shared faculty offices near meeting rooms | Colleagues from different disciplines share a work table and see one another’s activity. | Provide personal storage, daylight and nearby rooms for private discussions. |
| Maker spaces | Fabrication and project areas | Common equipment brings complementary skills together around a tangible goal. | Separate hazardous or noisy work, and make supervision and access explicit. |
| Shared meals | Courtyards, cafés and food-centered gathering places | Eating creates a low-pressure reason for people from different units to stay together. | Provide seating capacity, accessible routes and options for short or long visits. |
1. Build connection zones into circulation
A corridor is usually treated as leftover space, but a widened, daylit route can become a visible exchange point. In the source example, corridors include whiteboards and seating. Someone can sketch a question, post an evolving idea or sit for a short conversation without reserving a conference room. Daylight makes the route more comfortable, while the writing surface makes work visible enough to prompt a question.
Place the zone where routes already overlap
Start with a circulation map: entrances, lifts, stair landings, shared laboratories, libraries and teaching rooms. Put the collaboration zone at a genuine crossroads rather than at the end of a department-only hallway. A seat beside a busy route is useful only if it does not narrow egress or obstruct equipment movement. Clear sightlines help passers-by understand that stopping is welcome.
Make the whiteboard useful, not decorative
Use a writable surface large enough for diagrams, schedules or unresolved questions, and place it where contributors can stand without blocking traffic. Add a nearby ledge or small table for notebooks and models. Establish a simple maintenance routine so old material is cleared respectfully and active work is not erased accidentally. If work may contain confidential information, provide a separate board inside a controlled area.
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Connection zones generate sound and movement. Locate individual quiet rooms, reading areas or acoustically protected offices nearby but not directly in the flow. Upholstered seating, absorbent finishes and a change in ceiling treatment can signal where conversation belongs without turning the corridor into a sealed room.
2. Share amenities, expertise and expensive capability
Shared technology can be a stronger connector than a shared lounge because it gives people a concrete reason to collaborate. The article uses advanced nanoscale imaging as an example of equipment that can support chemistry, biology, geology and materials science. The architectural lesson is not to install one particular instrument; it is to locate valuable capability where several communities can reach it and learn from one another.
Design the facility as a service, not merely a room
A shared instrument room needs more than floor area. Plan for sample preparation, storage, loading, cleaning, training and technical support. Place an informal waiting or discussion area nearby so users can exchange methods while equipment is running. A visible staff point or specialist workspace makes expertise discoverable to newcomers.
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Set fair access rules
Cross-disciplinary use fails when one group effectively owns the resource. Publish eligibility, orientation, booking priority, supervision and after-hours rules. Provide an introductory path for people who have never used the technology, while preserving advanced workflows for experienced users. Include secure storage and contamination controls where the work requires them.
Connect the amenity to teaching and display
A window, viewing panel or small display area can show what the facility enables without exposing restricted work. Short demonstrations, open houses or interdisciplinary workshops help potential users understand when the capability is relevant. These activities should be scheduled around operations and safety requirements rather than interrupting them.
3. Make common areas genuinely welcoming
An atrium is not automatically inclusive. A common area draws people from across campus when it offers a reason to go there, comfortable places to stay and services that are useful to more than one department. The article points to a broadly usable atrium with seating, a café and nearby services as a campus-wide destination.
Design for several lengths of stay
Provide a mix of brief-perch seating, two-person tables, larger communal tables and more sheltered seats. Students waiting between classes, staff taking a short break and faculty holding an informal conversation need different settings. Keep some seats close to circulation for visibility and others away from the busiest path for longer work.
Use adjacency to create reasons to visit
Place the café, copy point, exhibition edge, service desk or other everyday destination where several routes converge. The goal is not to force everyone through one room; it is to make the common area the convenient place to pause. Wayfinding should identify the space as campus-wide rather than belonging to a single school.
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Provide accessible routes, varied lighting levels and acoustic refuge. Some people join a conversation more readily from the edge than from the center, so perimeter seating matters. Clear sightlines, visible entrances and reliable opening hours help visitors who do not already know the building.
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4. Remove walls selectively in faculty work areas
Shared offices can expose colleagues to ideas that would remain invisible behind separate doors, but an indiscriminate open plan can undermine focus and privacy. The article proposes larger shared offices for faculty from different disciplines, with personal storage, daylight, a shared work table and nearby conference rooms.
Keep individual control while sharing the room
Give each person a defined place for belongings, papers and equipment. Personal storage reduces the pressure to claim common surfaces and makes a mixed office feel stable. Bring daylight to workstations where possible, then use the shared table for reviewing drawings, comparing data or hosting a short working session.
Put private conversation within a few steps
Nearby conference rooms are essential for student advising, personnel matters, confidential research discussions and meetings that require a door. They should be easy to reserve and close enough that using them does not become a logistical burden. A small room for two people can be as important as a larger meeting room.
Plan the mix deliberately
Occupancy should reflect complementary work patterns rather than a random collection of departments. Before assigning seats, ask which groups benefit from proximity, what equipment they need and when they require quiet. Establish norms for noise, shared surfaces, visitors and access to the conference rooms.
5. Give interdisciplinary projects a place to make
Maker spaces turn an abstract invitation to collaborate into a shared task. Common tools and resources bring complementary expertise together around a physical problem. The article names a solar car and a net-zero house as examples of projects that can benefit from this model.
Organize around project flow
Map the sequence from delivery and storage to fabrication, assembly, testing and presentation. Leave enough clear floor area for large components and provide work surfaces at different heights. Locate briefing space where a team can review plans without standing in a hazardous work zone.
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Separate risk without isolating disciplines
Dust, fumes, heat, noise and moving equipment require controlled areas, extraction and supervision. Keep those controls visible and place clean collaboration tables just outside the higher-risk zones. Windows or safe viewing points let other disciplines see progress and ask questions without entering restricted areas.
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Tool orientation, posted procedures and a clear booking system make the facility approachable. Lockable project storage prevents teams from dismantling work between sessions. Displaying prototypes, failed iterations and completed components can explain the value of different skills and invite useful critique.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.6. Use food to create a shared destination
Eating together lowers the formality of an encounter. The article describes the University of Puget Sound Science Center courtyard and café as a gathering place used by people from the Science Center, School of Music and Library. The important feature is the overlap: the space belongs to daily campus life, not just to the unit that houses it.
Connect food space to outdoor and indoor routes
A courtyard, glazed commons or café edge can extend the usable season and make activity visible from circulation paths. Provide weather protection, shade and accessible thresholds so the destination works beyond ideal conditions. A direct route from neighboring buildings matters as much as the quality of the seating.
Offer settings for different social patterns
Include communal tables for spontaneous introductions, smaller tables for focused conversation and seats that support a quick meal. Keep service queues from cutting through seated areas. Power, lighting and durable surfaces allow the space to support informal work without turning every table into an office.
Keep the invitation broad
Clear signage, public-facing hours and routes that do not require departmental credentials signal that visitors are welcome. Programming such as exhibitions, lectures or performances can add reasons to return, but the space should remain useful on an ordinary day without an event.
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Turn the ideas into a building brief
These strategies work best as a connected sequence rather than a collection of isolated features. A project team can use the following process during programming and schematic design:
- Map existing encounters. Mark where people from different disciplines already cross, where they avoid one another and where a short stop would be possible.
- Identify shared needs. List equipment, expertise, food, services and project spaces that could serve more than one group. Distinguish resources that require controlled access from those that should be visibly open.
- Choose a network of places. Pair at least one circulation-based connection zone with a common destination, a resource space and a protected meeting option. The network should work across the day, not only during scheduled events.
- Test movement and operations. Check egress, deliveries, accessibility, acoustic spill, cleaning, booking, supervision and after-hours access before fixing furniture or walls.
- Prototype the social settings. Use temporary whiteboards, movable seats or pilot gatherings to learn whether people can stop comfortably and whether the proposed mix of public and private settings is credible.
- Assign stewardship. Name who maintains boards, manages shared equipment, schedules rooms, cleans food areas and resolves conflicts. A space without an owner will not remain welcoming.
Protect privacy, safety and disciplinary difference
Interdisciplinary communication is not the same as constant visibility. Faculty and students need places for confidential advising, sensitive data, focused writing and recovery from stimulation. Laboratories and maker spaces also have legitimate access and safety boundaries. The design brief should therefore specify which activities are public, shared by booking, visible but restricted, or fully private.
Accessibility must be treated as a participation condition, not a compliance afterthought. Routes, seating heights, door hardware, acoustics, lighting and wayfinding determine who can comfortably join an encounter. Cultural and dietary needs affect food-centered spaces, while different disciplinary practices affect storage, cleanliness and noise expectations. Invite representatives from the communities that will use each setting to review the plan before construction.
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The 2016 Building Design + Construction article presents practitioner reasoning and project examples. It does not report a controlled study, named statistics or quantitative estimates showing that any one strategy causes more communication or better research outcomes. The examples illustrate plausible ways to create opportunity; they are not measured proof.
After occupancy, a university can still learn whether the building is functioning by observing use and asking users about it. Useful indicators include who uses shared rooms, whether several disciplines book the same equipment, how often common areas are occupied outside peak periods, whether people can find private rooms when needed and which barriers prevent participation. Treat those observations as operational feedback, not as evidence that a particular architectural feature guarantees collaboration.
A practical standard for the final design
A strong interdisciplinary building lets a person encounter unfamiliar work, pause without getting in the way, find a shared resource, continue the conversation at a table and move to a private room when the subject requires it. Connection zones, shared amenities, welcoming commons, selective openness, maker spaces and food-centered gathering places each handle a different part of that journey. When they are planned as one network—with clear stewardship and safeguards—they give ideas more chances to cross disciplinary boundaries without sacrificing the focused and private work a university also needs.
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