Article

1. Introduction
For better or worse, human beings are the products of their environment. As the built environment shapes our behaviour. Hence, it affects our level of creativity, mood, and productivity. Today, work is considered as a key to our social identity, where we use our organization or job to build a strong sense of self and identity. “A large part of how people define who they are is by what they do.” (A. Weinberg & Doyle, 2017). Because employees spend most of their time indoors, that averagely start working from the age of 21 till the age of retirement which is 60; more or less. Almost 8 to 9 hours per day is the average working hours in Bahrain. There is an emerging opportunity to use workplaces to promote and encourage the state of well-being at work (Labour market regulatory authority, 2015). When workplaces provide an environment that supports users in every aspect and address the behaviour and psychological health of people. All is being revolved into creating a better life and wellbeing.

As much as working could be beneficial for our well-being where being absorb in a smart workplace promotes well-being and comfort, work environments usually do not provide a universally positive experience. The poorly designed workplaces, difficult work environments, poorly trained directors, and lack of understanding of human behaviour in the workplace can stimulate negative mental health conditions (A. Weinberg & Doyle, 2017).

According to workplace stress statistics from 2019, stress, anxiety or depression are accounted for 55% of the US employees experience at their workplace. Additionally, the average global percentage is almost 40% of the world population are experiencing workplace stress on a daily basis (Puac, 2020). Similarly, statistics of the MENA region shows that nearly seven in ten people (69.1%) of employees are suffering from stress disorders. Additionally, when asked about the effect of work stress on their personal lives, about 27.9% showed that they suffer from the challenges they face within their work environment that has a significant impact on their life relations which also affected their work performance as 19.9% of them had declared (Maceda, 2016).

The building design has the potential to cause stress and anxiety and eventually affect mentally and physically human health. We acknowledge that stress is a dynamic process in which is caused mainly by the people themselves. However, understanding that the physical environment has a significant role in enhancing the stress levels in a workplace creates a leap in designing innovation and workplaces (Evans & McCoy, 1998).

Therefore, the ultimate goal of this study is to look at the rigid headquarter workspaces and understand the way of designing a new building and design typology that enhances the work environment and maximize productivity, creativity, and wellbeing. The process by which this is done is to further address the design issues through observing the current existing situation of the workplaces, the factors affecting the human behaviour and the level of productivity and reflecting the architectural implementations of the new innovative workspaces that provide successful solutions for the challenges of the design of the 21st-century workplace that will lead to create a more of a destrict reflected in a building with different levels.

2. The change we face – The environmental effect on the human behaviour

With the rapid developments happening in the world, revolving on updating of science, technology, and economy, it creates risks in the world of organizations and companies. The dynamic environment that necessitates renovation creates a competitive pressure for the organizations to keep pace with this development in which the more innovative the organization is, the more competitive advantages it gets (Li & Zheng, 2014). Gogoleva and Balabanova define innovative behaviour as “Innovative behaviour is a part of organizational behaviour, and it is considered as proactive, based on a full understanding of one’s duties and responsibilities in the workplace and caused by intrinsic motives.” (Gogoleva & Balabanova, 2016, p. 6). Thus, employees are the driven forces of innovation where their innovative behaviour would be reflected in the organization innovation (Li & Zheng, 2014).

2.1 Factors affecting employee’s behaviour

Workstations and especially innovation stations are the physical manifestations of economic, demographic, and cultural forces. The attitude and the behaviour of the employee in workplaces are controlled by factors that will shape performance, productivity, and creativity. These factors could be derived from internal and external factors. As for the internal factors, it represents the ability of the employee to participate, feel comfortable and energetic within the envelope of the workspace. At the same time, the external factors include the open team environment, the collaborative places, the interactions, and the supports of the leaders. Correspondingly, the workstation atmosphere also affects the behaviour, where the employees feel the degree of the environment that could stimulate creativity and encouragement. These factors reflect the perception of the individual, which directly affects the employee’s innovational behaviour and productivity in the atmosphere of the organization. Moreover, the attitudes, values, and motivations of the members of the organization play an intermediate role in creating a relationship between the organizational innovation atmosphere and employee innovative behaviour (Li & Zheng, 2014). 

2.2 The emotion and the environment – the forgotten dimension

Employees’ innovative behaviours depend not only on cognitive style, motivation, and communication but also on social capital. The way the employee interact with other users could promote a sense of trust and vitality, not only will result in sharing experiences and knowledge, but also generating new ideas, expand the field of objectives, vision and enhance the level of creative thinking. With this intention, the creation of emotional commitments created by the internal motivation of the employee creates a good effect on their improvements and productivity. Le and Zheng (2014) believe that the inspiration and innovative behaviour of the employee does not only comes from the individual thinking of the employee himself. But it is generated by the repeated interactions between people. The interactions that happen between the members have great potential in promoting emotional trust and self-confidence. Thus, the satisfaction on the organization level and will take the organization to a higher level (Li & Zheng, 2014).

2.2.1 Architecture and Social Infrastructure

We are accustomed to understanding infrastructure to refer to engineering issues relating to the physical or virtual underlying systems that allow societies to function. For example, water supply and sewage systems, health care, and bridge and building foundations. However, what policymakers, business owners, and architects rarely address is the social infrastructure. If we will define what social infrastructure is, we can say that it is interaction spaces that impact, influence, and promotes social behaviour in people’s daily lives, civic involvement, and community interactions (Klinenberg, 2018). Social infrastructure provides the context for social engagements and value of encounters that architects should consider while building a headquarter workspace to achieve work-life balance.

2.2.2 Can architecture solve a social problem?

Even though architecture does not solve the social problems in lack of community participation, interactions between employees etc. It does give a method of constructing settings that are more likely to foster specific behaviours. In other words, it serves as the material basis for the designing of social infrastructure, which may then have a direct influence on social transformation. Architecture has a role in constructing settings that directly meet the needs of people.

2.3 Work environment issues and needs

Besides the working mood that should be promoted through space, the design of the working space also matters in shaping the behaviour and creating a productive and innovative employee. In fact, according to Weinberg et al., the interplay of different spatial organizations could play a huge role in creating an innovative atmosphere “Not a single factor is important, it is rather the whole atmosphere including size, light, and space climate.” (U. Weinberg et al., 2014, p. 910).

A design expression and diversity in the environment has a significant influence on the creativity and productivity of a workplace. When a work environment is creatively designed, the ability to generate new and innovative ideas will emerge. The idea is that working in a workplace, and people have different goals and moods than the other one next to them. As some needs a quiet, hidden area but on the contrary, the one next to him likes to watch other works, play, and interact with people around to get inspired. Creating diversity in spaces allows people to get inspired in different ways. The ability to walk from one space to another in a building that has a diversity in its places makes it possible to have a break from work in an extremally different environment, where many might find a place somewhere outside the building to change their scenery and get away from work (Dijk, 1969).

Further, having the proper facilities and creating interaction possibilities can transform inspiration into innovation. However, a space with diversity should provide orderliness to create an inviting space to work, collaborate and relax. Weinberg et al. (2014) elaborate that in disorder, nothing new could happen within the place as he believes that combining work and play in the same area is innovation. Still, if a team walk into space where it is messy and disordered, it cannot create anything. But on the other hand, the team can make an absolute mess to innovate and play (U. Weinberg et al., 2014).

A study has been produced by Ohio state university tracking the stress levels and the effect of the built environments on the workers. The participants were split into two groups. The first group worked in an old office building where poor lighting and colours with a low ceiling and lack of spatial organization were spotted. But on the contrary, the other group was sent to a new office building with an open layout office and skylights. This study showed that within one year and a half, the employees in the old building felt more stress than those in the newer building, even when they were not at work (Osterman, 2019).

After discussing the needs, causes and factors that impact the employee’s behavioural attitude, the following topics will discuss the effect of the built environment on the innovative workplaces, the physical environment role in this built environment and the creativity of the users that is enhanced by the workplace. 

3. contemporary Trends influencing the design of a workspace

3.1 The psychological effects of openness

The concept of openness expresses the feeling of a creative workplace. Thus, producing productive employees. the ordinary workstation on the contrary, often we see barriers like walls, separate rooms, etc. where the visual connection is not part of the space creating a lack of face to face interaction and collaboration. (Cristea, 2016). In fact, some psychologists agreed that “there are a mutual relationship and interaction between individuals and the work environment (action and reaction)” (Ahmadpoor Samani et al., 2017, p. 47). Having a big room with an openness feeling will immediately relate to collaborative feeling and teamwork. But according to some employees Cristea interviewed, they would bother them to have this open space as it will disturb the private space each person has. As she elaborated “it’s hard to manage who is responsible for what. Therefore, open is great, but within a certain structure.” (Cristea, 2016, p. 56). Openness does not always refer to a large open space without any boundaries. There are modified open spaces where people still have their individual area, but the wall is half as tall or a transparent partition where it offers a great deal of openness within a building while containing a degree of privacy that people seek. (Cristea, 2016).

3.2 Open plan layout

The workspace layout that defines the communication patterns has a significant impact on the levels of positivity, comfort, satisfaction, and productivity in the workplace. For example, the layout of the floor plan affects the movement within the building, visibility, and accessibility. Thus, affects the user’s perception and satisfaction on a higher level. As time passes, different approaches to plan layout have been formed for the workplaces. The most common one is the cellular offices that prioritize privacy and do not encourage collaboration because of the solid, non-transparent partitions, which called a closed plan layout. Furthermore, in these types of buildings, most of the common areas are placed away at the corners of the space where almost no connections are made between them and the workspace area. Although these kinds of layouts create a high acoustical and visual privacy for the users yet, it decreases the social interactions and communications between the users resulting in a dull, unpleasant environment (Rashid et al., 2009).

On the other hand, a new layout design has been established as a modern way to enhance communication, face to face interactions which is the open-plan layout. This type of layout has few to no solid partition walls combined with transparent walls and an open, flexible design that pays more attention to the employee’s satisfaction than the old layout. Moreover, the open-plan layout created a vast improvement in the visibility and movements, allowing users to intersect, feel fresh and create a lively area where boredom does not take place (Rashid et al., 2009).
A comparison has been conducted between a traditional open layout with a contemporary approach of an open layout. The open organic layout has an arrangement with the same layout as the typical open layout, but in an organic way that no geometric order is placed. Moreover, a variety of innovative spaces and facilities is fitted within the organic layout where the circulation lack definition, so they become a part of the workspace (Rashid et al., 2009). A study conducted on the open organic layout noted the behaviour and movement of the users in such spaces. The results showed that in comparison with the typical open plan layout: