Prof. Dr.-Ing. Architect Nikolas Müller, Professor of Real Estate Engineering and Management at HSBA, is an expert on Workplace Design and Interdisciplinary Workplace Research and explains the importance and potential of open office structures and working environments for collaboration, performance and motivation:
"Space is always more than just the physical environment for social interactions; it is always also decisive for the nature, quality and duration of social processes, interactions, behaviour and the motivation of employees and, in this case, students. Against this background, space is also decisive for the results (of employees and students).”
In 2018, HSBA set out to become an agile organisation in order to be able to react quickly and dynamically to the constantly changing challenges posed by digitalisation. The necessary cultural change is a complex process in which culture and structure must be continuously adapted. Against this background, the move to the new building is an essential step in advancing the change process, because: "With the spatial structures," Professor Müller continues, "the communication structure of the users also changes. Open workspaces offer many opportunities for team collaboration and performance, provided that the management and corporate culture changes accordingly. This was already stated by Winston Churchill long before the first studies on open work environments: "We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us".“