Arranging Office Departments: How to Plan Neighborhoods That Foster Collaboration
Alessandro Nicotra
Workplace Intelligence
In short
— Physical proximity measurably promotes collaboration. With every metre of distance, exchange decreases; a floor acts like a boundary.
— Open does not automatically mean close. What matters are shared paths, meeting points, and short distances between the right teams.
— A survey shows which teams need proximity. This creates zones that organize the office.
Who sits next to whom is no minor matter. A difference of a few meters or a single floor determines whether two teams run into each other by chance or only communicate by email. That is why good office neighborhoods are not created from the organizational chart, but from the question of who actually works together in day-to-day life.
A story is the highest wall in the office.
Why is the arrangement of departments so important?
Because distance costs collaboration. Back in the 1970s, Thomas Allen at MIT showed that the frequency of technical conversations drops sharply as the distance between workstations increases. More recent studies confirm this: at MIT, the likelihood of joint publications and patents decreases significantly with increasing distance between researchers. A study on a Paris campus shows: those who work in the same location are 3.5 times more likely to conduct research together.
Proximity also works on a small scale. An NBER study found that software developers who sit close to their team receive significantly more feedback on their code. Young and new employees benefit the most.
Does an open-plan office foster collaboration?
Not automatically. When two companies moved into open-plan office spaces, face-to-face interactions dropped by around 70 percent, while emails and chats increased (Bernstein and Turban, Harvard). Researcher Kerstin Sailer from the Space Syntax Lab at UCL also observes: the larger the space and the more people you see, the more likely teams are to keep to themselves.
What matters are shared paths. In a University of Michigan study, more shared walking paths between researchers was associated with more collaboration, while greater distance led to significantly less. People who bump into each other on the way to the kitchen talk to one another.
HIAG Bahnhofplatz, Zurich
How do you find out which teams belong next to each other?
By asking the teams themselves and translating their answers into zones. In the survey by Workplace Intelligence, each department indicates who they collaborate with and how closely. This creates a matrix showing which teams need spatial proximity, which can handle distance, and where conflicts might arise—such as when a loud team would have to sit next to a very quiet one.
We translate the matrix into neighbourhoods: functional zones where closely connected teams are located together, with shared meeting points at the intersections. Across multiple floors, we distribute the departments so that the most important working relationships remain on the same level. Only then does the design process begin.
What does a good neighbourhood in the office look like?
Closely connected teams share a zone, and between the zones are spaces where people run into each other. The kitchen, a project room, a staircase with room to pause. Quiet areas are situated away from the main thoroughfares, while encounter spaces are located where everyone passes by anyway.
At the new Bern University of Applied Sciences campus in Biel, we worked with user representatives in workshops to determine who needs interaction where and who needs quiet. This resulted in spatial modules arranged according to the principle of "from loud to quiet". At Kanadevia Inova in Zurich, clear pathways, recognisable zones, and meeting places turn a space for 900 people into a cohesive building.
What does this bring to the company?
Shorter distances, faster decisions, and fewer subsequent relocations. When teams that need each other daily sit close together, questions are resolved at the desk instead of via emails and meetings. Just how costly distance is has been shown by a study by Microsoft: during remote work, collaboration across team boundaries dropped by about a quarter.
In addition, there is a tangible cost advantage. Those who clarify the layout before the design phase do not have to correct it after moving in. Any subsequent rearrangement incurs planning, moving, IT, and working time costs.
Zwhatt Community Office, Regensdorf
Frequently Asked Questions
Should departments be seated according to the org chart?
Not necessarily. Teams from different departments often work more closely together than those within the same one. The layout should follow actual collaboration.
What is a neighbourhood in the office?
A zone where closely connected teams work near each other, with shared meeting points and retreat spaces. They are referred to as neighbourhoods.
How do you handle multiple floors?
The most important relationships belong on the same level. Where that isn't possible, highly visible staircases and shared spaces that connect all floors help.
Does this also work with desk sharing?
Yes. Even without assigned desks, every team needs a home base. Neighbourhoods provide orientation on where to find one's team.
How often should the layout be reviewed?
Whenever teams, projects, or ways of working change significantly. A short survey will show whether the neighbourhoods are still right.
Sources
An exploration of collaborative scientific production at MIT, Claudel et al., PLOS ONE, 2017
Microgeography and the Direction of Inventive Activity, Christian Catalini, Management Science, 2018
The Power of Proximity to Coworkers, Emanuel, Harrington and Pallais, NBER, 2023
The Impact of the «Open» Workspace on Human Collaboration, Bernstein and Turban, 2018
How building layouts drive social interaction, UCL Bartlett, 2024
Shared Paths to the Lab, Kabo et al., Environment and Behavior, 2015
Thomas J. Allen, Managing the Flow of Technology, MIT Press, 1977
The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers, Yang et al., Microsoft Research, Nature Human Behaviour, 2021
Collaboration cannot be mandated. But you can pave the way so that the right people meet.
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