By Christopher Murphy CHAPTER 13Witthoft, its secrets aren’t, in fact, secrets. You have no excuses not to pick
up a copy and start to understand and unleash the creative potential of
space when used well. As the d.schoolers put it: “Make your space!”
The CenTRalizeD offiCe
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing Erik Spiekermann speak, you’ll
know that not only is he an extremely engaging and hugely knowledgeable
speaker (entertainer is a far better term), but that he also has a vision for
the perfect studio.
Writing in Studio Culture: The Secret Life of the Graphic Design Studio, de-
sign critic Adrian Shaughnessy states:
Unusually among contemporary designers, Spiekermann has a sophisticated
set of theories relating to the layout, structure and management of design
studios. His theories have been extensively roadtested in the various creative
enterprises he has founded and run during a long career.During the 1970s Spiekermann worked as a freelance designer in London before
returning to Berlin in 1979 where, with two partners, he founded MetaDesign.
In 2001 he left MetaDesign and started UDN (United Designers Network), with
offices in Berlin, London and San Francisco. Since January 2009 he has been a
director of Edenspiekermann, which employs over 100 people and has offices in
Berlin and Amsterdam.Spiekermann’s Centralized Office collects his lifetime of experience
running design agencies both large and small, and proposes a design for
the perfect studio. The design solves numerous problems that offices rou-
tinely present, namely: different teams are all too often separated; chance
collisions rarely occur; management hierarchies often (intentionally or un-
intentionally) lead to physical separation by rank; and many, many more.