Between organisation and architecture: end-user participation in design

This paper contributes to our sparse knowledge on the relationship between organisational and architectural design. It is based on an ethnographic study of the process of designing a municipality town hall, in which end-user participation constituted an integrated part of the design process. In this process, the open-office layout was introduced as a premediated design condition, a format that the users initially resisted. The paper discusses how end-user participation as a method and spatial design as a perspective may inform change in organisations. Although the users' resistance toward the open layout remained, their perception of this solution concurrently modified.