Many employees take pride in personalizing their workspace. But while it’s not uncommon to see desks littered with action figures or cubicle walls cluttered with pictures, few people give much thought to the light around them. The intensity and type of light we live with during the workday can have a major impact on our health, happiness, and productivity. Even if you have little choice but to deal with the overhead fluorescents in a windowless office, there are still several steps you can take to make the light work for you.

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In this episode of 360 Real Time, Scott Sadler, manager of integrated technologies discusses the future of smart + connected spaces and how thoughtfully integrated technologies can use data to improve the experience people have at work.

The deeply embedded practice of designing gender-segregated restrooms may feel like the norm to many, but in recent years, transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals and the organizations that support them have voiced the everyday discomfort and sense of alienation felt by those who cannot use the restroom of their choice in public spaces. They point out that gender-segregated facilities inherently exclude people who might not conform to stereotypical gender definitions or modes of expression. Moreover, research shows that transgendered and gender-nonconforming people of color specifically suffer under this status quo at disproportionately higher rates: both in terms of the health impacts resulting from not using the restroom for long periods of time and by experiencing violence in public restrooms. As this form of inequality gains a wider understanding, architects and designers must decide whether they wish to perpetuate inequality through their designs or advocate for change.

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The way that office design has evolved says a lot about the way we think about company organization and work in general. In the first half of the 20th century, many white-collar workplaces in the United States were still organized into rows of corridor offices. But by the 1950s, offices had begun to shift to the kind of layout you might see in “Mad Men”: a ring of offices around the corner of the room, surrounding a secretarial pool or accountants in the middle. In this design, only a company’s higher-ups had privacy: The lower-downs lived out their working lives in plain view.

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When the Second World War ended, universities struggled to cope with record enrollments. Like many universities, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology built a series of new housing developments for returning servicemen and their young families. One of those developments was named Westgate West. The buildings doubled as the research lab for three of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century and would come to reframe the way we think about office spaces.

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