Designing Idea Machines

www.avnetwork.com: “Thoughts exchanged by one and another are not the same in one room as in another.”

This quote by legendary architect Louis Kahn refers to what really is at stake in designing spaces for collaboration. Whether we realize it or not, as AV designers, we have considerable influence over how ideas are exchanged. We influence room designs for some of the most important people in government, finance, law, education, and many other places. Ideas that fuel the world are formulated in spaces we help to design. As Steven Johnson says in his book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, “The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table.” Our industry figuratively creates those tables. Good ideas are generated by conversations, and the spaces in which conversations often happen are meeting rooms.