It was the Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa who described the door handle as ‘the handshake of the building’ in his book The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Buildings greet us in other ways too and we respond to those greetings in very human ways. So much so, in fact, that when we make decisions about the ways in which offices introduce themselves, we should take account of the psychological factors that can mean the difference between a successful or failed office design. For a start, first impressions count. According to researchers at the University of Ottawa, people make decisions about websites within a 20th of a second. That seems hasty, but the good news is that we take our time when we first meet other people. We make our mind up about them in one 10th of a second according to psychologists at Princeton. People also make similar snap decisions about a company based on its office design and especially its reception.
Getting a better handle on the psychology of office design