The impact of office spatial aspects on creativity and innovation of architecture and urban design researchers

Innovative research centers need creative researchers who generate new ideas for product or process innovation. research activities have an extremely significant role in the development of societies whose promotion is strongly dependent on the creativity and innovation. the built environment has a key impact on human behavior. therefore, this paper at first, evaluates the appropriate plan of offices between open plan and closed plan where increase architecture and urban design researchers' creativity and innovation. then, the impact of spatial aspects of offices on effective factors of the creative and innovative process is examined. the spatial aspects derived from literatures are privacy, beauty, spatial diversity/flexibility, and proximity/visibility. also, effective factors on the creative and innovative process are tranquility/physical comfort, creative thinking, motivation, and communication. in the current study, a survey was conducted of 92 faculty members and phd students of architecture and urban design departments in governmental universities of tehran, iran. results indicate that closed plan offices are more desirable for architecture and urban design researchers with the subject of enhancing creativity and innovation. moreover, spatial aspects of offices have different influence on effective factors of the creative and innovative process that should be considered in design of research offices. at the end, some architectural design guides are proposed to achieve the appropriate research offices where stimulate architecture and urban design researchers' creativity and innovation.