Contextualizing Co-Working Spaces: User Participatory Approach in Architectural Design Studio

The evolution in our understanding of the notion of 'working' has evolved into a spatially diverse spectrum over the last decades. The era of increasing new definition of working enabling collaboration, knowledge sharing and socializing among users is worth of attention in terms of contextual use. Since the popularity of coworking spaces has increased over years, the variation of use contexts is gradually increasing. Thus, it becomes clearly important for designers to take the phenomenon of target users in specific co-working places into account throughout the design process. This study explores the effects of user participation and limits of actor diversity, with an approach focusing spesifically on the university campus area within the new emerging contextual diversity. User participation design method has been tested in the bachelor degree architectural design studio in the Department of Architecture in Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University. The purpose of this study is providing the understanding of the relationship between design process and behavioral patterns with the knowledge obtained through data collection based on user preferences and final versions of the projects.